I think metered internet and a rolling distro is never going to be a great fit. Putting packages on the installation medium only inflates the ISO download, and

I think metered internet and a rolling distro is never going to be a great fit. Putting packages on the installation medium only inflates the ISO download, and those packages will be out of date sooner rather than later. It's not like Ubuntu, macOS or Windows updates wouldn't hurt metered connections.