The first thing that caused Arch Linux to grow significantly was the migration from two single-architecture images, one for x86 and the other for x86_64, to a single dual-architecture image that can boot on any of the two machine types. This happened I believe in 2012, and caused the CD to grow from a bit over 200MB to well over 450MB. TalkingArch, because of the brltty package, grew even more, as many dependencies are added even with the minimal package we have. Chris was still working on TalkingArch at that time. By the time Kelly and I took over the project, the size had grown to nearly 550MB, and has now topped 700MB. This is largely due to upgrades in the base packages, which usually add just a little size over time as code complexity increases. However, the small size increases double on Arch, because every time one package grows, it actually grows twice on the same iso, once for i686 and again for x86_64. TalkingArch, like Arch Linux itself, stores two of nearly everything, due to the dual-architecture format, which is why even 1MB of growth in a single package is nearly 2MB on the iso. TalkingArch was simply the first to break the 700MB size limitation of a CD, because it has more packages. Hope this helps explain things. Sent from my isobox _______________________________________________ Speakup mailing list Speakup@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx http://linux-speakup.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/speakup
