Bloated Distros

[gerard4143]

I just read a comment on a Linux distro calling it "bloated". It just happened that the distro was Mandriva and I had to laugh. So many people forget that Linux is highly configurable so its as light or "bloated" as you want it.

For example:

I just happen to have Mandriva 2009.1(WMII window manager) running on a P2 with 250Mb/RAM and it works fine

[minthaka]

It seems to me that Mandriva sucks. Open Office won't work at all. If I only could wipe the damned Akonadi server. Unfortunately KDE4 IS bloated.

[gerard4143]

It seems to me that Mandriva sucks. Open Office won't work at all. If I only could wipe the damned Akonadi server. Unfortunately KDE4 IS bloated.

Yeah I've had problems with KDE...I usually run Mandriva with Gnome

[reed9]

I just read a comment on a Linux distro calling it "bloated". It just happened that the distro was Mandriva and I had to laugh. So many people forget that Linux is highly configurable so its as light or "bloated" as you want it.

For example:

I just happen to have Mandriva 2009.1(WMII window manager) running on a P2 with 250Mb/RAM and it works fine

I don't think they forget, so much as they review the distro as it's released. I think it's appropriate to judge a distro based on its stated goals and the product it puts out. Mandriva, Ubuntu, etc market themselves as user friendly options for people who either have little to no knowledge of their computer or operating system, or more advanced users who just don't want to bother fiddling with the system.

I use Arch because I prefer starting with a minimal base and building it up as I want, rather than install a cohesive desktop distro only to rip out and replace half the default apps and root through disabling services I don't need.

[techieMoe]

Most of the major distributions are configurable, but I don't believe the majority of people do that level of configuring. They'll look at the default application set and how it runs on their hardware and judge its relative "bloat" based on that.

[gerard4143]

Myself I like that Mandriva comes "fully featured" but I also appreciate that it can be slimmed down with very little work...This, I feel, is one of the main reason people are drawn to distros like this

[minthaka]

At the moment I'm facing with a trouble. I cannot open/save any documents in openOffice. It hangs immediately. I don't know why. It's also next to impossible to fetch packages from mirrors, although the network works correctly.

[gerard4143]

At the moment I'm facing with a trouble. I cannot open/save any documents in openOffice. It hangs immediately. I don't know why. It's also next to impossible to fetch packages from mirrors, although the network works correctly.

You must be using KDE. I'm using Gnome/WMII and I'm have no problems with Open Office.

[minthaka]

yes, of course. And I cannot list the content of my home folder! It simply shows 0 elements. And it laments about bad locales. I don't know how to handle it.

[bigtomrodney]

I don't think a distro can be bloated. When I think of bloat I think of feature creep or things I can't remove from an application. Everything you don't want can be removed.