When do you consider a system to be bloated?

governorkeagan@lemdro.id to Linux@lemmy.ml – 100 points –

I often hear folks in the Linux community discussing their preference for Arch (and Linux in general) because they can install only the packages they want or need - no bloat.

I've come across users with a couple of hundred packages installed (likely fresh installs), but I've also seen others with thousands.

Personally, I'm currently at 1.7k packages on my desktop and 1.3k on my laptop (both running EndeavourOS). There might be a few packages I could remove, but I don't feel like my system is bloated.

I guess it's subjective, but when do you consider a system to be bloated?

I'm asking as a relatively new Linux user - been daily driving for about 7/8 months

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I find it bloated if the system have things I don't need are noticeably using up RAM and CPU. I couldn't care less about extra unused packages on disk, they're dormant. I don't care about a few daemons or resident apps I don't use either if they're idle all the time and use minimal RAM. Bloat for me is something that noticeably affects my running system.

I would probably add (as a couple of others have already mentioned) if it slows down the update process by pulling loads of software/dependencies that I'm not using.

Who sits and watches the update process?

Me, occasionally. I like seeing the little Pac-Man eat away at progress of a download on EndeavourOS.

Also, this video covers it slightly.

Oh god, the "your computer slows down over time" BS from people who have no idea what they are talking about so "fuck it - just nuke and reinstall".

Remove repos you aren't using. Uninstall / purge things you don't want anymore. If you don't know how to fix it then you'll just re-do everything that made it "slow" again.

Maybe not watching it per se, but it's nice to catch a problem before I reboot (ie a grub upgrade failure for example)

People that live in a place where 4 mbps speeds are a norm.

People that live in a place where 4 mbps speeds are a norm.

Why? That's an even worse place to sit and watch your updates. apt update && apt upgrade -y then do something else while it runs and check in later.

Gentoo user here. I look at system load while compiling. (: But most of the time I can use my PC while portage is doing it's job.

I mean, for Gentoo users an update is a bit like "track day". So I can understand that. 😀

I completely agree. This is also why I find find teams and discord to be especially frustrating; they're slow out of the box on the literal best possible hardware.

Yup. Fretting over a light daemon while running a hundred browser tabs is really missing the forest for the trees.