Now my arch is bloated more than the default ubuntu

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.
- 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+
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.
- I'd like to know more about what my system does, so I can fix it when it breaks.
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
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?
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.
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?
Snaps still take longer to load with that.
It's not always about storage. It can also be more processes that drains battery, more attack vectors etc.

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.
- 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.
- So GNU?
Bloat = making your system usable

annoying people who whine about bloat
installing more than base, linux, and linux-firmware 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

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)
why not both 😅
- 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.
- you're usually only using one at a time.
Have fun with TWM I guess

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.
- 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.
- Step 1. Install user-friendly Linux distro
  
  Step 2. Get frustrated at the complications
  
  Step 3. Try to check back on Windows
  
  Step 4. Get completely disgusted, realize just HOW much bloated and slow and terrible Windows is
  
  Step 5. Learn Linux-fu and live happy ever after
  
  That's my path
- Go back to windows is not an option, it's a really horrible system. I dont see how people can use it without blowing their brains out.
- 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 ?
Neofetch is unmaintained btw, fastfetch is a good replacement... for whoever needs that. I wrote my own tool for getting system info and I like my terminals to have free space

List of fetch tools

Cool alternatives:

macchina Rust

zeitfetch Rust

fsi Rust

tuatara Zig

hayabusa Rust Lua
- 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.
- oh no! not unmaintained! The unmaintenance gremlins are going to implement so many bugs and vulnerabilities!
WDYM? The only listed dependency is bash
- Bash 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 ...
- 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!

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.

Install minimal linux.

Your ~/.config folder is 3GB

Kid named Electron
- By the water fountain?

sudo is bloat

ls is bloat, real Linux users just need echo.

echo *

> 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.

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

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.

NixOS: haha cute

nix-collect-garbage goes brrrrrr
- nix-store --optimize goes brum brum

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
- No, same dependencies get deduplicated
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.

😂 same for me

Debian is the solution

Is there a way to download Debian with GNOME without all the bloat?
- You don't use GNOME to get rid of bloat. You use it to get a fully functional opinionated desktop without tweaking too much.
  
  If you want no "bloat", whatever that is, use some minimal compositor like Sway or something.
  
  Personally, I say: Give me all the bloat, I love it! I love every cool and quality of life feature there is. I have enough space on any desktop computer.

Install gentoo

paru -Qqtd | paru -Rc -