Linux

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'm not against bloat, I just want it to be MY bloat

When there's ads in my terminal

It's relative. If you installed everything you need, then it probably isn't bloated. Bloat is something you don't need and keep getting updates. My home server has 300+ packages while my desktop has 900+ packages (cannot tell the exact numbers on mobile). I'm currently on EndeavourOS as well, though I'm thinking about moving to Void.

I don't. Modern computers have a LOT of resources. The whole 'minimalist computing' thing some people go on about is really odd to me. And I say that as someone who remembers when 16K was impressive. I can see it for restricted environments, where every byte counts, but not for desktops.

I love a bloated Linux system. Zeitgeist running in the background? Sweet, that means when I search for the file I was editing 3 days ago I’ll find it fast. Tracker busy indexing my files? Nice, next time I search for something the results will be near instantaneous.

That’s why I bought the ram, CPU and disk. To work for me, not the other way around. I’m daily driving a PC, not a server.

When my calculator app in windows is suspended, but has locked 29 threads and is using 60megs of ram. Not that those two values are significant, but why is my caluclator-app "suspended" when I closed it a few days ago since the last time I used it? Shouldn't it just be closed and not showing up at all.

The minute any Electron application is installed, it’s GG

I don't feel like my system is bloated.

It probably isn't bloated.

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

If someone is testing out several different DEs or WMs and installing meta-packages, then I suppose I might say that things are bloated because they could end up having multiple apps to control the same preferences along with different libraries, etc., and then when they decide to update it takes ages. That would be bloated for me. I have tried the minimal stuff before. Like you said, hundreds of packages, not thousands. But, I didn't install any manpages. So when I decided I wanted those manpages the number of packages ballooned. Nothing was really bloated, just a number on neofetch going up.

My laptop is 6 years old and has been running arch Linux with xfce for most of that time. I got tired of maintaining it and changed to an "easy" Linux mint distro. It takes much longer to boot up now and feels generally sluggish in comparison to a minimal arch install. So from experience, in older hardware having a bloated distro can really slow down your system.

I'd define "bloat" as functionality (as in: program code) present on my system that I cannot imagine ever needing to use.

There will never be a system that is perfectly tailored to my needs because there will always be some piece of functional code that I have no intention of using. Therefore, any system is "bloated" and it's a question to which degree it is "bloated".

The degree depends on which kind of resources the "bloat" uses and how much of it. The more significant the resource usage, the more significant the effect of the "bloat". The kind of resource is used defines how critical some amount of usage is. 5% Power, CPU, IO, RAM or disk usage have varying degrees of criticality for instance.

Some examples:

This system has a calendar app installed by default. I don't use it, so it's certainly bloat but I also don't care because it's just a few megs on disk at worst and that doesn't hurt me in any way.

Firefox frequently uses most of my RAM and >1% CPU util at "idle" but it's a useful application that I use all the time, so it's not bloat.

The most critical resource usage of systemd (pid1) on my system is RAM which is <0.1%. It provides tonnes of essential features required on a modern system and therefore not even worth thinking about when it comes to bloat.

I just noticed that mbrola voices sneaked into my closure again which is like 700MiB of voice synthesis data for many languages that I don't have a need for. Quite a lot of storage for something I don't ever need. This is significant bloat. It appears Firefox is drawing it in but it looks like that can be disabled via an override, so I'll do that right now.

Personally, I consider a "bloated system" to be one that has a bunch of installed apps that I'll never use....

I have 12 cores and 64 GB RAM. I am not worried about "bloat". The people trying to keep 20 year old Thinkpads running are.

When do you consider a system to be bloated?

When I see a service or process running and I have no idea what it's for.

Disk space isn't so much of a concern for me so package size and count is fairly irrelevant (this system is above 1500) because a lot of it is just things I use rarely.

Have in mind that package count is unique to each package manager and how the distribution packages. So those numbers of package count are not really meant to be compared across distributions. Unless it is basically the same distribution in another coat. BTW I am also running EndeavourOS, so we can compare each other well. :-) My desktop has 1.5k packages with pacman and 14 through flatpak. To me this is already "bloated" compared to the initial installation. Especially as I was a tiling window manager user and now use KDE Plasma.

The term "bloat" is off course relative; that's why you ask this question in the first place, right? Besides that the term is also often used to just exaggerate and not meant literally, just to denounce (I had to look up the word, hopefully it's correct :D). It depends on the context of what people mean by bloat and what their goals are. I think it's obvious that a slim distribution can still be bloat for someone else. In example if the initial installation already has most application a user needs, then there is not much left to install and the user may feel its slim. For someone else who handpicks every single bit, this bloated mess might look ... well bloated.

It also depends on what the goals of the installation is, if multiple users are using it, what the purpose of the machine is (laptop, server, gaming, programming, nothing) and what hardware it has. For some people the entire concept of a desktop environment or systemd are bloat. Not because the user bloated the system, but the distribution is.

I don't know man. It doesn't matter what others say, as long as you are happy; and as long as your system functions well. Don't forget, the more libraries, packages and applications you have installed, the slower are the updates and the bigger of a chance for failure or security issues can arise. There are good reasons to maintain a slim system and I just listed a few important ones. But whatever it is, don't let people tell you what bloat means, because you should have your own definition of the word. Just like what you think is good and bad. And my reply gone longer than expected.

Edit: I forgot to mention something. One of the reasons I feel a system is bloated, when it has ton of packages and applications installed that I don't need or use. Maybe a simple small application has ton of dependencies, which makes it feel like totally bloated.

I don't really care about "bloat" (whatever that means) I care about the system not being in chaos. I keep my bare system as clean as possible and install everything in a container, flatpak or VM.

A linux is bloated if it has packages installed thaz you don’t need.

I love my bloated Arch.btw (honestly after installing arch once normally, I installed it using EndeavourOS installer (still Arch in my opinion))

Bloat is when unwanted software gets in my way of doing my tasks, whether it be active presence or background processing.

I just installed Red Hat 5.2 a couple of days ago ( true story ). It is so light-weight with its Fvwm window manager, bash 1.2, and GCC 2.7.2. It even had Netscape Navigator! Who could ask for more? Anything more is bloat!

Just kidding. Bloat is installing things you do not use or that do not make your system better. I think some desktop environments add bloat. Mostly though, even the heavy ones represent a smaller fraction of system resources than their ancestors did on older systems.

If you have 3000 packages you use, who cares? However, if you have 3000 packages and only use a dozen of them, maybe your system is bloated.

I use a lot of older hardware. So, I like a fairly lean base system. I still use a lot of software though. I don’t think that is bloat.

People favor Arch Linux for configurability, not lack of bloat. With the level of configurability that Arch offers, any DE can look bloated. On the other hand, if you are a new Linux user or someone who just wants to use the computer without so much personalization, anything Linux offers is lightweight enough. Even a decade old system has enough hardware to handle modern Linux distros effortlessly. This is probably what a regular user wants anyway.

I'd say that bloat is whatever you define it to be and can vary depending on the power of your system.

I care less about how much resources apps are taking up on my desktop (32GB RAM, Ryzen 7700X), but I do bring my concerns over to my laptop (8GB RAM, Ryzen 4500U).

the one thing I cannot stand are electron apps and anything similar. they are a whole browser bundled with an unoptimized interface, and will eat up what used to be a decent amount of RAM for a laptop back then, as well as my battery life. for this reason I always try to find native apps that use less power and less RAM, which in turn improve my battery life.

this is just one example of where you can draw the line for bloat, although you are completely correct in saying that it is subjective.

To me bloat is anything using resources when I didn’t ask it to. Someday I’ll have more than 16 gigs of ram to throw around, maybe then I won’t be such a memory miser. One of the biggest things that pushed me into linux was the myriad of live service-esque background processes windows was forcing on me.

If I was a little less dyslexic I’d have a CLI for everything, now THAT’S efficiency!

When it got software/features I don’t use.

When you notice it takes a long time to scroll past a lot of unused software in your application launcher to get to the one you want

If it does things in an intransparent way.

Bloat is when stuff you need pulls in tons of stuff it and even you doesnt even need. So that stuff gets updated, stored and even loaded to RAM.

Sometimes this is also a complex set of libraries, like GNOME and KDE have. There are tons of libraries, and especially when using Flatpak, you poorly always pull in all of them, as the runtime system is built like that. (Even though packagers could state the needed dependencies from that runtime, and then only those are downloaded)

I think there are several factors influencing when someone feel 'bloat'. There's the 'purists' that tend to optimize their system to be as 'lean & mean' as possible - relentlessly, and there's the simplists that just want a simple setup/dashbord they can control - without too many options/distractions from info-bloat. Info-bloat hints to different types of bloat: filesize, dependencies, gfx details/animations, option-bloat, monetization-bloat and so on. There may also be cultural tendencies within different distro communities gentoo, tendencies from those with the emacs syndrome, or other more political groupings..

The last factor I can imagine atmo is that the level of hardware is very important and low end operators will tend to see more bloat when things run slowly - no matter their 'bloat focus'.

I had some Pythoncode for you but couldnt get the codeblock to play along 🙃

A system us bloated when I feel it is bloated. It is highly subjective and there is no real line to cross. It is just more of a sliding scale, at one end there is no code on your system that you never use and at the other there is nothing on it that you ever want to use.

The former can likely on be reached on small microcontrollers where you have written everything exactly how you want it, and you would never even consider using the latter.

Realistically every system has things younever use, even the kernel has modules you will never load. And every non tiny program has features you never use. All of that is technically bloat but each instance I don't think makes your system or even an application feel bloated.

So really the question is when does the bloat bother you or get in your way. If you are trying to install an OS on a tiny embedded device where space is a premiumthenn you are going to draw that line at a different point to on the latest desktop with multi terabytes of storages and oodles of ram.

Anyone that claims there system has no bloat is technically lying to themselves. But if it makes them happy who cares? If your system has every package installed and it does not bother you at all thenitt does not matter at all.

Too many windows