Wondering what the various advantages/disadvantages of having a shorter Long Term Support (LTS) support period were over longer ones.
I notice Ubuntu provides 5 years of support, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) has 7 years, and Novell has a 10 year support cycle.
Are these numbers essentially meaningless beyond 3-4 years (i.e., servers are replaced/upgraded by then)? Or is there a benefit to the different support durations?
Both Debian and Ubuntu end up with 500 Mb to 750 Mb in their "minimal" installations, even after starting with the "netinstall" iso or "business card" iso and no optional packages installed later on in the installation process. The Debian "netinstall" is a 180 Mb download, and the "biz card" iso is 50 Mb.
My question:
is this a typical size for a minimal server install?
In other, more contemporary words:
MINIMAL, Y U SO BIG?
Are there any other options/variants (primarily Debian) for keeping things as lean as possible without having to go the route of customizing one's own bare bones Debian install?
Thnx in advance.