What is the purpose of this linux ?
The unfortunate side is that it's a 992MB iso in comparison to a 224MB Debian installation or even a 20MB RancherOS install.
It's bloated.
The ISO supports three installations (micro, minimal, full) see page 10 of https://vmware.github.io/photon/assets/files/getting_started...
For example, most editors are larger than ed. However, ed can't support the same kinds of workflow that most other editors can. Therefore, those other editors are not bloated because ed is smaller: ed can't do the same jobs.
So, is it 992 MB because it does a different job, or is it 992 MB because they didn't care about size?
The ISO is 992MB because it includes three different installations (micro, minimal, full).
An ISO for a distribution is often bigger than a typical install, since it includes packages which may not be included in any particular installation. 992MB ISO isn't ridiculously large; the question is whether the typical installs recommended for various uses are unreasonably large for their uses.
Photon™ is a technology preview of a minimal Linux container host. It is designed to have a small footprint and boot extremely quickly on VMware platforms. Photon™ is intended to invite collaboration around running containerized applications in a virtualized environment.
Optimized for vSphere - Validated on VMware product and provider platforms. Container support - Supports Docker, rkt, and the Pivotal Garden container specifications. Efficient lifecycle management - contains a new, open-source, yum-compatible package manager that will help make the system as small as possible, but preserve the robust yum package management capabilities.
More: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloudnative/introducing-photon/