If you just want a bare bones http server of any kind, nginx is probably overkill in the first place.

I would argue the opposite: Anything but nginx is probably overkill unless you have specific requirements. I mean, sure, if you just want to serve some files from a development machine into the intranet right now, `python -m http.server` will do the trick. But for anything that is either a productive system, or one serving content to the public internet, nginx is a sane default choice.

For a production system facing the public, lightttpd strikes me as inappropriate.

Any of the “I don’t care how poorly it supports modern browsers, I just need something barebones that speaks http” usecases the person I was responding to seemed to be suggesting would typically be something like a local dev http server, or a barebones http server sitting behind a more robust proxy.

Which brings us back to, for those usecases, nginx is probably overkill.