Today, I actually do not choose the minimal virtual machine option. At the time, I felt the virtual version of the kernel would not be as well tested. However, it's 2012 and virtualization technology is rampant in clouds and admins are choosing to use this option. As such, it is time to revisit this and do an investigation on the exact differences and check if there really are any performance gains.
This article is in process of being written. I just setup two vms (one optimized the other not) using 10.04.4 in Parallels to investigate.
At least as early as Ubuntu 8 (I'm not 100% sure), the Ubuntu installation there allows the administrator push F4 and select from a number of options some of which are,
- Normal
- Install a minimal system
- Install a minimal virtual machine
According to the Ubuntu FAQ,
The virtual kernel only includes the necessary drivers to run inside popular virtualization technologies such as KVM, Xen, and VMWare. The server kernel in contrast contains the necessary drivers to work with a wide range of hardware, and should be installed directly on host systems. Other than that, all other options are identical between the server and the virtual kernel.
Note though, that it is still a minimal install so the "Basic Ubuntu server" task packages are missing.
So in theory, the minimal virtual machine option should be used if you are using virtualization technology. The gains would be a faster kernel without the bloat of consideration for many types of drivers. This is because the hardware list in virtual machines is much smaller.
Differences
Differences between a minimal virtual machine, minimal and normal.
Packages
213, 313 vs 356
Performance
Tasks 84, 85 vs 87
Memory Used 73,980k, 86,584k vs 171,392k
Disk Space
557M, 791M vs 851M
References
Provided what the differences between the installs are - http://askubuntu.com/questions/57336/minimal-system-or-minimal-virtual-machine-on-install