An article on how linux has now become bloated

[Belwarrior]

here's the link http://osnews.com/story.php?news_id=7324

i think i tend to agree with the writer, there should be a way to reduce the amount of bloat Linux is now having on the more popular distros.

[The PIT]

Programs will expand to take the space availabe even Linux.

[TnT]

Is it really that XP + Office + IE are less bloated than GNOME/KDE + OOo + Mozilla? The former combination gets a bunch of shared libraries so not as much has to be loaded, AFAIK.

Gnome-Terminal is really slow. In Gentoo syncing with the portage tree is noticeably slower than doing it in a diff terminal or in one of the non-gui consoles. Other processes that heavily use the CPU and the terminal output have the same thing happen.

I haven't used Mandrake/Red Hat in a while, so can't speak to how much bloat they have.

[The PIT]

Redhat9 and Mandrake 10 have a lot of bloat when using default setup.

[spadnos]

Realize that the Linux distributions have a lot that the default Win2K/XP installation is missing (though they may not be useful to many people):

1) Complete development system, including compilers for multiple languages. Add MS Visual Studio or the like (~1G or more)

2) Scripting languages - perl, python, bash, PHP, etc.

3) servers - Apache is included with most distributions, as well as FTP, TELNET, and other servers (and clients, of course)

4) games and other distractions

plus lots of other stuff.

So - although a Linux distribution is bloated, it generally provides more functionality than a Windows system with the same bloat factor.

- Steve

[The PIT]

Well I'm not going to do a clean install of both to check it out.

However all this stuff used to be in the earlier distros of Mandrake and Redhat and they're used to be much smaller.

[UtwigMU]

I haven't dabbled too much in Linux, but I had oppurtunity to play with two idenctical boxes with multiple OS's (computer classroom at some company) for courses.

Redhat9 + OO + Mozilla compared to Win2k + MS OfficeXP + IE was way slower and less snappy on Duron@700MHz, Abit KT133 RAID 256MB, Ati Rage3D.

Open Office is a dog speed-wise. I experienced lag on 1.7 Celeron. Now 1.7 is no speed demon, but so should Office not be a performance hog.

[The PIT]

Got to admit I've always found Linux slower than expected. However I've never recompiled the Kernal which i was always told was I lie.
Probably another myth which shaves a few milliseconds off loading and running programs.
In defense of Linux I know how to tweak XP a lot better but then XP is a lot simpler to tweak.

[Marshmallowman]

First thing I always do is recompile the kernel, optimise it for my CPU and remove any modules or bits that are not needed...it easily halves my boot time.

You really are missing out on free speed increse by not doing it.

Recompiling KDE adds quite a bit of speed..but for me that has always far to much of a pain in the ass to bother with, but the kernel is very simple to do.

actually I meant Xfree86, last time I tried it was defintely faster but it broke so many other things,

[TnT]

I use Gentoo, so I have to compile anything anyways. Not too hard either using portage.

[The PIT]

Originally posted by Marshmallowman
First thing I always do is recompile the kernel, optimise it for my CPU and remove any modules or bits that are not needed...it easily halves my boot time.

You really are missing out on free speed increse by not doing it.

Recompiling KDE adds quite a bit of speed..but for me that has always far to much of a pain in the ass to bother with, but the kernel is very simple to do.

actually I meant Xfree86, last time I tried it was defintely faster but it broke so many other things,

Give me some instructions in english and I'll do it.

[TnT]

Download the kernel you want http://www.kernel.org

unpack them into /usr/src:

cd /usr/src
tar -jxvf linux-2.6.6.tar.bz2

go into the directory

check out the README

then you want to:

make mrproper
make menuconfig

You'll get to go around a screen and choose a whole bunch of options. You'll want to compile into the kernel hardware and options required to boot. Extra hardware that isn't required for booting (gamepads and sound card for examples) can be compiled as modules. Remove all the options that aren't even needed or make them modules, this is where you'll get most benefit. If stuff is compiled as modules they won't bloat the kernel, but they still take up space. Make sure you have all the system specs (chipsets for all your devices).

Once you have all that done run:

make bzImage modules modules_install

Wait.

The compiled kernel will be found in
arch/i386/boot/bzImage

Copy that to the /boot directory and name it something that has the kernel version (for my example I'd do linux-2.6.6). Leave your old, working kernel alone.

Edit your Grub or LILO config file to have an option for your new kernel.

Edit your /etc/modules.autoload to load the devices you want to automatically be useable that were compiled as modules. In Gentoo my modules.autoload is a symbolic link that goes to either an autoload for 2.4 or 2.6 kernel. So, not sure if your distro does something like this too.

I may be missing something, so hopefully someone else can add in or point to a nice online guide.

[The PIT]

Funny how many times have I read all you need to do is make this.

Then you get a load of error messages as this is missing and that is missing.


I tell you the distro Suse 9.0 do it step by step for that.

Next one after that is Mandrake 10 step by step nothing missing.

[TnT]

I think it might be due to the distros being binary based. They don't have the developer packages and source files for compiling stuff that has a lot of dependencies. If I remember correctly I did run into the same problem you sound like you are having with missing stuff when I used Mandrake. I think Mandrake had seperate RPMs for the kernel headers or something like that.

[Marshmallowman]

First thing to do in Mandrake before compiling any new kernels is to make sure you have a good working backup kernel that is not going disappear when a new one is added.

Probably the easist way is to simply use the package manager to download and install the latest mandrake suplied stable kernel, not the source just the kernel. Verify it works then(eg it boots) then shows us acopy of your /etc/lilo.conf file just to make sure it has valid hardcoded files, not just symboilic links.

This will make sure you have at least one kernel that won't disapper or stop working when lilo is modified by the kerenel installer.

The alterative(preferred and what I do) is.

First make a copy of /etc/lilo.conf just in case you make a bad mistake and go back and install you olo lilo conifg before rebooting.

then edit /etc/lilo.conf

what you want to do is replace the symbolicly linked kernel stuff with links to the actual files, BUT DO IT ONE LILO ENTRY AT TIME and test to make sure it boots before doing another entry.

The one I usualy do first is the non fb(none frambuffer one)

image=/boot/vmlinuz
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/initrd.img
append="devfs=mount"
read-only


to something like

image=/boot/kernel-2.6.7-mdk.img
label="linux-nonfb"
root=/dev/hda1
initrd=/boot/kernel-2.6.7-mdk.img
append="devfs=mount"
read-only
(keep the tabs the same as the orig and also leave in all other bits as they were eg append ...)

Where you change vmlinuz/initrd to the equivalent files in your /boot directory
eg the file names you changed must exist in the /boot directory.

once you have done that, go to the console and type

lilo

it should go through and add all the entries to lilo.

if you get errors go back and fix the problem
once it goes though without errors, reboot and use theis entry to verify that it works,

I usualy change all mine (one at time and reboot inbetween to check they work) so the no longer refer to any symbolic links

Once you have done that you can move on to making your own kernel, as you should be able to boot you old kernel if you "overtweak" things

once you have the above done, show us a copy of your lilo.conf just to check and we'll move on to installing ,tweaking and compiling a new kernel.