Have you ever installed a complete Tex platform? It's about 1GB of packages. I find the DVD thing a bit funny - but I can imagine it makes installs go quite a bit faster. And considering its a 40-year old technology - its not like you really need the latest commit.
The worst part of setting up a fresh OS installation for me over a rural satellite connection is inevitably installing TeX. It takes forever, and between the OS and it, I won't have any data left for the rest of the month.
