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@Velocio
Not really.
The raw partition sizes of a freshly installed Cyanogenmod or Android is about 1.5GB of system partitions, not including the data partition.
Many of the things within the OS are packages which expand, and do not include a lot of the base functionality. So you end up having those extracted, and having to download things like Gmail, Maps, etc.
When you download, and when you report on disk file size, you normally only see the packaged (compressed) size.
If you take a Cyanogen system and install all of the Google apps you'll probably find something near 3GB used. The core 1.5GB partitions and a load of stuff in the /data partition relating to the core (caches, preferences, updates, core apps, etc).
Then updates... updates that extend system things, and updates that are system things are usually appended rather than replacing things. The fact that you can uninstall updates should reveal that you are duplicating things on the file system.
Hence my qualifying statement that over a year or two, with multiple system updates and patches applied... you're using close to 5GB on the system, OS, and core functionality (play services and all basic Google apps).
The same is true for Cyanogen.
Of course, it's worse if you're running a HTC or Samsung in that you get a load of crapware. But... in their favour they update so infrequently that the updates will take up way less space (a weird side-benefit from a shite process).
A realistic lifetime use of a phone is therefore 5GB for the OS and related core stuff whichever way you cut it.
I do agree that Cyanogen is better from a privacy control perspective, but totally unconvinced that Cyanogen is better from a pure "my OS takes less space" perspective.
I've yet to see how Cyanogen manage updates over the course of years, and whether they go OTA, and if so how they do this safely. All of which impact space taken.
My point is simply that a phone with 8GB storage and 1GB RAM is surprisingly good enough with today's Android and the kind of apps available that so long as you don't have any need of your internal storage (i.e. you're using Spotify, Dropbox, etc) that the phone will be fine.
It's a conclusion even I'm surprised at given that I went for a 2GB RAM, 32GB storage phone but appear to be not using barely any of it. I could've saved some money.