Re:consider using the package manager for your dis (Score 1)

Yes, you are correct. Most distros can do a lean install, but archlinux' lean install is about 170M you then use pacman for everything else, and it really is the best package manager I have used. You are also correct that it is more than than kernel and bash - glib, ncurses, binutils, filesystem utils, etc basically everything pacman would need to retrive other packages (it has ftplib embedded into it).