Storage-wise they're there, but they never run or take up memory? Is this correct?
On a related note, are there any accessories that you can attach to an android phone to give it a keyboard?
My server is 2 GB, and for self hosted stuff it's good enough. Granted, I use Gentoo, but I wouldn't expect debian would be much higher unless you're running something.
I run postgres and a file server on mine. I've previously ran NextCloud. It was a liiittle slow, but I think I was CPU bound (raspberry pi).
The big choice here is: do you want rolling release or stable? Most servers are stable, but endeavour is rolling.
Stable release means your distro's repository's packages rarely change behavior. This is because they lock the versions and only bring in security updates. Pros: things will almost never change when you update, which means you won't have to be fixing things when updating (unless updating major version of your distro). Cons: you're stuck with frozen versions. Those can be years old sometimes. As long as you're okay with not using new versions of what you're using, you should be fine.
If you like stable, go with debian stable for 5 year release / update cycles, debian testing for 2 (or Ubuntu server), or the red hat one for 6 months (I forgot its name).
Rolling release means you have to update frequently and you always get the latest version, remaining very close to upstream. This is unpopular for servers as it means an update might bring changes you don't expect, and you might have to change a configuration or maybe even more. If you like this, OpenSUSE tumble weed is a good choice, or good old Arch.
You also have Gentoo and NixOS, but I don't know if you'll be wanting those.
The size of the code still impacts your deployment. Moreover, if you're using something like AWS lambda, small changes can have significant influence on cold start time.
I agree that an extra step is not desirable, but this would only be done for production deployments (and consequently pre-prod if you do that).
Ideally you'd only do this for live deployments (production and possibly pre-production or staging / QA). For all other testing, you would keep it unbundled.
It's not any worse than chrome imo, I agree.
Book reader on android.
Scala has some of that effect too.
I'd be happy to tackle this with you, but just to avoid the frequent "actually, this isn't libertarianism, this is the other X system", can you please define libertarianism from your perspective?