During the installation, there is a choice to let you choose which desktop and whether or not install the standard system utilities. See here for the screen shot and the packages included.
Personally I don't like to install many packages I don't need, so I ask here what is the consequences of not installing these utilities. Please in plain language what functionality I will lose or inconvenience I will get.
I often install servers without "Standard system utilities" and then only install what I need later. It works just fine (even with them deselected in tasksel, Debian will still install required packages like dpkg, apt-get etc.) and thus result in fully functional system.
(Note: I primarily install it that way as I don't want nfs-common and its depended rpcbind daemon, nor python required by reportbug script and stuff like that)
You can alway run tasksel again later and add those if you want. (and compare dpkg -l ouputs before and after to see what exactly are you missing)
tasksel, and put --no-install-recommends as default) and then build up from there. And after upgrades, I do go again and uninstall newly installed junk I don't want. It actually also saves time in the long run, as less packages installed means less things to break on next upgrade and require manual intervention, and not just less security issues (primary concern)
Commented
Sep 3, 2016 at 14:21
What's the consequences that I don't install the standard system utilities of debian?
Edit
Without installing the standard system utilities , you will get a working operating system but you will need most of the utilities later.
I have tested debian in a Virtualbox offline install without a GUI and without standard system utilities. The output of apt list --installed > installed.txt is here.
From the installed OS i have configured apt because it is not fully working only the security update is enabled:
deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main
then i have installed a GUI , here are the two steps that I execute:
1) To configure my sources.list i have comment out the following lines:
deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ jessie/updates main
deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ jessie/updates main
Then adding:
deb http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ jessie main
deb-src http://ftp.fr.debian.org/debian/ jessie main
2) Runing tasksel to install the Gui: i mounted the debian.iso to save the bandwidth , connecting to the internet then installing my desktop .
Updating the package and everything work fine.
NB the standard system utilities isn't available" after runing tasksel on the installed system.
This task is available only during the installation, it contains the following packages:
# tasksel --task-packages standard
~pstandard
~prequired
~pimportant
It corresponds to the following command:
aptitude search ~pstandard ~prequired ~pimportant -F%p
The following priority levels are recognized by the Debian package management tools.
required
Packages which are necessary for the proper functioning of the system (usually, this means that dpkg functionality depends on these packages). Removing a required package may cause your system to become totally broken and you may not even be able to use dpkg to put things back, so only do so if you know what you are doing. Systems with only the required packages are probably unusable, but they do have enough functionality to allow the sysadmin to boot and install more software.
important
Important programs, including those which one would expect to find on any Unix-like system. If the expectation is that an experienced Unix person who found it missing would say "What on earth is going on, where is foo?", it must be an important package.[6] Other packages without which the system will not run well or be usable must also have priority important. This does not include Emacs, the X Window System, TeX or any other large applications. The important packages are just a bare minimum of commonly-expected and necessary tools.
standard
These packages provide a reasonably small but not too limited character-mode system. This is what will be installed by default if the user doesn't select anything else. It doesn't include many large applications.
tasksel (eg put it in /tmp) and modify one line (line 244 on Jessie) reading !package_installed($package)) { and make it read something like !package_installed("foooooooo$package")) { then you can do /tmp/tasksel --task-packages standard to get a complete list of packages.
Commented
Sep 3, 2016 at 10:39
standard utilities?
Commented
Sep 3, 2016 at 10:51
tasksel --new-install.
According to csmojo article standard system utilities consists of following packages on Debian 8 (jessie):
apt-listchanges, lsof, mlocate, w3m, at, libswitch-perl, xz-utils, telnet, dc, bsd-mailx, file, exim4-config, m4, bc, dnsutils, exim4, python2.7, openssh-client, aptitude, bash-completion, python, host, install-info, bzip2, reportbug, krb5-locales, bind9-host, time, info, liblockfile-bin, whois, aptitude-common, patch, ncurses-term, mutt, mime-support, exim4-daemon-light, ftp, nfs-common, python-reportbug, rpcbind, texinfo, python-minimal, procmail, libclass-isa-perl, python-apt, python-support, exim4-base, debian-faq, doc-debian
at, bc, file, m4, patch and time are mandatory POSIX utilities (I see pax, another mandatory POSIX utility is not listed).
Commented
Jul 25, 2017 at 15:24
cmd.exe.
The best answer is in a comment by jlh which mentions you can always add it later:
Note that you can still access that option post-install by using the
tasksel --new-install.
