Maybe the real bloat was the apps we needed all along
It’s not bloat if you use it.
Then again, am I really using these Haskell libraries? I just want to use pandoc. I love Arch, but the organization of the official repos is sometimes suboptimal.
you’re right, installing pandoc on arch really comes with a lot of bloat. Iirc it’s >200 haskell libraries.
Last I checked (which was some time ago), pandoc-bin doesn’t require the haskell dependencies. I saved quite some installation time (and screen space during installation) by switching.
Used pandoc-bin before and agree it’s more compact, but I had some issues with citation management recently, so went back to standard pandoc.
Haskell is paved with bad installations.
Someone has never done software development or worked on a build pipeline and it shows. Obviously complex software has lots of dependencies especially compiling from source.
I definitely use the previous 10 versions of electron that I definitely didn’t completely forget to uninstall.
In unrelated news, by root partition is now about 2GB lighter.
I never understand this obsession with “bloat” when you can buy a 1 TB SSD for € 50.
or you can’t buy if you’re not successful enough or you’re in the wrong country. For example, in my country, the minimum cost of a 1TB SSD is about $85 and a salary of $2,000 is considered a very successful salary at the upper limit
bro a 256 gb ssd here costs 200+
That’s wild. I just bought several recently for $20 ea
That sounds insane, are computer parts in general that much more expensive than other countries?
yeah
Do you live in North Korea?
of course, how else would i use lemmy?
It’s not about storage. It’s about complexity getting back at you, for example not knowing what caused a problem because multiple programs are stepping on each others feet
For me it’s not about the size, it’s about the understanding. I’d really like to understand what everything on my system does and why it’s there. It seems impossible with modern systems. Back in the '90s I needed a secure email relay - it had lilo, kernel, init, getty, bash, vi, a few shell utils (before busybox…), syslogd and sendmail. I’m not sure any more as it was a long time ago, but I think I even statically linked everything so there was no libc. I liked that system.
For me it was a problem with update frequency and how long they would take. Once i got rid of my flatpaks and moved to stable firefox i update once a week instead of daily now and it takes seconds instead of minutes. Probably also solvable with auto updates.
Bloat is more about performances
It seems to be seen across all platforms.
What I find interesting is that no one is asking about the quality of code, nor do they seem concerned about the dependencies but they do care about that one package/app/program of any size they see and don’t immediately know why it’s there.
Bloat multiplies when you have to back it up.
You realize you don’t have to backup the actual “bloated” programs. Just maybe their configs and any files those programs generate that you’d like to keep, right?
That’s committing the cardinal sin of cherrypicking your backup contents. You may end up forgetting to include things that you didn’t know you needed until restore time and you’re creating a backup that is cumbersome to restore. Always remember: you should really be creating a restore strategy rather than a backup strategy.
As a general rule I always backup the filesystem wholesale, optionally exclude things of which I’m 100% sure that I don’t need it, and keep multiple copies (daylies and monthlies going some time back) so I always have a complete reference of what my system looked like at a particular point in time, and if push comes to shove I can always revert to a previous state by wiping the filesystem and copying one of the backups to it.
So you have a folder and need to find a specific file from it. Would it be faster to find the file when there are 5 folders or 500?
It’s not always about storage. It can also be more processes that drains battery, more attack vectors etc.
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?
Bloat = making your system usable
- annoying people who whine about bloat
installing more than
base,linux, andlinux-firmwareis bloat.
Still way less bloated than win11 I’d wager
You can use window managers instead of DEs. While I prefer DEs because how much features they have you may not need these features
Instructions unclear, installed sway and 50 utilities for it.
smh get real, install Hyprland and 50 utilities for it (30 of those are sway utilities)
But at least you don’t need to use a stupidly long argument to start it (I know both don’t really have support but sway runs it in your face even more than normal) because you can’t quite be as choosy with laptops as you can be with desktops…
I haven’t had laptop-related issues on either
Have fun with TWM I guess
why not both 😅
you’re usually only using one at a time.
This is the way.
Install tiling wm, because I can’t without anymore. Install a DE, because I actually like the discoverability of graphical settings programs.
Don’t install neofetch, so many dependencies.
But how would he show that he uses Arch, without Neofetch?
Cat /etc/os-release ?
uname -a ?
Is it unmaintained completely or just feature complete and not getting recent updates?
I’ve seen people say “this tool isn’t being maintained because there aren’t recent check ins” and those two things are very different.
It is written in Bash which I guess makes it pretty high level and stable. Until it breaks it shouldnt need much work.
Bash is damn slow though, so fastfetch (mainly in C) is way better for the “arch flex”
WDYM? The only listed dependency is bash
Bash is bloat
Anything more than ash/dash is bloat
Most people in this thread don’t get it.
You know how some people compete to see who can get Doom to run on the craziest platforms, like a calculator?
Installing Arch with the fewest packages is like that. There’s something oddly satisfying about stripping everything back to the most basic level - to make things work for you within the most constrictive environment you enforce for yourself.
It’s like eating a spicy shellfish dinner and super gluing your asshole closed.
Arch Linux: It’s like eating a spicy shellfish dinner and super gluing your asshole closed.
… most people don’t get it …
Tbh I don’t
Poetry. >chef’s kiss<
Fuck! I forgot nano and pacman again.
Nano… Pfff…
Requires three dependencies, while Vi requires one. Everyone can see how bloated your system is. You should be embarrassed.
Hey guys, check out this resource beast and laugh! Ha ha ha!
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.
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.
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.
sudo is bloat
ls is bloat, real Linux users just need echo.
echo *
Install minimal linux.
Your ~/.config folder is 3GB
Kid named Electron
By the water fountain?
> Install NixOS > Learn about Nix > Organise your dotfiles > Learn about flakes > Organise your dotfiles > Learn about modularisation > Organise your dotfiles > ...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.
NixOS: haha cute
nix-collect-garbage goes brrrrrr
nix-store --optimize goes brum brum
