[Flame Bait] - Linux as bloatware
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
Tue Apr 11 16:15:20 UTC 2006
On Tue, 2006-04-11 at 10:26, Styma, Robert E (Robert) wrote:
> To me bloat is when you load a bunch of software you do not use.
> If I only use k3b to burn CD's, the other CD recording tools I don't use are
> bloat. If I use one of those tools and never use k3b, then k3b is bloat.
But that means you have to know what other tools k3b uses under
the covers - and it is worse than bloat if it re-invents badly
what some other tool would handle correctly.
> I suspect much of what is termed bloat comes from the politics of what goes
> into the distribution and what it included by default.
Some comes from licensing issues, some from people who just like
to re-invent instead of re-use.
> Also the people who
> want the "Install everything" option should not complain about bloat.
I don't think these are the same people, or at least not when
talking about the same devices. The first hard drive I ever
used cost $3,000 for 5 megs - yes megs... I have absolutely
no qualms at all about potentially wasting $2 worth of disk
space at today's prices to have 'everything' on line so a
script expecting some tool will find it instead of crashing
at an inopportune moment. In fact I'm thrilled at how little
that costs now.
> My conclusion is that one person's bloat is another's critical application.
> Oh well, enought ranting, I better get back to work.
Yes, there's enough difference between a full featured modern
PC and a dedicated minimalist device that the same distribution
shouldn't be expected to accommodate both, although it would
make sense to plan for document portability. Wouldn't something
like OpenZaurus be a better place to start for a minimal
device?
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com
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