Former sysadmin here: conserving disk space was never a major concern. The issue is with security updates. There was one nightmare period where every single pro

Former sysadmin here: conserving disk space was never a major concern. The issue is with security updates. There was one nightmare period where every single program in existence seemed to have a bundled copy of zlib, each with a slightly different version of the same gaping security vulnerability. Things like disk (and network and RAM) savings are really the icing on that cake. It was also the case that each bit of free / open source software had its own ideas of a good user experience. The distro building all all the software allowed the application of consistent policies. As a user, this was a huge step forward. But that said, yes, things have changed and distros need to too.