Maybe the real bloat was the apps we needed all along
mfs with a 16 core cpu, 64gb ram and 10tb storage be like
Hey! I have 128gb of ram
…and still restart my browser if it’s using over 1 gb
This, MFers will have the most top spec computer and worry about bloat while I install random shit for fun on my 320gb had drive that’s also my boot drive on my core 2 duo computer with 3 gigs of ram that struggles to run firefox and thunar at the same time (also cinnamon is the best running on my computer from my testing, xfce is laggy af and I’m not even going to mention kde, bspwm or any other since the, either lag beyond usability (KDE) or just straight up crash my computer into tty when i try to launch them (bspwm), one massive note is that I’m using software rendering since the GPU on the core 2 duo is struggling with even drawing the boot screen)
Literally have probably a ton of overlap software from installing the desktop environments and other random (well not very random, stuff I used on windows before) software that I don’t bother googling the deleting commands since apt installed them all as snaps because I never noticed in my first three months of use, fuck you Ubuntu, Xubuntu and all other derivatives, this shit makes me not want to use Ubuntu ever again (not like i can, my pc is fucked and no other drive is bootable, i can’t even boot an install usb)
You might want to check out the i3 tiling window manager. Shit’s under 50MB and makes every other DE I’ve ever used feel bloated and laggy.
Yeah, I’m not actually not very into the tiling window manager thing, I tried bspwm just for the sake of wanting to try one but I since lost interest, I’ll keep it in mind though and maybe come back and try it one day
to be fair - core 2 duo computer with 3 gigs of ram - you’re using the desktop I had in 2009. At some point, do you think that it’s time to upgrade? no, wait, I think I had a core 2 quad actually…
Every person who comments about “bloat” in their install should be required to preface their post or comment with a full definition of “bloat.”
This shit is obnoxious.
I actually wonder if we could ever agree on a definition?
Maybe:
Bloat: any unnecessary, superfluous software, software package, or feature that is unused or unnecessarily inefficient, and/or uses system resources to an unessasary or unreasonable degree.
What do you guys think? Because then we can still argue about bloat and what reasonable is! And that’s what it’s all about. Arguing for the sake of it!
Bloat is relative to every person / usage case but I agree with this definition.
I like this. Maybe it needs some words on bloatware that is enforced on users agains their interests?
Anything that’s not kernel
Well, also not kernel modules. That counts as bloat.
You’re right. And how much of the kernel do we really need, anyway?
So GNU?
Just the G actually
But the G in GNU stands for GNU
I mean compared to things like Alpine which use musl and busybox you could consider it bloated yes.
Bloat = making your system usable
- annoying people who whine about bloat
installing more than
base
,linux
, andlinux-firmware
is bloat.
Still way less bloated than win11 I’d wager
Step 1. Install the most secure, pure, minimalist Linux distro
Step 2. Get frustrated at the complications
Step 3. Give up and go back to Windows
- a story I’ve seen happen more than once
I’ve had the exact opposite experience on arch, mostly because of the arch wiki.
- Install arch using the arch wiki for reference
- If an issue arises, consult the arch wiki
- Document, contribute, and help others
For me unfortunately it has been Step 1 install literally the most universally compatible distro possible
Step 2 audio drivers craps out. No fix is available. Trying to apply workarounds completely Bork the system
Step 3 install again. graphics driver is problematic, refresh it giving it MOS permissions. I miss the MOS permission screen at the reboot. Look for how to do obtain that option again. No easy way to do it at all. Bork the system again
Step 4 install again. Notice touch screen support is completely useless, and pen is not supported.
Step 5 Ask myself if keeping a 1200$ computer with tinny audio, no graphic hardware acceleration and a half functional display can be justified in any way. It can’t.
Step 5. Back to windows. Bloated, but it works.
Unfortunately system support is still very iffy on some models. I’d really like to embrace the distro life but can’t.
Without claiming that I would be able to fix any problems, I’m curious which hardware that is. In all honesty I can’t remember the actual audio driver ever crapping out in the last 15 or so years. I find this fascinating and like to know more.
The set of hardware I’ve had most problems with had been various types of WiFi adapters from Realtek and Broadcom.
I’ve seen “Step 3: Buy a Mac” plenty of times for exactly that audience. They like tinkering as a college student and when they enter the working world they realize that tinkering all the time impedes their financial bottom line. Then they go from Linux fans to hardcore Linux haters (“it’s for playing around, not serious work”), even though a convenience distro like Fedora would have solved all their problems in an instant.
Oh I’m sure. People get used to something because it’s forced on them and change is hard. Also, ADD is at all time highs thanks to portable devices.
People who are abducted and held captive often experience Stockholm Syndrome once they find themselves set free.
Don’t install neofetch, so many dependencies.
But how would he show that he uses Arch, without Neofetch?
Cat /etc/os-release ?
uname -a ?
WDYM? The only listed dependency is bash
Bash is bloat
Anything more than ash/dash is bloat
You can use window managers instead of DEs. While I prefer DEs because how much features they have you may not need these features
Have fun with TWM I guess
why not both 😅
As someone who primarily uses Windows, Ubuntu didn’t feel like it had any bloat when I tried it.
Buahaha
lol yeah, I still use windows regularly, but every Linux distro I’ve tried has seemed like a lean mean OS in comparison.
Started playing with arch this week for the first time. Got a pretty good laugh when I realized that I forgot to install a dhcp client and had to boot the install media again to add networking.
I appreciate what they’re doing and I’m going to keep poking at it, but my first impression is that philosophy is driving and the utility is in the back seat.
So just run archinstall Personally as a relative newbie I found arch a lot easier to deal with than fedora and ubuntu, both of which have had me in dependency hell on previous attempts to switch to linux. Not only that but I have a much better idea of what makes up my system.
I think it’s important to do it all manually once. But, after that there’s no reason not to use archinstall, at all.
It’s definitely a philosophy, and you have to understand the implications. But I’m not sure utility is in the back seat. It’s just that you personally own your own config.
sudo is bloat
ls is bloat, real Linux users just need echo.
echo *
I mean - you control what gets installed on Arch. One finger pointing at arch is three pointing back in this scenario…
I don’t think the finger is being pointed at Arch though
You also control what’s being installed on other distros. In fact, other distros split their packages in a way more modular way which allows one to pick and choose what one needs granularly. In Arch, the package count is lower because the maintainers don’t split stuff up. But you get all the so called bloat when you installna regular package
And you’d have to try pretty hard to make it as infested with snaps.
it’s not bloat if i wanted it and installed it.
It is bloat if dependencies aren’t defined properly and the packager defines a too broad set of dependencies.
(Disclaimer: I don’t use Arch myself but I am a packager of a small “scratch my own itch” but public repository for another distribution.)
Btw I don’t use Arch?
Yeah I remember that one time I tried to uninstall Banshee because I didn’t want it and Ubuntu’s repos were set up that it by default just tried to uninstall GNOME entirely. And it was GNOME 2 so uninstalling it was a bad thing at the time.
Twelve window manager are not bloat, it’s variety!
I have installed probably 100 packages on my arch install, it’s still sitting at like 8gb used. Arch isn’t the problem in this scenario
Flatpaks have helped me a lot reducing bloat, avoiding dependency hell.
That said, probably there’s some overlapping dependencies that, if installed in a different way I could save some space, but it’s not worth it in my opinion.
I’m also using rootless podman+systemd for certain services, but that’s been a mixed bag compared with plain old docker or LXC.
I thought the number one drawback to flatpaks is that they’re enormous because each one includes all its own dependencies
Flatpak is like the most bloated thing ever because of the runtime and all the dependencies it needs.
I did a test, flatpak with just firefox installed used 3 GiB of space.
While 15 appimages that includes heavy applications like libreoffice, kdenlive and two web browsers uses 1.2GiB.
Install gentoo