Linux Getting Fat... [Archive] - Overclockers Forums

Zerileous

06-18-04, 02:37 AM

I totally agree with the author of this article. Recently I tried Fedora Core 1 just to buck the trend and to be anti-microsoft, because I have found that in the past, turning to open source instead of the pre-bundled stuff is sooo much better.

I ditched IE for opera, and ran firefox (at the time phoenix) on my little 333 celeron that could. Phoenix's small memory footprint was just what I needed. After customizing the browser, I found it preferable to Opera. Now I will only turn to IE in the case of a rare compatabilty issue (getting rarer and rarer with each release)

I love listening to music in the background. I used to use windows media player, but it could make even the simplest task slow. Now I use foobar, with a very small memory footprint and an amazing playlist tab system that I can no longer live without. I even will leave the program running when not playing music (gaming) because I gain so little memory from closing it.

Now that I am done praising some of the few open source defeats of M$ and wasting your time, I will tell you that I totally agree with the author of that article. Fedora Core 1 had alot of nice things about it, but in the end, there were too few benefits. For now, XP pro was adiquate, I had great programs for everything and I had a bit more speed to boot. Price is the only winning point of linux to me, and, when longhorn is still bearing down my back I have no use for it on my main rig, especially as a gamer. I love to support open source, but my support will have to stick to secondary rigs when it comes to liux.

When I find XP Pro to be inadiquate, a few years will have gone by, and linux will have developed to the point where it will be greatly preferable over longhorn or whatever else is out simply because I am a hardware enthusiest and I would rather spend money on hardware, and speed will not matter when my wallet is 200 dollars heavier. Right now, however, linux will just be in the form of overclockix sitting on a CD for emergencies, and something to throw on a secondary rig I want to run for a game server.

Thanks for letting me waste this much of your time, not sure why I make such long posts when its late, I guess I have nothing better to do.

dalek2.0

06-18-04, 04:24 AM

arabarabian

06-18-04, 09:50 PM

I am running Fedora Core 2 now and it does feel very fat. I think I will be switching to Gentoo soon. I found that when I used to run Windoze media player it would slow my system done.

dalek2.0

06-18-04, 10:10 PM

I think I will be switching to Gentoo soon.

I thought you were working on Gentoo. Just checking.

I remember Mandrake 9.1. It is pretty fat. Gentoo runs a LOT faster. I can say that because I have ran both on the same rig. Gentoo is faster.

I would like to install Redhat, just to see it. I'm not switching from Gentoo though. :rolleyes:

I think they are trying to GUI everything to be more like windoze. It makes Linux easier for newbies but it also makes it fatter and slower, like windoze. We need more choices on what Mandrake or Redhat installs. I know Mandrake put a lot on mine, not sure about Redhat.

Later

:D :D :D :D

Audioaficionado

06-19-04, 11:55 AM

Hmmm...

I have an empty untouched 39Gb partition on my SATA 74Gb Raptor I reserved for Gentoo. My folding position is secure for a few weeks. How does Gentoo like SATA drives? My Hance Rapids Southbridge doesn't need windows drivers unless I RAID two drives.

JigPu

06-20-04, 12:20 AM

LiGhTBoY

06-20-04, 08:18 PM

I totally agree with the title. Just to give you an example what FC2 means, I run setup on a rig, DESELECTED gnome and kde, I just left the xorg. When I logged into the system upon reboot, I forgot to select which session I wanted.... and guess what? kde starts up. Wth?

XWRed1

06-22-04, 04:26 AM

I think it is stupid to complain about "Linux getting fat".

The fat distros are getting fat. Go use Debian or Gentoo or Slackware if you think Fedora is too fat.

dalek2.0

06-22-04, 04:38 AM

Mosty of the "fat" comes in on the GUI part. KDE is pretty fat. I like the slide show on my desktop though. I have it set to change pics every minute. Like a screensaver all the time.

Gnome is the next "fattest". I just don't like it much.

You get down, no pun intended, to IceWM or something, they are VERY light and fast.

I have most all of them installed but I use KDE 99.9% of the time. Just use what will run on your rig and that you like. Simple enough.

Later

:D :D :D :D

DaWiper

06-22-04, 05:15 AM

Well then Mandrake 9.1's bloat would explain the poor performance on my sister's rig.

A Pentium 1 @ 100MHz /w 96MB of RAM :D

It's a heck of a lot more stable than the Win95 that USED to be on it, but dang if it isn't slow! I'd switch to one of the ligher distros, but I'm a n00b with linux (...who has to fix any problems my sister has...) and Mandrake gives me more tools to mess around and set stuff up. I think it just needs more memory, but Gnome runs just as fast as IceWM, so I'm not sure on that....

JigPu

I consider 128mb ram a minimum for kde... and a p100 isn't a lot of power. I bet winXP would be even slower. I rember my first try on installing mandrake. Think it was v8.0. It was on a old p75@90 w/24mb ram. KDE needed about 5 mins just to open a window...

---
KDE tries to make linux into something that ordinary people can work with. That WILL make it fat. But I think linux is far away from beeing something ordinary people can use. RPM's and the other package systems are a good thing until you get told by the system that you need 10 other packages to get the first package to work. Tar.gz installation is another thing. Every time I get it to work I say a little prayer to thank the almighty tux for my luck(I am a semi-noob).

Currently I'm running mandrake 10 and I think it runs faster than 9.1. It might be that I've done a better job when installing it.
The fatness of linux shouldn't be too big a problem for people with a new rig. Anyway, heard that Longhorn isn't too fast either.

Linux is great. Long live the TUX!

Admiral Falcon

06-22-04, 08:30 AM

RPM's and the other package systems are a good thing until you get told by the system that you need 10 other packages to get the first package to work.

Agreed! Even with an automated package-management system like Portage (my first attempt at using Linux was with Gentoo), it was *still* the usual Linux Dependency Heck. Linux may do some things better than Windows, but managing program installations isn't one of them. I'd sit down, type in "emerge program name," and then wait for an hour or two while Gentoo had to get the 30-75 other packages downloaded and installed. I don't know what I would have done if I were still stuck in 56k-land.

dalek2.0

06-22-04, 08:45 AM

I'm still in 56K land, actually, 28.8K. It sucks. :cry: :cry:

I want out of this thing. :bang head

Bedtime. 8:45 AM here.

Later

:D :D

TUK101

06-22-04, 12:06 PM

I have a K6-2 400 based comp here that I have thought about installing Linux on. I have a Redhat CD bundle here that I bought about 6 months ago. Any tricks that I need to know?

DaWiper

06-22-04, 04:18 PM

I'm still in 56K land, actually, 28.8K. It sucks. :cry: :cry:

I want out of this thing. :bang head

Bedtime. 8:45 AM here.

Later

:D :D

I feel sorry for you. If you lived closer I would give you a old 56k modem for free...:)

I have a K6-2 400 based comp here that I have thought about installing Linux on. I have a Redhat CD bundle here that I bought about 6 months ago. Any tricks that I need to know?

My best advise is to install no more applications/packages than you need. Try with a bare minimum and add on later. Stay away from server deamons that you don't need.
A couple of times I've installed just about everything ending up with a slow system.
Get as much ram as possible to away extreme swap partition usage. A fast hd might also help.
IceVM is suppose to be faster than kde/gnome. There also are other GUI's to choose from.
If you really want speed then go for a console only installation(no gui at all)....

TUK101

06-22-04, 04:39 PM

I feel sorry for you. If you lived closer I would give you a old 56k modem for free...:)

My best advise is to install no more applications/packages than you need. Try with a bare minimum and add on later. Stay away from server deamons that you don't need.
A couple of times I've installed just about everything ending up with a slow system.
Get as much ram as possible to away extreme swap partition usage. A fast hd might also help.
IceVM is suppose to be faster than kde/gnome. There also are other GUI's to choose from.
If you really want speed then go for a console only installation(no gui at all)....
Thanks for the advice on the Red Hat installation. As for what you quoted dalek2.0, I am on a 28.8 connection as well and having a 56k modem doesnt make any difference. For those of us people who live on the outskirts of town or in a rural area our telephone bandwidth is limited to 28.8. It was a way for the tele companies to get service to the outlying areas at an affordable cost I guess.....

DaWiper

06-22-04, 06:45 PM

Thanks for the advice on the Red Hat installation. As for what you quoted dalek2.0, I am on a 28.8 connection as well and having a 56k modem doesnt make any difference. For those of us people who live on the outskirts of town or in a rural area our telephone bandwidth is limited to 28.8. It was a way for the tele companies to get service to the outlying areas at an affordable cost I guess.....

Oh, I see.

dalek2.0

06-22-04, 08:30 PM

If Mandrake is anything like Redhat, you need to keep those daemons to a minimum. I would not use KDE and would try to use something besides Gnome even.

I had a AMD 400MHz that I used Mandrake 9.1 and KDE on. It was a mess. It was slow as leap year on that. Yours will be slower.

Linux is doable, just get programs that are light weight but work well.

Keep it to a minimum.

Later

:D :D :D :D
make a good file server though. :attn:

Audioaficionado

06-27-04, 02:20 PM

Grab Libranet 2.8 Debian. It defaults to IceWM and can be updated through apt-get.

rogerdugans

06-27-04, 03:38 PM

I have no doubt that linux has gotten pretty fat in general...
But the distros that are commonly spoken of ARE the fattest- and the ones that are most oriented to people using Linux for the first time or who want to expend the least effort:
Mandrake and Fedora being examples...

They consume even more space than Windows for a standard install.
Of course they also include a much greater variety of software as well, and enough services to keep an airport running. ;) But this is to make things as simple as possible: less to install (with difficulty) afterwards, and the greatest hardware compatibility.

It is possible to get even those distros down to a small size though, and there are linux distributions with a far smaller footprint: look into some of the special-purpose distros used for firewalling and even floppy-booting if you want a small footprint version of linux.

Personally, I am more than happy to accept some of the compromises that using linux entails in order to gain the flexibility and software choices that go with it.

And note that turning OFF all the unused services can make just as big a performance difference in Linux as it does in windows.

A better statement, in my opinion, is that many distros have gotten very bloated.....

FizzledFiend

07-03-04, 04:16 PM

Windoze XP on a 333MHz Celeron. I bet that is "peppy".

I like my Linux. I have never had windoze on my rigs. I had a rig give to me that had it. It died though, typical windoze I might add.

You can have windoze, I'll keep Linux warm for you. :D

Later

:D :D :D :D

Well if you never had windows on your rigs how can you knock it?
I never had linux on any rigs, so it wouldn't be just for me to say linux is lame now would it?

Yes you can argue that I am a MS fan, but lets face it I can get more software for my windows than I can linux, Drivers are easier to come by and install The learning curve from one OS version to the next is very low, and I have "heard" that linux is a large curve. Time is money, and if I had the time to even play with linux I might join you, but for now I perfer to go with a known OS rather than something I know nothing about.

thanks for your comment, but I personally found it to be rather sallow and one sided.

dalek2.0

07-03-04, 06:10 PM

Actually just because I have never had it on my rig does not mean that I don't use it. I work on peoples computers and have to mess with it more than I should. Most of it is the stupid bugs in the OS. If you add viruses and trojans to that, you have a mess.

I can knock it because I was around windoze when it came out. Long enough to know I don't want it or need it. I wanted a real OS that works and doesn't crash and require re-installs all the time. I think they call it " bit rot" or something. I was working on computers when DOS was around and remember windoze 3.1 pretty well when it first came out. It sucked to. Me and a bunch of other techs sat around and talked about how much work we were fixing to have to do. The company hired three more techs to the 9 or 10 we already had because of the crashes and re-installs that it required. Windoze 95, 98 didn't improve things much. Bigger OS and more bugs and holes to deal with.

Windoze is not that good just because so many people use it. I made my choice and I really don't care what anybody uses. If someone wants to use DOS, fine. At least it won't complain so much if you crash and have to hit that restart button.

I have done my share of working on computers. I have worked on them, with them for a long time. I have yet to see anything I like about windoze. I have seen things I like about Linux. It is stable. It is secure. It is capable of doing everything I need and then some. I have yet to see anything windoze can do that Linux can't, except those stupid winmodems and most of those work. I have seen plenty that Linux can do that windoze can't come close too.

Use what you want. I'm not going to hunt you down or anything. It's your rig not mine. Ignorance can be blissfull. :D

Later

:D :D :D :D

Audioaficionado

07-04-04, 09:23 AM

I've used both and windows can last years if you maintain it and don't do stupid things like install everything you find on the internet. I've found XPpro to be fine if you just take the time to learn it's quirks. Linux is much more geekey and requires more from the operator, but if learned, will give you more power and flexibility than windows can.

dalek2.0

07-04-04, 11:40 AM

It can last if you don't do anything with it then? If you can't install programs and try them out what is the point of having a OS? I'm not counting the spyware/adwware which we all know is bad. I have installed a bunch of stuff on this rig and then uninstalled them and it still works fine. No 'bit rot' here.

Windoze needs to improve. It needs to be more secure at the least. I say that for ALL the people that have to use it and have little if no choice in the matter, wiether it is for work or just from inexperience with computers.

That would make the world better for everybody and make those viruses writers have to work much harder. My brother, older than me, uses XP. He plays Solitair and checks his e-mail. It has been pretty good so far, for him anyway. He does NOT install anything until I give it a look see. He does not have access to some of the config files and we run Norton and keep that and the OS up to date with the patches and such. It is starting to slow down though. Not sure what is up with that. Norton finds no problems.

I will say that XP is better, but to me, it is not good enough. Bill Gates needs to fix what is broke before adding more 'stuff' to what he has and making more holes.

As I said, this is my opinion. Just like cars, your mileage may vary.

:D :D :D :D :D

rogerdugans

07-04-04, 06:03 PM

Hmmm.
This seems to be one of those "Windows vs. Linux" threads instead of a discussion of how much bloat is in some linux distros......

Can we not go there, please?
Back in the day...when I couldn't get a linux install past the command line, a linux installation barely took up 200mb- and included web servers, et al, much as it does today. It even included xfree86 although I couldn't get it running. ;)

Even just a few years ago, I had no trouble getting a linux install under 1 gig- far under if I left out the gui stuff.

Japaki

07-05-04, 03:11 AM

I agree.

Titan386

07-08-04, 05:15 PM

First of all, as has been noted, the problem isn't Linux getting fat. It isn't. The problem is that some distributions now have quite a bit of software in them. So, you'll find that lower end systems have trouble running them.

This isn't surprising at all. Has anyone else heard someone say, "I'd use Linux all the time, if it only had feature XYZ?" Or see a post complaining about dependency issues? Since many open source / free software projects have begun, a lot "XYZ features" have been added. Probably your average user doesn't use most of them. There is a very rich set of open source libraries available, which many distros install, resulting in large (in terms of disk space used) installations.

Some distros want to attract users that want lots of features and lots of programs. (And if you don't like dealing with dependencies, lots of libraries and such too). It follows then that such distros will eat up more hard disk space, and require more processing power to run.

So how can one fix this "problem?" IMO, the solution is simple: do not use such distros if you don't have the resources to run them at whatever speed you find acceptable. There are plenty of alternatives available. It is true that many more minimalistic distros require more knowledge and experience to operate. Consider Debian for example. The base install is in the neighborhood of 50 MBs. However, if you've never used Linux before, you'll probably feel rather lost when it dumps you at the command line after installation. If you've never heard of X, KDE, OpenOffice, X-Chat, or whatever, you surely won't be able to apt-get them. So, the user has got to do a little research. Perhaps that includes playing around with one of the "bloated" distros for a while. You can get that lean and mean setup, but it takes a bit of work on your part.

eabeukes

07-09-04, 07:36 AM

Having just recently come back to the space age (after the desert for 2 years) I was keen to get my hands back on a pc. I scraped together a C433/128/10G machine and stuck Win2K on. All sweet and lovely, browsed the 'net for a few days and generally got back into things.

I was glad to see that Fedora had reached core 2 with a 2.6 kernal and I was itching to try it out. Bad move. GRUB did a botch up fo the whole disk and I had to go get a new disk cos the 10G is now without a MBR (and fdisk /mbr nor Win2K recovery console can do anything). So I eventually stuck my trusted slackware 7 on it. Lovely. I now boot between Win2k, Fedora2 and Slack7 and I can agree Linux is fat. And its not the extras that come with it. Memory usage is at disgusting levels, programs are slow and while all my hardware is found perfectly, I can barely use any of it for lack of RAM.

Being a novice programmer I've been taking a look at some of the coding going on and I can't say I'm very impressed. M$ may be buggy and flawed, but at least the code has a slice of elegance. Linux code seems to be kludged together, with everyone building on others code. While a good idea in practice, this leads to the code getting bigger and bgger and no-one ever stepping back and really cutting away the rubbish. Linux programmers need to stop hacking together kludges and workarounds and start writing elegant and strealined code. There are people out there doing it but the whole bunch needs to be rewritten before it gets any faster.

End users dont want to tweak systems or recompile code for specific architechtures and thats why M$ still has the upper hand. Until Linux distributions can equal Windows on the ease of OVERALL use, its gonna go nowhere but the techie's box. Its far less painfull to wack 2k or XP on a box and let it run (without having to manually do anything other than my name, timezone and yes/no network) out the the box than to have to tweak and prod to get it in a semblance of working order.

Titan386

07-09-04, 10:33 AM

Memory usage is at disgusting levels, programs are slow and while all my hardware is found perfectly, I can barely use any of it for lack of RAM.

If you are running KDE or Gnome, then you need to use a lighter weight desktop environment / window manager. 128 MB is often not sufficient for these programs. You have many choices, like Fluxbox, Enlightenment, WindowMaker, and others. Here's a link with more information on them:
http://xwinman.org/

Being a novice programmer I've been taking a look at some of the coding going on and I can't say I'm very impressed. M$ may be buggy and flawed, but at least the code has a slice of elegance. Linux code seems to be kludged together, with everyone building on others code. While a good idea in practice, this leads to the code getting bigger and bgger and no-one ever stepping back and really cutting away the rubbish. Linux programmers need to stop hacking together kludges and workarounds and start writing elegant and strealined code. There are people out there doing it but the whole bunch needs to be rewritten before it gets any faster.

Can you give an example of the code where you are seeing this problem? I'm sure you agree that it is unlikely that all open source / free software code is "kludged together." In all (or most) software projects of a significant size, you'll find code that is less than perfect. However, that does not mean that the overall quality of the code is poor. Furthermore, code that looks nice is not necessarily code that works well. BTW, if you think that some particular piece of code is a performance bottleneck, I encourage you to profile the program in question. The results may be quite surprising.

The comparision to Microsoft's programming seems rather odd, considering that most of MS code is not open for the average programmer to see. Which brings me to reiterate what rogerdugans said: please let's not turn this into Windows vs Linux, yet again. We've had enough of those.

Nunyas

07-14-04, 01:43 AM

Linux bloating up is nothing new really. It's been happening since the late 90's. Since, GNOME and KDE started to focus their efforts into making the Linux GUI Desktop more "user friendly" (this is still before GNOME even hit version 1.0). Since then the "major" names in branded Linux publishers have been adding more and more applications to their distribution in an effort to provide the neophyte with every possible Linux equivolent to their Windows favorite. So, if yer using some major name 'brand' of Linux you will naturally see this "bloating". But to blame Linux for it is non-sense. The blame belongs on the publishing houses that are loading anything and everything onto their distributions.

I mean come on, who really needs to have 3 different word processors on their machine? or 4 different apps to ICQ people with? or 5 different web-browsers? or 15 different TEXT EDITORS? But I can see their logic in doing it for the neophyte... sort of... They do it because they assume the neophyte doesn't know which application does what they truly want since they've never used Linux before. Ok, so I guess they're not going to get away from loading up their distributions with everything they can possibly squeeze onto their 6 CDs or 2 DVDs or whatever they ship them on. What they really need to focus on is clear concise descriptions that the everyday Windoze user can read and understand, and MAKE SURE they know that they only need ONE... not ALL of them.

There are folks on these boards that have descent performing Linux machines but after reading which distributions they're using it's obvious that they're not recent windoze converts.

The point is that this "bloating" thing is not really new. It's a trend that's been happening for as long as I've been using linux. It's definitely possible to make a fast linux system without "bloat". There is at least one company that I've read about that's aiming to make just that non-bloated distro AND still be user friendly to the neophyte. Which I believe is 100% possible with the sheer amounts of software that's currently available for Linux now.

Linux for gaming... eh... the last time I really played games on my linux box was when Quake 3 Arena was still in Beta... Since then I've not really tried since all the games I've been into had to Linux ports.

DocClock aka MadClocker

07-17-04, 06:33 AM

quot edited
(and fdisk /mbr nor Win2K recovery console can do anything). So I eventually stuck my trusted slackware 7 on it. Lovely. I now boot between Win2k, Fedora2 and Slack7 and I can agree Linux is fat. And its not the extras that come with it. Memory usage is at disgusting levels, programs are slow and while all my hardware is found perfectly, I can barely use any of it for lack of RAM.

Instead of typing fdisk/mbr.. just type fdisk and enter...There you will find a few choices, like displaying the partition info, create partition etc. just delete the borked partition, and create a new one, format, and you're ready to go.

Audioaficionado

07-17-04, 11:41 PM

Linux is only fat if you allow it to be when installed or updated.

You have control if you want to and learn how to.

I have both very powerful and old systems and Linux worked well on both.

madmodder777

07-27-04, 03:36 PM

Linux is so much more Powerful and STABLE but for now im running Windoes

XWRed1

07-27-04, 09:11 PM

Why?

scotty20857

03-29-05, 09:31 PM

I have to agree with Linux becoming "fat" or "bloated" because in order to have the control to have only the programs and features I need, I would have to know as much as a computer genius. I don't even know how to go about learning about this sort of thing since it's all written in a foreign language to a competent, yet unknowledgeable Windows user.

jcw122

03-29-05, 09:33 PM

^^^lol talk about resurection a bit

TollhouseFrank

03-29-05, 09:44 PM

Linux (as long as you stay away from a big distro) is quite streamlined and smooth. As others on here can attest, I've had my MORE THAN FAIR SHARE of troubles with Linux, everything from Kernel Panics installing my video drivers (Fedora Core 3) to kernel panick just trying to initial XServ (Debian) and those d**n apt-get dependencies that King_Warg and I run into every time we try to finish installing KDE while working on a new distro called Borgix.....

the ONLY reason I haven't gone to Linux yet is driver support. I can deal with figuring out dependcies, but until DRIVER SUPPORT becomes better, I won't make the switch (Video, Mobo, and Sound Card drivers are hard to come by half the time)