I've been using an Amazon EC2 image (AMI) based on Fedora Core 6 for a long time now, but I would like to update to FC8 or FC10.
The problem is, when I went through the excellent upgrade instructions at ioncannon.net and re-bundled, I ended up with an AMI that had grown from 1.9 GB to 2.4 GB. Similarly, when I tried re-building from scratch using the Amazon FC8 image (fedora-8-x86_64-base-v1.08 a.k.a. ami-2547a34c), the size was about the same.
Is there something inherently "bigger" about FC8? Did I somehow pick up some new packages that I don't need? Is there any other explanation?
I can only speculate since both of these are pretty old versions of Fedora. I know at some point in the Fedora time line that they added the OpenOffice.org suite as a default install item. I also know that GNOME has steadily grown in size as they continue to add or enhance new features (programs).
I will tell you that Fedora 8 is IMHO the best Fedora release to date but that it is no longer supported by the Fedora Project, i.e. no security updates, no bug fixes, etc. You still have access to their repositories but they're stagnant, i.e. they are no longer updated.
Fedora 11 looks promising but if you're fighting size issues then newer releases are probably not going to help.
I'm not familiar with AMI. Is your size issue with the "final installation size" or "the size of the install media"? I know that I can use install media much smaller than the sizes you've mentioned. I also know that during the installation process I can modify the packages (items) installed to make the final install size fit my drive space.
I've yet to see an OS - Linux, OSX, Windows, what have you - that didn't increase in size from version to next version. If disk space is a big concern, consider installing a 'mini ISO' (that's what it's called in Ubuntu) so you can install the bare minimum you need.