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

  • @[email protected]
    77•2 months ago

    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.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      25•2 months ago

      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.

        • @[email protected]OPEnglish
          10•2 months ago

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

          Also, this video covers it slightly.

          • @[email protected]English
            9•2 months ago

            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.

        • SayCyberOnceMoreEnglish
          5•2 months ago

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

          • @[email protected]English
            1•2 months ago

            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.

        • @[email protected]
          2•2 months ago

          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.

          • @[email protected]English
            4•2 months ago

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

    • DaGeek247
      13•2 months ago

      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.

    • @[email protected]English
      11•2 months ago

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