My reason to minimal packets is just space. When we build device which must run for years, we take as large and good quality SD card as possible and minimise writings to SD. Still we have had some cases, where the card has worn out.
Linux GUI doesn't need much space, but still...
I read some of your discussions and found that you have made a lot of work with the temperatures, which normal user does not know what to do and buys larger cooler.
Your second note sounds good.
So if possible, it would be nice, if there were various kinds of 'rest of packet', lab-minimal, server, KDE, Gnome...
It is easy to add packets with dpkg, apt-get or whatever.
The most important thing (for us) are the drivers for GPIO and most common devices.