[CS-FSLUG] The Fast-Food Syndrome: The Linux Platform is Getting Fat

[Ed Hurst]

Eduardo Sanchez wrote:
> One of my points is that ease of use and "consumerability" (yuck!) does 
> not translate necessarily into "bloat". You could use easy-to-use 
> distros such as libranet, knoppix or vector linux.
> 
> Additionally, you could tweak Mandrake and get a very fast distro. 
> However, you can't do that with SUSE/Fedora/RH.

On at least one point, there's a flaw: Knoppix is easy to install in the
narrow sense of getting it on your drive, but you *will* install the
whole thing, then have to learn how to uninstall what you don't use. I
never saw any guide on package de-selection -- "If you do this, you
don't need that." You and I would find it easy; Joe Consumer would reach
for another distro. Thus, a loss of the "easy install" in the broad
general sense for Knoppix. (Or did they fix that?) I can't speak for
other distos that come out generic. Libranet does not yet appeal to Joe
Consumer, and I'm sure it's fans are thankful; Vector is still largely
unknown, to me and to the general public.

SUSE and RH have the advantage of a long history aiming at the consumer
market to back them, and marketing. Slack and Debian seem to have
frankly avoided that, with their history being at least as long. The new
morphs of those two will remain hidden for a long time unless they find
a way to get the word out.

I contend that you cannot, in the marketing sense, separate bloat from
consumer appeal. Fun and glitz, without tweaking -- "out of the box" --
is fat. Variations are slight. Keeping it automatic in detection and
setup, adds fat. There are tons of other things that will bulk it up.
You are right that SUSE is hard to tweak, though it can be done. Last I
saw, all the apps are optimized for either i586 or i686 already.

And I really don't feel deeply moved either way, since I am not
personally involved anymore. Our positions are not all that far apart, I
believe, but we wrangle a bit over definitions.

My personal system is optimized, and getting more so every day. I am an
aficionado of my favorite, as you are of yours.

-- 
Ed Hurst
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Software Freedom Day, 28 August 2004
Got Freedom?
http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/
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