The Oracle database client installation software is rather large in size.
$ ls -l *11g* -rw-r--r-- 1 rasti staff 642016988 2010-04-27 23:36 linux_11gR2_client.zip
Not only the approximate 630MB in size but also the graphical installation procedure is sometimes a big shortcoming. And for simply accessing an Oracle SQL Server a lesser volume of data might be sufficient too. There the Oracle Instant Client comes into play.
