While I strongly sympathize, in this case it specifically addresses one of the OP's main objections: why did they have to download and install many GB of stuff

While I strongly sympathize, in this case it specifically addresses one of the OP's main objections: why did they have to download and install many GB of stuff that they'll never need. The three options I can think of are: (1) install everything (what they objected to), (2) ask the user what things to install (they probably already had this option but didn't know what they needed), or (3) install a minimal amount and download on demand. Although it doesn't work well for you, it seems it would work well for them.