MX Linux Forum

I keep reading reviews of distros(I know I should stop) and one comment that often comes up (not just for antiX/MX) is that 'distro X is bloated'.

Usually, that's it. No explanation of what is 'bloated' except 'it comes with apps I don't use' (emphasis mine).

eg antiX is bloated (1.4GB iso size), but EndeavourOS (c.2GB iso size) is bloat-free.

So, to you, what is bloat and more importantly why and how.

Thanks

(I posted this over at antiX forums as well).

I still remember checking out linuxbbq, and they released tons of no-X isos. I only tried those initial ones where they included XFCE or LXDE. And one openbox release.

On the forum, some of the main characters used to say things like "X is bloat". Only half jokingly.

I have no idea what those comments are supposed to mean--but they do manage to irritate me!

Once in an earlier lifetime I was doing IT support and system administration at a large city's fire department and was installing Windows NT Server on a, well, server. The installer was of course interactive so I had to spend my time sitting at the console and watching the installation in case I got prompted to do something or make a decision and I remember the time spent while it installed all of the NT wallpapers. Who the heck needs wallpaper on a server? That an example of what what I consider unnecessary bloat.

In the case of antiX or MX I suppose it would be if every language pack for every app, every available web browser, and stuff like that were included in the ISO rather than letting users install (and uninstall) whatever they like after the OS installation was finished.

I remember a few months ago that a few people were complaining about the "bloat" in MX because of the apps that were preinstalled, so m_pav came up with an MX-19.x Base respin for them. Some were complaining that that was still bloated. Others who installed it struggled trying to use it as their daily driver OS due to the things that had been removed. Can't win for losing.

Some people seem to want the developers to release custom versions of the distro just to suit them rather than spending a few minutes adding and removing packages to tailor their system to their own needs.

anticapitalista wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:16 am ...
eg antiX is bloated (1.4GB iso size), but EndeavourOS (c.2GB iso size) is bloat-free.
So, to you, what is bloat and more importantly why and how.

Do not worry, that's mean nothing, some people discuss only to discuss.
This is the depthness of things that counts, not the form and the words packaging.

To me bloat is a mark of low IQ from the people who complain about it. :)

I really wanted to call MX-21 something based on bloat. the pufferfish name on the original pre-alphas came from that.

in retrospect, it should have been bloaty-mc-bloatface

dolphin_oracle wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 8:11 am I really wanted to call MX-21 something based on bloat. the pufferfish name on the original pre-alphas came from that.

in retrospect, it should have been bloaty-mc-bloatface

The name "wildflower" always gives me an earworm.

anticapitalista wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:16 am I keep reading reviews of distros(I know I should stop) and one comment that often comes up (not just for antiX/MX) is that 'distro X is bloated'.

I found bloat on my MX - it is my data folder

No, antiX and MX are not bloated.
Complainers just want to look knowledgeable in Linux world. Little do they know...

Comments about bloat annoy me too, but in the end I find them funny, especially when they say “it has too many apps but they may be good for some users”.

Why even say it’s bloated then?

The OOTB experience for new and every day users is what is important, I think that is covered pretty well. Not too much, not too little.

i saw one reviewer calling neofetch bloat ...

if you really need a fetchy thing .....pfetch is much more trim

you could save several KBs on your terabyte hard drive

:)

Hi,

Yes bloat is hugely misunderstood and @anticapitalista nailed it in his first post when he said they are usually talking (complaining) about apps they don't use being present in the menu..

As an example my project (AVL-MXE) is probably one of the largest ISO's you will find weighing in at around 3.5 Gb but it is also one of the tightest performing since reducing Audio latency is of key importance... The mistaken impression that the number and size of applications have much at all to do with RAM consumption, or general system speed etc. is indeed a source of great misunderstanding out there in amateur journalism world..*eyeroll

Some people also have no concept of the sizes of applications... they see something like 'MX-Tools' with all of it's useful entries and think hmmm there are more launchers in MX Tools than LibreOffice... MX Tools must be 'bigger' when in truth it is tiny in comparison.

anticapitalista wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:16 am So, to you, what is bloat and more importantly why and how.

Bloat: Software/Apps I don't use that have the potential to allow security breaches into my system.

The more potential for ‘insecurity’ the more I’d consider the software bloat. Things like: The software default listens on an interface, defaults to running, or can be easily started by some other item or software without the user’s knowledge.

A specific example I think would be CUPS. Useful if you have a printer and the perception is that everyone does (which is the reason why I believe it’s default installed and enabled). But, what is the percentage of people who don’t have printers, such that CUPS is just ‘bloat’ as defined above?*

Anyway, interesting question!

Best,
Michael

* Polls are basically useless to determine this, but hardware reporting has such a negative history (back to at least Win95 beta) I can’t see it really being an option. Maybe, if the QSI’s contain printers?, scan all the QSI info uploaded to the forum? Really IDK of a way to get the info without some ‘poll fraud’ mechanism corrupting the gathered data...

"Bloat: Software/Apps I don't use that have the potential to allow security breaches into my system."

@Michael-IDA ... Yes, but In this case, all kernel modules also have this potentiality ;-)

These are all useless bloat to me and get removed.
bluetooth, cups, cups-browsed, samba, nmbd, smbd, nfs-common, nfs-kernel-server, rpcbind, openvpn, clementine, and all the Indian and Asian fonts.

Bloat: too much programs/code running unnecessarily and consuming hardware resources.
Firefox is bloated compared with Palemoon (for the same end result).
Modern web pages are bloated compared with a handful of years ago (for the same end result).

Speaking of fonts, the Noto Sans family of fonts has gotten a bit out of hand. There are so many of them that it creates a bottleneck when trying to select a font from LO's font combobox. One of the first things I do after an install has settled down is remove the types I don't need and store them elsewhere, so they no longer show up. I have 192 Noto Sans types stored, and left in place less than 10 of them that I may use.

I'm not blaming that on anyone, because there are people who will need different font faces. It is what it is.

BV206 wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:30 pm These are all useless bloat to me and get removed.
bluetooth, cups, cups-browsed, samba, nmbd, smbd, nfs-common, nfs-kernel-server, rpcbind, openvpn, clementine, and all the Indian and Asian fonts.

How do you define 'bloat'? Simply software you don't use?

oops wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:17 pm "Bloat: Software/Apps I don't use that have the potential to allow security breaches into my system."

@Michael-IDA ... Yes, but In this case, all kernel modules also have this potentiality ;-)

You have a brain...

Seriously, you know what I mean, as it's somewhat hard to run a Linux system without the kernel...

I think the term more became common when some mobile manufacturer came with software pre-installed which users don't use, but still can't remove them with out doing something which makes end of warrenty.

For some a naked person is a painting
For me a well-dressed.

If I can remove some thing, I don't like, without making system problematic, why call it bloated
You may call it un nessesary stuffs.

But what's not useful to you, may be useful to thousands

That's why I love MX
It comes with things, even a computer without network connection, start using for all/ most required things out of box, with a install and go.

I never liked os that's not useful, come naked even without a word processor and hypocrisy is that they advertise it's freedom of choice.

I love MX, preconfigured for majority
Usable after installing with out a network connection for getting this or that.
Developers and team configuration these software more towards the os specific and a dummy finds his solution and I don't want to speak for experts, because they are,

I love MX , the way it is.

You like chrome install it, but don't suggest don't ship it with firefox.
Your love is Kingsoft office, install that, but don't suggest remove the libre office.

Bloated is a term coined by haters who don't agree with you, even if you are open and allowing change.

You mentioned correctly, a small iso contained with so many useful application, and a bare bones with large size.

I love bloated MX, thanks

Edit..
I found this definition from dictionary.
"swollen and rounded because of containing too much air, liquid, or food"

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... sh/bloated
https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dicti ... sh/bloated

But I don't think MX is swollen, rather it's health and not rounded too...:)
Neither it's content air or food.
Yes if healthy is bloating in their own definition, I can't justify malnutrition ones

A good, user-oriented, general-purpose, desktop distribution needs to have preinstalled a nicely selected suite of software to make it useful to most users out-of-the-box, without excessive size, unnecessary vulnerability, and reasonable system load, while remaining stable and easy to maintain. MX-Linux is doing a good job of hitting that sweet spot.

Michael-IDA wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 2:01 pm

oops wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:17 pm "Bloat: Software/Apps I don't use that have the potential to allow security breaches into my system."
@Michael-IDA ... Yes, but In this case, all kernel modules also have this potentiality ;-)

You have a brain... Seriously, you know what I mean, as it's somewhat hard to run a Linux system without the kernel...

... It's exactly the same process, not all embedded modules are needed into the kernel, few are enough to run a computer.

anticapitalista wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 5:16 am So, to you, what is bloat and more importantly why and how.

"Bloat" to me is more about "feel" than size or running processes or RAM usage or whatever other metric you might use. Of course, that makes my definition of bloat dependent on hardware.

Windows is "bloated", obviously. Ubuntu and Mint feel bloated. On my desktop, MX is quick and snappy and just "feels" right. On my laptops with old weak processors, some programs <cough> Firefox <cough> take too darn long to launch and bog down more easily than they should. But the OS itself performs better than I could ask for.

Windows is "bloated", obviously.

I was thinking about that when I was downloading a Nvidia driver update, about 800MB and then I found on Nvidia forum this question:

Why the size of the drivers is so high? If I go to "Programs and Features" I can see that the size of nVIDIA Drivers is 2.54 GB, Is there a problem with my PC or what? I have the newest drivers.

Or when you see a folder c:\Windows\servicing\LCU with 166,000 files and 2GB... presumably updates? But yeah some idiots comment that antiX with an entire system of 1.4GB is "bloated"...

The problem these days about "bloat" is that the majority of these "bloat" applications are all the dependencies that they need and other applications which depend on a library from the "bloat" package, etc. As a package maintainer for Slackware Linux, I see it all the time with any KDE, XFCE, or any other X Desktop Environment. Try removing one of these "bloat" packages and you'll have to uninstall the whole Desktop Environment. lol :) But, true to the OP. When I read those reviews and they say the distro has bloat, please back that statement up and provide what you consider "bloat" and what do you offer to remove that "bloat".

When I read those reviews and they say the distro has bloat, please back that statement up and provide what you consider "bloat" and what do you offer to remove that "bloat".

One person's useful package is another person's bloat.

But there's a simple solution -- remove the offending package(s) and remaster or even take a snapshot. MX and antiX have these useful tools that allow you to create your freaking customized ISO -- people have no right to demand packages to be removed from the official release (unless they make no sense there for most of the people). They can simply do that by themselves and take a snapshot then they can use that to their heart content. For example when I want to create a lean custom ISO for troubleshooting/PC cloning, etc I know I will never use Thunderbird, dictionaries, themes, fonts, etc I remove them and create an ISO < 1GB. But that's my own preference. It's also minimal work, removing stuff takes minutes, a LZ4 remaster takes 1-2 minutes too if not less, if you have problem you can always boot with "roolback" to go back to the functional remaster, it's really easy....

Bloat, I know the term from the Windows world. That was the garbage that came with PCs "off the shelf" that NOBODY else wanted.
From HP, for example, a "desktop" attachment for children with its own paint and write program. Advertising, Affiliates, Norton Antivirus AND Avira, although the Windows Defender was already installed and active and a dozen other applications. Everything was so tightly interlocked in the system that you needed half a working day to get the dirt off the computer (but only if you had done that before and knew where to do what, including direct editing in the registry). Of course, also some MS Office variant with 4 weeks runtime limitation, to "test". The Recoverysystem was on a hidden 20GB partition, there was no longer an original Windows installation CD at department store computers. This created then no simple installation CD, but 3 DVDs, which were of course only usable on this computer and if you actually needed them ... the installation took 5x as long, as with an installation CD of the Pro version.

Who under Linux of "Bloat" babbles, which does not know for a long time, what Bloat really is he is like a spoiled affluent child, because a Distri does not meet his "requirements" to 100% and he must remove perhaps times 5 minutes himself what.
Surprises me actually, with a user group that on the other hand is always so proud to use an operating system, because it gives them among other things exactly this freedom to remove or add what they want :-)

Bloat is what happens to a dead body that is left out for some time unnecessary use of resources to accomplish a task that can easily be accomplished with fewer resources, usually because of unnecessary features or things that are completely irrelevant to the task at hand.
For instance, Microsoft's Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) had lots of skins and styling options for it, none of which looked like the native OS. Considering that this is meant to be a serious security tool, this was ridiculous and resembled the idiocy demonstrated by "registry cleaners" of the 2000's.

Now people love to associate bloat with Windows, and to me this is completely fair. Windows has a history of adding useless software that gets in the way. Cortana, anyone? But, another form of bloat, is ecosystem bloat. Usually a result of Not-Invented-Here syndrome, you have nonsense like dozens of different incompatible GUI toolkits, audio subsystems, package managers, initialisation systems (I mean really!), etc. So for those who think Windows is more bloaty than Linux, well, it depends on what bloat you're talking about.

wdscharff wrote: Sat Aug 28, 2021 12:37 am Bloat, I know the term from the Windows world.

Yeah I remember Win 2000's newly installed footprint was around 800mb but in XP that rose to over 3gb.

I recently helped a friend purchase a new laptop. It had to be Win 10 of course and what an ordeal it was to try and get rid of Spotify which he was never gonna use and the nag screens at startup were just too much. I said try as I gave up in the end and advised him to take it back to the shop and let them deal with it.

Bloat, what I knew about, is associated with bloating paper; where the paper soaks up the ink or whatever and gets swollen as the result. I guess that's what people relate with swollen apps and resource usage in computers these days. Yes, it was inevitable and much needed for the entire industry to post growth with better accounting numbers and make the users not stick to decade old solutions as they say. In some way, in a limit it is ok; when overdone, then comes the controversy and debate relating to linux, windows and other software junk.

agnivo007 wrote: Sat Aug 28, 2021 4:41 am Bloat, what I knew about, is associated with bloating paper; where the paper soaks up the ink or whatever and gets swollen as the result. I

That's blotting paper.

@JayM Yes, homophones. But that's how many people around me relate to bloating; had explained that according to their common perception.

AK-47 wrote: Sat Aug 28, 2021 2:05 amCortana, anyone?

Well. Bloat to me is installing a distro on my small ssd drive on my chromebook and watching dist-upgrade expand it's space on the ssd.

AntiX does not do this . I have never had to re-install because my drive is too small. This covers years.
I loved this feature on my dual drive eeepcs when I had em also.
Root would fit comfy cozy on the 4 gig ssd. /home would end on the larger drive.

I never ran a journaled file system on those cheap phison ssd, Ext2 all the way baby with no swap and 2 gig of ram on a 800 rated celeron cpu. Not even atom.
So like in the commercial "where is the beef?"
"Where is the bloat? "

Besides. Some dudes like fat bottomed girls, Some don't. Opinions are personal.

anticapitalista wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:55 pm

BV206 wrote: Fri Aug 27, 2021 1:30 pm These are all useless bloat to me and get removed.
bluetooth, cups, cups-browsed, samba, nmbd, smbd, nfs-common, nfs-kernel-server, rpcbind, openvpn, clementine, and all the Indian and Asian fonts.

How do you define 'bloat'? Simply software you don't use?

That's the main thing.

What-a-ya-gonna-do? Haters gonna hate. HATE HATE HATE.

Antix is the only distro that satisfies on my traveling Asus eee 900A, and it gives me all I need on a 4GB SSD that's slower than I am. But, Antix runs just fine. Slim, trim, runs with the wind!

MX is the only O.S. I will ever run on my old daily driver. Like a great pizza, if there's topping there you don't like, scrape it off, you can't be that helpless.

I had to install Windows on a friend's StinkPad last month, with less than stellar bandwidth, and I thought that I would never get the dern thing the drivers it needed and all the countless updates. I think I would rather take a whuppin' than have to go through that again.

I haven't seen any bloat around here, well, maybe in my ramblin' posts..

The Tramp

I haven't seen any bloat around here, well, maybe in my ramblin' posts..

Great sig line.

At the turn of this century, when broadband access was in its infancy, dial-up access was still very prevalent and hard drive real estate was at a premium, bloat was a serious issue. A bloated iso could take days rather than hours to download, then installing it could leave precious little space for the users’ own data and removing the ‘fluff’ to create extra space was often a non-trivial exercise. Today, the reverse is true: huge hard drives, the prevalence of high speed broadband access that means ISOs can be downloaded in mere minutes and removing the ‘fluff’ just takes a few clicks in MXPI or Synaptic.

In terms of anticapitalista’s opening statement, I think that the term ‘bloat’ has almost become a non sequitur IE nobody really much cares any more, 'bloat' is very dependent on an end-user's perception and it’s really only of concern to reviewers who are searching for enough constructive criticisms to fill out an article.

agnivo007 wrote: Sat Aug 28, 2021 5:03 am @JayM Yes, homophones.

Actually, they're not homophones as they are not pronounced the same. Bloat rhymes with boat while blot rhymes with lot. This can sometimes be difficult for non-native speakers to detect.

j2mcgreg wrote: Sun Aug 29, 2021 9:43 amIn terms of anticapitalista’s opening statement, I think that the term ‘bloat’ has almost become a non sequitur IE nobody really much cares any more, 'bloat' is very dependent on an end-user's perception and it’s really only of concern to reviewers who are searching for enough constructive criticisms to fill out an article.

My favorites are those that complain about RAM usage. Having a bunch of RAM doesn't do you much good if you don't use it, does it?

I Look at my wifes gear while she is doing her city hall work. You wanna mention bloat with ram usage.

Windows takes the cake on that.