how many extra packages are installed compared to standard install?

[gvian]

frankly, i was intrigued, frustated and finally installed arch on laptop. learnt a lot. frequently long time arch users say gui installers install lot of unnecessary packages.

do we have statistics about how many extra packages compared to standard install for a particular or test desktop or laptop?

[Torxed]

Yepp, that's coming in v2.2.0. But the packages are these:

• https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/blob/torxed-v2.2.0/archinstall/lib/installer.py#L14

And whatever packages are needed for the file system chose, for btrfs that would be btrfs-progs for instance.
And if you choose a profile, say awesome the additional ones would be:

• https://github.com/archlinux/archinstall/blob/torxed-v2.2.0/profiles/awesome.py#L5

But in general I try to keep it as close to "absolutely the only ones that's needed for a functioning system", with the exception where it's very optional things such as profiles that are in the best interest of user friendliness. Those tend to hog a log of packages in general, like gnome and all it's "basic needs" are like ~8G or something :)

Tl;dr: base, base-devel, linux, linux-firmware, efibootmgr + file system packages

[asbachb]

@Torxed Is there a reason why base-devel is installed by default? Is there a way to prevent that via user_configuration.json?

[Torxed]

We could remove it I suppose. I don't recall a specific reason for it being there other than this was one of my default packages back in ~2014. It does pull in sudo and and which, as well as being an optional pacman dependency.

But in reality, submitting a PR with a suggestion to remove it is welcome and we'll see the community feedback (if any) :)