I often hear folks in the Linux community discussing their preference for Arch (and Linux in general) because they can install only the packages they want or need - no bloat.

I’ve come across users with a couple of hundred packages installed (likely fresh installs), but I’ve also seen others with thousands.

Personally, I’m currently at 1.7k packages on my desktop and 1.3k on my laptop (both running EndeavourOS). There might be a few packages I could remove, but I don’t feel like my system is bloated.

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

I’m asking as a relatively new Linux user - been daily driving for about 7/8 months

  • bbbhltz
    15•8 months ago

    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.