What is "Bloat" anyway?

[Sporkman]

...or one of these:

[whiskeylover]

Some people would rather drive one of these

than one of these

because they don't think they need all of that bling.

My original post said "Most people like to...". Meaning, given the chance, they'd certainly choose the second car over the first. In 99% of the cases, they'd choose the first car only because of financial constraints.

[Bachstelze]

Bloat, just like beauty, is in the eyes of the beholder. A person's bloat is another person's must-have feature.

[aysiu]

If bloat is strictly defined as a program using code inefficiently or taking up more space than it needs to, then I don't really care (as an end-user) if a program or operating system is "bloated."

What I care about is performance. If a new version of a program adds in a bunch of new "features" that I don't actually use and the addition of those new "features" slows down the loading of the program or affects the performance of the program, then I will consider that bloat.

I've heard a lot of people refer to iTunes as a "bloated" program, but I don't see where that criticism comes from. New versions of iTunes perform just as quickly as older versions did, so the new features don't bother me, even if I don't use them. And, frankly, most people I know who do use iTunes use either all or most of the features available.

[forrestcupp]

My original post said "Most people like to...". Meaning, given the chance, they'd certainly choose the second car over the first. In 99% of the cases, they'd choose the first car only because of financial constraints.

I know, but it seems like a lot of people around here would choose the first car, not because they can't have the 2nd car, but because it's not popular or 1337 to drive the second one.

[Madspyman]

I know, but it seems like a lot of people around here would choose the first car, not because they can't have the 2nd car, but because it's not popular or 1337 to drive the second one.

It's not about being 1337 it's about being neat. Lets say a cars exterior is more like the hardware, and the interior is like the software. Keeping the inside clean is just as important as making sure the outside doesn't get any scuffs.

[XubuRoxMySox]

Wow! Lots of very thoughtful responses here (but absolutely none so far on the original post at Linux.com)!

It's quite insightful, actually. "Bloat" to me might be "improvements" that add features I don't want and which also slow down performance, whether those "improvements" are part of the kernel or an upgraded version of some software.

The point of the original article though - which was that bloat is in the eye of the beholder - has certainly been demonstrated in the replies! I guess I like a little bloat when it comes to my user interface (I want it fast and simple but it also needs to be pretty and offer a few favorite little bits of eye candy). I prefer an e-mail application that lets me write cutesy, heavily formatted e-mail to penpals with embedded pictures and animated gifs - to most people that would definitely be bloat, but it matters to me.

Yet my web browser is Midori! Ultralight, not so full-featured. But Firefox takes a long time to load up and go on this old hand-me-down 'puter. To me, Firefox is bloated! But for other (most?) people it's not.

Abiword and Gnumeric, so far at least, have been sufficient for all my schoolwork and choreography stuff, so OpenOffice - for me - is bloated. Yet for alot of people for whom Abiword/Gnumeric aren't enough, OpenOffice is not bloated.

So what I'm trying to say in my article is just this: Let's not throw the word "bloated" around so carelessly and use the term so broadly and apply it to whole entire OSes when really... it's all a matter of personal preference and subjective perception.

I learned alot from this thread! Thanks everyone for participating!

-Robin

[clanky]

I think bloat can be different things depending on the context:-

At the Kernel level it can either mean inefficient coding which makes the kernel unwieldy and slow, or it can mean unnecessary modules which have much the same effect for functionality that I don't want.

At application level it is pretty much the same thing, O_Oo is often described as bloated because it performs actions in inefficient ways rather than because it is loaded with unwanted features, but either would be bloat.

At a system level it is pretty much loads of unwanted apps or processes taking up disk space or running in the background and slowing the system down.