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@xxxxxxxxx
