I have searched all of the internet for this and nothing is helpful. I want the option to select nothing in the software selection page. I need a command-line version of Ubuntu with a GUI. There is already a mini.iso for focal fossa but I guess there is none for groovy? Why? Where can I get something similar?
The mini.iso for 20.10 (and newer versions) was not produced.
We have already asked Canonical to continue providing such images. But no luck.
So personally I'm happy with the following solution:
Download mini.iso for 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) from
http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/focal/main/installer-amd64/current/legacy-images/netboot/mini.iso
Or create your own mini.iso with HWE 5.13 kernel using this answer and install from it, then go to step 3 below.
Install the minimal system from mini.iso for 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa)
Upgrade just installed minimal system from 20.04 LTS to latest non-LTS release
Use minimal Ubuntu non-LTS system as a starting point.
I will use this solution until Canonical developers change their mind about this problem.
Existence of netboot mini.iso is essential thing.
It is a way to have highly customized system (yes, without Snaps) to start from scratch, to use
apt
with--no-install-recommends
and--no-install-suggests
on minimal system to keep it really minimal.It is like stage3 for Gentoo. Even Ubuntu 4.10 (Warty Warthog) has this installation media in place.
It should be noted that Debian still have netinst images for stable and even testing versions.
So I hope that the next LTS - 22.04 LTS will have traditional mini.iso in place.
Stuff to read and engage: