On Sat, Mar 11, 2023 at 05:41:23PM -0800, Van Snyder wrote: > With other distributions, for example back when Scientific Linux > actually existed, the list of "additional software to install" provided > by the installer was much larger. It included development software, > publishing software, web serverrs, .... > > Are these not in the list in the recent Debian installers because they > don't fit nicely on one non-graphic-installer's screen?
If you want the exact reasoning behind the decisions made by the Debian installer's developers, you'll have to ask them. Here, we can only speculate. Let's take "web server" as an example, because at least I know a little bit about those. There are at least two major web servers in common use on Linux web servers -- Apache and nginx. A choice for "web server" 10 or 20 years ago might have been clear, because it was almost always gonna be Apache. Only a *tiny* minority would want aolserver or some other choice. But now? There are major competing products, and for the installer to choose one arbitrarily might alienate a big chunk of the people who want a different choice. The overwhelming number of options and configurations available on a Debian system means that the person installing the software is the best one to make choices about what to install, and how to set it up.
