Ubuntu plan to release a new minimal ISO as part of the upcoming Ubuntu 23.04 release.

While there’s nothing to download or test (yet – that I’m aware of) a good overview of the project was shared on the Ubuntu developer mailing list at the weekend. Interestingly, the effort is being headed up by Dan Bungert, the maintainer of Subiquity, which is the tech underpinning Ubuntu’s new Flutter-based installer).

“The ubuntu-mini-iso is a small bootable iso that can be either downloaded and used on a CD/USB-drive or even via UEFI HTTP that brings up a dynamic TUI menu of what Ubuntu images you want to download/install to your target system,” Canonical’s Lukasz Zemczak explains.

“It uses simplestreams to select which images, so it’ll be quite customizable regarding the selection. The difference is that it then downloads the iso-of-interest into memory and chain-boots into it, allowing the installation of any image as one would normally do.”

Sounds pretty interesting, right?