Do you know the difference between “Kali Linux 32 bit” and “Kali Linux 32 bit Light”?

There are several ISO images to choose from when it comes to downloading Kali Linux. Most of them are quite obviously named: “Kali Linux 64 bit XFCE” – no doubt about that.

But theres is no hint or easy way to find documentation about the ingredients of this considerably smaller installation variant “light”.

So you have to dig a little bit deeper. The solution is to look at the build scripts which are available via gitweb. The default variant is a link to variant-gnome. Following this path the package-lists reveal what is going where:

Default (gnome) version
http://git.kali.org/gitweb/?p=live-build-config.git;a=blob_plain;f=kali-config/variant-gnome/package-lists/kali.list.chroot;hb=HEAD

# You always want those
kali-linux
kali-desktop-live

# Kali applications

# You can customize the set of Kali applications to install
# (-full is the default, -all is absolutely everything, the rest
# corresponds to various subsets)
kali-linux-full
# kali-linux-all
# kali-linux-sdr
# kali-linux-gpu
# kali-linux-wireless
# kali-linux-web
# kali-linux-forensic
# kali-linux-voip
# kali-linux-pwtools
# kali-linux-top10
# kali-linux-rfid

# Graphical desktop
kali-desktop-gnome

Light (xfce) version
ttp://git.kali.org/gitweb/?p=live-build-config.git;a=blob_plain;f=kali-config/variant-light/package-lists/kali.list.chroot;hb=HEAD

# You always want those
kali-desktop-live

# Kali applications
iceweasel
openssh-server
nmap
ncrack
sqlmap
aircrack-ng

# A light desktop
kali-desktop-xfce

Conclusion
So the light version comes with the XFCE desktop (surprise!) and a stripped down package list, while the full version comes with Gnome and all packages. Knowing what goes where makes it much easier to choose the proper installation media.