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

  • @Deckweiss
    6•2 months ago

    You answered it yourself in your post.

    It is subjective.

    I think the concept applies more to whats preinstalled and less to what you yourself install

    To illustrate, personally I think:

    Ubuntu is bloat, because when I used it it was a hassle to remove everythink I knew I never would use.

    Archinstall without template is not bloat, because there is nothing installed that I would not use.

    But archinstall with for example the KDE Plasma template is very bloated and it is a pain to uninstall what I don’t need because of the meta packages.