I mean - you control what gets installed on Arch. One finger pointing at arch is three pointing back in this scenario…
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.
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
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.
You can use window managers instead of DEs. While I prefer DEs because how much features they have you may not need these features
Have fun with TWM I guess
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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.
Am I?!?
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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)
But at least you don’t need to use a stupidly long argument to start it (I know both don’t really have support but sway runs it in your face even more than normal) because you can’t quite be as choosy with laptops as you can be with desktops…
I haven’t had laptop-related issues on either
> Install NixOS > Learn about Nix > Organise your dotfiles > Learn about flakes > Organise your dotfiles > Learn about modularisation > Organise your dotfiles > ...Don’t install neofetch, so many dependencies.
WDYM? The only listed dependency is bash
Bash is bloat
Anything more than ash/dash is bloat
But how would he show that he uses Arch, without Neofetch?
Cat /etc/os-release ?
uname -a ?
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”
Twelve window manager are not bloat, it’s variety!
sudo is bloat
ls is bloat, real Linux users just need echo.
echo *
paru -Qqtd | paru -Rc -
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.
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.
installing more than
base,linux, andlinux-firmwareis bloat.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!
I like this. Maybe it needs some words on bloatware that is enforced on users agains their interests?
Bloat is relative to every person / usage case but I agree with this definition.
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?
Just the G actually
But the G in GNU stands for GNU
I mean compared to things like Alpine which use musl and busybox you could consider it bloated yes.
Bloat = making your system usable
- annoying people who whine about bloat
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
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.
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.
Vendor lock in. Still melts the brain.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
Ah interesting. Good to know. Thank you
But you need at least one runtime right? How much overlap is it between what’s included in the base install and the runtime?
we are all runtimes on this blessed day
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.
