There are several good reasons for doing this:
- Minimize resource utilization – disk space, network bandwidth, CPU time and RAM are all finite; there is no reason to waste these quantities on processes which don’t have a purpose.
- Greater security – the fewer open ports and running processes, the few vulnerabilities there are likely to be on the system.
- Easier maintenance – with less software there are fewer dependencies to worry about, less to upgrade, and patching is less problematic.
- Elegant simplicity – management of a host is easier and cleaner if every component has its utility and nothing is extraneous.
A server freshly built from a Linux DVD – whatever distribution it is – will be automatically installed with a set of software suitable to its function. During the installation process, one selects “Basic Server” or “Desktop”, and a predetermined selection of software packages are selected accordingly. The thing to remember is that this selection is for a general case, and is rarely exactly applicable for any one host in particular. For example, if one were to select the “Web server” option for some distributions, one might by default get both Apache HTTPD and NGINX, although only one of these would probably be used at a time. It would be necessary to uninstall the extra package.
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