Linux

A system us bloated when I feel it is bloated. It is highly subjective and there is no real line to cross. It is just more of a sliding scale, at one end there is no code on your system that you never use and at the other there is nothing on it that you ever want to use.

The former can likely on be reached on small microcontrollers where you have written everything exactly how you want it, and you would never even consider using the latter.

Realistically every system has things younever use, even the kernel has modules you will never load. And every non tiny program has features you never use. All of that is technically bloat but each instance I don't think makes your system or even an application feel bloated.

So really the question is when does the bloat bother you or get in your way. If you are trying to install an OS on a tiny embedded device where space is a premiumthenn you are going to draw that line at a different point to on the latest desktop with multi terabytes of storages and oodles of ram.

Anyone that claims there system has no bloat is technically lying to themselves. But if it makes them happy who cares? If your system has every package installed and it does not bother you at all thenitt does not matter at all.

If it affects system performance and gives me no noticeable benefit. Otherwise, flash bytes are cheap. I've got 30TB+ in my laptop. Why do I care if I have a 3GB OS or a 2.95GB OS?

If it has the following: -graphical file manager -graphical app store -"start menu" of some sort -graphical centralized settings app I use i3wm on gentoo or arch

I concider bloat to be either unneeded files/programs. So duplicated libraries, unused apps, not personal data files that are stagnant, anything similar to that. It's hard to put a metric on it, I just browse through my files every once and awhile and delete the unused stuff, but with the push for container based stuff I forsee that method will become increasingly harder as time goes on

I just installed Red Hat 5.2 a couple of days ago ( true story ). It is so light-weight with its Fvwm window manager, bash 1.2, and GCC 2.7.2. It even had Netscape Navigator! Who could ask for more? Anything more is bloat!

Just kidding. Bloat is installing things you do not use or that do not make your system better. I think some desktop environments add bloat. Mostly though, even the heavy ones represent a smaller fraction of system resources than their ancestors did on older systems.

If you have 3000 packages you use, who cares? However, if you have 3000 packages and only use a dozen of them, maybe your system is bloated.

I use a lot of older hardware. So, I like a fairly lean base system. I still use a lot of software though. I don’t think that is bloat.

I think there are several factors influencing when someone feel 'bloat'. There's the 'purists' that tend to optimize their system to be as 'lean & mean' as possible - relentlessly, and there's the simplists that just want a simple setup/dashbord they can control - without too many options/distractions from info-bloat. Info-bloat hints to different types of bloat: filesize, dependencies, gfx details/animations, option-bloat, monetization-bloat and so on. There may also be cultural tendencies within different distro communities gentoo, tendencies from those with the emacs syndrome, or other more political groupings..

The last factor I can imagine atmo is that the level of hardware is very important and low end operators will tend to see more bloat when things run slowly - no matter their 'bloat focus'.

I had some Pythoncode for you but couldnt get the codeblock to play along 🙃

When it affects stability, functionality, or exceeds my abilty to secure it properly.

I don't even care anymore. I've got a system with 1TB of SSD space and 16GB of RAM that I mostly use to open a browser.
Install all the desktop environments for all I care.

To me bloat is anything using resources when I didn’t ask it to. Someday I’ll have more than 16 gigs of ram to throw around, maybe then I won’t be such a memory miser. One of the biggest things that pushed me into linux was the myriad of live service-esque background processes windows was forcing on me.

If I was a little less dyslexic I’d have a CLI for everything, now THAT’S efficiency!

when it eated too much

I think it depends on the packages themselves. Do you have a lot of packages with overlapping functionality or are they packages that specifically focus on one function. I think its bloat when your file compression package also controls your rgb lights. Not all overlap is bad but too much is. Im a bit of a noob with linux though so grain of salt and all that

Personally, I consider a "bloated system" to be one that has a bunch of installed apps that I'll never use....

Idk. I use Ubuntu (although the MATE flavour, not sure about the default version) and I don't feel it's bloated (there are preinstalled apps that I don't use but I stilk don't feel it's bloated). One example that I consider bloated is stock Android on most phones where you have Facebook and Instagram preinstalled (two social media ffs), GDrive and OneDrive, and those useless vendor apps (Samsung Pay, Samsung Store or whatever that is). It's just too much. Worse is they're all privacy nightmares.

Systemd continues to consume system functions with - bad - facsimiles, and for things like the /bin-/usr/bin decree they just don't actually get it.

I consider any system running systemd to be bloated and I stop caring about PACKAGE COUNT after that.

When there's ads in my terminal

"Bloat" implies "excess", "overloaded" -- anything that has been installed and used without my consent or a badly optimized package/command.

Usually never, I'd consider something bloated if the battery life is down 10%-25% without starting programs manually.

A linux is bloated if it has packages installed thaz you don’t need.

I love my bloated Arch.btw (honestly after installing arch once normally, I installed it using EndeavourOS installer (still Arch in my opinion))