Re: back on topic - small virtual linux servers...
The main reason is that many people these days provision their systems with something like Puppet or Ansible. If you have scripts that will install your app, pull in dependencies and configure everything, you only need the base distro to boot and be reachable over the network. Any other needed functionality will be added by the provisioning scripts.
Even Windows Server has a stripped-down minimal install option.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
