Don’t install neofetch, so many dependencies.
WDYM? The only listed dependency is bash
Bash is bloat
Anything more than ash/dash is bloat
oh no! not unmaintained! The unmaintenance gremlins are going to implement so many bugs and vulnerabilities!
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”
But how would he show that he uses Arch, without Neofetch?
Cat /etc/os-release ?
uname -a ?
sudo is bloat
ls is bloat, real Linux users just need echo.
echo *
Twelve window manager are not bloat, it’s variety!
Install minimal linux.
Your ~/.config folder is 3GB
Kid named Electron
By the water fountain?
Install gentoo
NixOS: haha cute
nix-collect-garbage goes brrrrrr
nix-store --optimize goes brum brum
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.
Bloat = making your system usable
- annoying people who whine about bloat
installing more than
base,linux, andlinux-firmwareis bloat.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?
So GNU?
I mean compared to things like Alpine which use musl and busybox you could consider it bloated yes.
Just the G actually
But the G in GNU stands for GNU
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?
I mean - you control what gets installed on Arch. One finger pointing at arch is three pointing back in this scenario…
And you’d have to try pretty hard to make it as infested with snaps.
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
I don’t think the finger is being pointed at Arch though
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
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
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.
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
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.
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.
Vendor lock in. Still melts the brain.
It just works. I don’t want to have to invest time in making my os work. I want to spend my time on my projects(which I use wsl for)
I totally understand the desire and satisfaction of having complete control over your os but a lot of people just want to be able to do simple stuff like game and browse the web which windows does just fine in my experience.
It just worksit’s just better supported because of the monopoly Microsoft establishedI’m saying it just works, I didn’t say anything about why that is the case.
I did
I’d argue Linux falls short on audience that needs a little more than browsing and simple games, but are themselves a little less than sysadmins. That’s the audience that is really hurt by the transition. The rest (simple as well as power users) should be just fine.
Even still, with Windows being the mainstream option, it just goes as a no-brainer and a default solution for the majority of people, regardless of how good or bad it is.
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.
Without claiming that I would be able to fix any problems, I’m curious which hardware that is. In all honesty I can’t remember the actual audio driver ever crapping out in the last 15 or so years. I find this fascinating and like to know more.
The set of hardware I’ve had most problems with had been various types of WiFi adapters from Realtek and Broadcom.
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
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.
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 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.
Haskell is paved with bad installations.
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.
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.
you’re right, installing pandoc on arch really comes with a lot of bloat. Iirc it’s >200 haskell libraries.
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.
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.
Yes, I understand that, but I don’t need all the games and stuff installed by default. Sway is a whole different experience. I use i3 on my older laptop (Macbook A1181 w/ Libreboot) but I personally wouldn’t want to use it unless I needed to.
GNOME is a gorgeous desktop environment, I just hate the fact that I have to take a additional 5-10 minutes every install just removing all the stuff I don’t need. Is there a debloater script for GNOME that you know of?
Maybe the real bloat was the apps we needed all along
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.
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!
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<
