Difference between 'Ubuntu netboot + Xubuntu Minimal (from taskel) and 'Xubuntu'

Question

I'm trying to figure out the difference between the following two installations:

• Ubuntu Netboot with "Xubuntu Minimal" from tasksel
• Xubuntu

I'm aware that Netboot with 'Xubuntu Minimal' is trimmed down. But I can't find out how much has been taken out (packages difference).

I've installed both in virtual machines and there's a difference of about 350~ packages. I've noticed that the minimal Xubuntu doesn't even have a browser, for example (which is fine by me). However, I'm worried that I may be missing some important (?) configurations and packages for laptop that I don't notice.

I've tried looking in the Ubuntu packages and a few other sites, but couldn't find much detailed info.

Thanks!

Answer 1

If you look under the hood of Tasksel (in /usr/share/tasksel/descs/ubuntu-tasks.desc), you will discover the real metapackage names:

• Tasksel's "Xubuntu Minimal" simply installs the xubuntu-core metapackage.
• Tasksel's "Xubuntu Desktop" simply installs the xubuntu-desktop metapackage.

If you query apt about those two metapackages, you will discover that xubuntu-core is a dependency of xubuntu-desktop.

So really, the question is about which dependencies of -desktop are not already included in -core. Here's one easy way to do it:

diff --suppress-common-lines <(apt depends xubuntu-core) <(apt depends xubuntu-desktop)

This script-voodoo simply reads the dependencies of -core and -desktop, then passes those to the diff program, and tells diff that we care about non-duplicates only.