[jarcane]

I think you’re rather over exaggerating. For a few emergency boot disk or very low spec, like LOAF or uLinux, sure. But even late 90s, for anything actually practical, 50mb would’ve been quite the achievement. DragonLinux was my go to “lightweight” and it was around 200mb. 50mb in the early 00s only got you the net install for Debian, and Knoppix was a whole CD.

But this is 2021. You need to do some serious pruning just to get GCC in under 1gb. 50 mb is a fucking miracle.