Comments on: Bloat is in the eye of the beholder http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/ K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences Mon, 11 Feb 2013 18:19:59 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: K.Mandla http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45273 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 23:07:47 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45273 This should link straight to en-US version for Linux that you can decompress into a folder, and run from that directory.

You may need to add dbus-glib and the alsa-lib package before it will start though. Most distros already have those installed. Cheers. ;)

]]> By: Ninad http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45269 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:54:14 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45269 Hi

The link getfirefox.com redirects me to firefox.com

I was not able to find the pre-compile static linked version from firefox.com

Ninad

]]> By: steve http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45265 Tue, 07 Sep 2010 05:52:58 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45265 K.Mandla, have a look into modifying/making/adding a file called apt.conf that goes in /etc/apt/ … mine looks like this

// auto-remove breaks on meta packages
APT::Get::AutomaticRemove “0″;
APT::Get::HideAutoRemove “1″;

// Recommends are as of now still abused in many packages
APT::Install-Recommends “0″;
APT::Install-Suggests “0″;
Debug::pkgAutoRemove “0″;

This config allows me to install an xfce4 desktop in just over 1GB of hdd space and avoids horrendous lists like you got there. The ‘no-install-recommends’ is the same thing, but I don’t want to type that everytime I install something.

]]> By: LM http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45256 Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:17:57 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45256 I’ve checked into StaLi. Sounds like a great concept. However, when I asked about things like backward compatibility and binary compatibility, was told the project was more interested in other goals. Looked like it would be of more use to someone working with embedded systems at this point. Also ran into some other interesting distributions such as PC-BSD, Glendix, gobolinux and t2 sde, but none of them is exactly what I’m looking for. I keep thinking I’d like to do my own Linux from Scratch, but I just don’t have the time to build it all. Would be nice, with all the Linux distributions out there, if I could find one with similar goals and add my efforts to it, rather than wanting to reinvent the wheel because I can’t find what I’d like. Thanks for the suggestion. I’ll keep searching.

]]> By: bryan http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45248 Mon, 06 Sep 2010 00:35:15 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45248 If you think that staticly linked libraries are faster and have less bloat, you may want to keep track of StaLi, the suckless distribution. So far it’s shaping up well and only uses staticly linked libraries and executables from what I understand. The available software may not be to your liking (dwm, xterm,surf, mplayer & dmenu if memory serves) but you’re free to change that.

]]> By: LM http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45245 Sun, 05 Sep 2010 16:41:00 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45245 I do feel like my Windows system is less bloated than my Linux and FreeBSD systems. The programs I run on Windows either have things linked statically or have less dll dependencies. That’s probably because you usually have to install Windows programs individually, not using a package manager to pull down everything you need. I think it might have helped to qualify which version of Windows feels bloated. Windows 98 SE runs better and faster on my 64 MB machine than FreeBSD 7.2. I run mostly the same applications on Windows and Linux and FreeBSD, but for some reason, I feel like the choices made when compiling the Windows applications were much cleaner and pulled in far less dependencies than what repositories for FreeBSD or Linux seem to offer. Would be nice if there were more options other than compiling everything from scratch in Linux that would still let you cut down on library dependencies.

]]> By: Soroush http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45241 Sat, 04 Sep 2010 20:13:24 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45241 You should tell apt to ignore recommended-dependencies with --no-install-recommends. These are the packages that are not dependencies but supposedly provide better overall experience while you are using the software. Hopefully it will get rid of most of the bloat.

]]> By: anon http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45240 Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:57:40 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45240 holy crapola, I’ve seen Vista use less than this even. However, it’s still bloated: XP managed to sturggle with 256 MB (though Firefox actually runs kinda smooth)

In contrast, I can get a pretty feature-rich desktop entirely in RAM (64 MB at that) using Tiny Core Linux using WindowMaker, SIag, XFE, Dillo, and some games too ;)

]]> By: Mario Figueiredo http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45239 Sat, 04 Sep 2010 18:21:59 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45239 You cannot ask us to follow your reasonin and then tell us that Windows is bloat. Where’s the argumentation for that? Nowhere, if we are to agree with you.

Running a Windows 7 machine with no special configuration options, takes away ~800Mb of my 3Gb RAM. Under these circumstances (and because I rarely ever experience paging) It’s not bloat. And when I start optimizing my system, I can reduce that to ~500 MB.

Truth is I agree bloat is subjective. But to users’ tastes and requirements, but also to the current hardware. What really doesn’t bother me on a x64 machine with 8GB of ram, could probably make me scream in anger on a 1GB i686 machine.

But from a developer standpoint, bloat is a very precise and precisely measurable variable in any program. And that’s where most bloat reside. Not on what users choose to install on their machines, but on how developers choose to code their applications.

]]> By: prinzzchavo http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45238 Sat, 04 Sep 2010 13:52:20 +0000 http://kmandla.wordpress.com/2010/09/04/bloat-is-in-the-eye-of-the-beholder/#comment-45238 You made your point quite clear…BUT in the end, we all end up watching snail races from time to time(I guess)…and, on that purpose, there are several other (un-bloated?)possibilities(IMO, swiftfox/opera and non-automated installations should do the trick)

Apart from Webbrowsers, I find it difficult these days to stay away from bloating the system. I might be doing something wrong, but even my most basic system installation goes easily over 1 Gb

E.g.: Arch Linux, openbox, openoffice, openjdk, wine, and a bunch of other, lighter programs…6.5Gb!! Even when I have qt and gtk2 installed(because of skype and some other programs) it makes no sense at all, that the rest of dependencies take so much diskspace.

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