A standard installation for the i386 architecture, including all standard packages and using the default 2.6 kernel, takes up 397MB of disk space. A minimal base installation, without the “Standard system” task selected, will take 250MB.
In both cases this is the actual disk space used after the installation is finished and any temporary files deleted. It also does not take into account overhead used by the file system, for example for journal files. This means that significantly more disk space is needed both during the installation and for normal system use.
The following table lists sizes reported by aptitude for the tasks listed in tasksel. Note that some tasks have overlapping constituents, so the total installed size for two tasks together may be less than the total obtained by adding up the numbers.
By default the installer will install the GNOME desktop environment, but alternative desktop environments can be selected either by using one of the special CD images, or by specifying the desired desktop environment when the installer is booted (see Section 6.3.5.2, “Selecting and Installing Software”).
Note that you will need to add the sizes listed in the table to the size
of the standard installation when determining the size of partitions.
Most of the size listed as “Installed size” will end up in
/usr and in /lib;
the size listed as “Download size”
is (temporarily) required in /var.
| Task | Installed size (MB) | Download size (MB) | Space needed to install (MB) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Desktop environment | |||
| • GNOME (default) | 1830 | 703 | 2533 |
| • KDE | 1592 | 613 | 2205 |
| • Xfce | 1056 | 403 | 1459 |
| • LXDE | 963 | 370 | 1333 |
| Laptop[a] | 26 | 9 | 35 |
| Web server | 42 | 13 | 55 |
| Print server | 215 | 84 | 299 |
| DNS server | 3 | 1 | 4 |
| File server | 74 | 29 | 103 |
| Mail server | 14 | 5 | 19 |
| SQL database | 50 | 18 | 68 |
[a] There is some overlap of the Laptop task with the Desktop environment task. If you install both, the Laptop task will only require a few MB additional disk space. | |||
If you install in a language other than English, tasksel may automatically install a localization task, if one is available for your language. Space requirements differ per language; you should allow up to 350MB in total for download and installation.