• massive_bereavement@kbin.social
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • Samueru@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      I thought the number one drawback to flatpaks is that they’re enormous because each one includes all its own dependencies

    • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      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
      • mrmanager@lemmy.today
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • sum_yung_gai@lemm.ee
          0·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • Allero@lemmy.today
            0·
            1 year ago

            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.

      • CubitOom@infosec.pubEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        I’ve had the exact opposite experience on arch, mostly because of the arch wiki.

        1. Install arch using the arch wiki for reference
        2. If an issue arises, consult the arch wiki
        3. Document, contribute, and help others
      • Allero@lemmy.today
        0·
        1 year ago

        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

      • psycho_driver@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • pizzazz@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
          0·
          1 year ago

          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.

      • woelkchen@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.)

    • Lemmy@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 year ago

      Is there a way to download Debian with GNOME without all the bloat?

      • Username@feddit.de
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • Lemmy@lemm.ee
          0·
          1 year ago

          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?

    • Ziixe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      0·
      1 year ago

      This, MFers will have the most top spec computer and worry about bloat while I install random shit for fun on my 320gb had drive that’s also my boot drive on my core 2 duo computer with 3 gigs of ram that struggles to run firefox and thunar at the same time (also cinnamon is the best running on my computer from my testing, xfce is laggy af and I’m not even going to mention kde, bspwm or any other since the, either lag beyond usability (KDE) or just straight up crash my computer into tty when i try to launch them (bspwm), one massive note is that I’m using software rendering since the GPU on the core 2 duo is struggling with even drawing the boot screen)

      Literally have probably a ton of overlap software from installing the desktop environments and other random (well not very random, stuff I used on windows before) software that I don’t bother googling the deleting commands since apt installed them all as snaps because I never noticed in my first three months of use, fuck you Ubuntu, Xubuntu and all other derivatives, this shit makes me not want to use Ubuntu ever again (not like i can, my pc is fucked and no other drive is bootable, i can’t even boot an install usb)

      • DickFiasco@lemm.ee
        0·
        1 year ago

        You might want to check out the i3 tiling window manager. Shit’s under 50MB and makes every other DE I’ve ever used feel bloated and laggy.

        • Ziixe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          0·
          1 year ago

          Yeah, I’m not actually not very into the tiling window manager thing, I tried bspwm just for the sake of wanting to try one but I since lost interest, I’ll keep it in mind though and maybe come back and try it one day

  • jroid8@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    You can use window managers instead of DEs. While I prefer DEs because how much features they have you may not need these features

    • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • areyouevenreal@lemm.ee
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

      • Goddard Guryon@sopuli.xyz
        0·
        1 year ago

        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.

        • rustydrd@sh.itjust.works
          0·
          1 year ago

          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.

    • JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • octopus_ink@lemmy.mlEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    I mean - you control what gets installed on Arch. One finger pointing at arch is three pointing back in this scenario…

    • fossphi@lemm.eeEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      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

    • 4am@lemm.ee
      0·
      1 year ago

      I don’t think the finger is being pointed at Arch though

  • Zozano@lemy.lol
    0·
    1 year ago

    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?

    It’s 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.

  • Pohl@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.

    • DrRatso@lemmy.ml
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

      • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 year ago

        I think it’s important to do it all manually once. But, after that there’s no reason not to use archinstall, at all.

    • bluetoque@lemmy.caEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      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.

  • Telodzrum@lemmy.world
    0·
    1 year ago

    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.