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

  • Eager EagleEnglish
    4•7 months ago

    maybe if it has too many things I don’t want.

    But I find the concept a bit silly. A large number of installed things doesn’t usually matter if they’re not running. I had over 5k packages in my previous kubuntu that I was running for some 3y and it was just fine. The time and effort I’d spend cleaning it up and installing things as needed wouldn’t translate into any perceived benefit imo.

    I’m now running endeavour with a third of this number of packages, since it’s a fresh install and not ubuntu. But other than some storage space and missing packages if I try to build something, I can’t say there’s much of a difference. As for storage, packages rank low in usage, for my desktop anyway.