I really never understood this thing about Ubuntu as a minimalist OS for servers and embedded. Almost no matter what, it's going to be more bloated and complicated than just about any other flavor of Linux you can think of. Sure, it works, and there's the factor of familiarity, but just... why? Make Ubuntu the best desktop or mobile OS it can be. Without the original selling point that it fixed problems downstream from Debian and made install easier, what exactly is the point? Ubuntu does some things well, but they've never been good at keeping anything minimal.