Wow, talk about a difference

[ayasin]

I'm a recent convert from windows. I was looking at my system the other night and I noticed something HUGE. I always knew that windows was a bit bloated but I figured it wasn't THAT bad, maybe 500 mb more than Linux base install, boy was I WRONG.

Windows Setup:
Win XP Media Center Edition w/ SP2 (Straight off the CD)
Drivers for hardware
NO 3rd PARTY SOFTWARE

Total space required: 9 GB

Kubuntu Setup:
KDE
OpenOffice
FireFox
Wine
Tomboy
<craploads of USEFUL (read not minesweeper) software I forgot>
C&C 3 demo (which represents 2.3 GIG of this)

Total space required: 5.5 GB

My question to Redmond: Um, WTF?!

[tbroderick]

Yes, Windows installs are generally larger then GNU/Linux installs. There's a lot of unneeded stuff on there. Not really a big deal since hard drives are pretty cheap these days.

[SuSUntu]

I'm a recent convert from windows. I was looking at my system the other night and I noticed something HUGE. I always knew that windows was a bit bloated but I figured it wasn't THAT bad, maybe 500 mb more than Linux base install, boy was I WRONG.

Windows Setup:
Win XP Media Center Edition w/ SP2 (Straight off the CD)
Drivers for hardware
NO 3rd PARTY SOFTWARE

Total space required: 9 GB


Wow. I don't know anything about the Media Center Edition, but I have multiple machines with Windows XP Pro SP2, and they require only a fraction of what you're talking about here.

I always install Windows on a separate partition with 3rd-party applications, data, Linux, etc. on their own partitions. None of the Windows partitions are set bigger than 4GB, and all are using less than 2GB of that storage space. Throw in a 1.5GB swap file on a separate partition and it's still less than 4GB.

I only make this post to show the contrast between the Media Center Edition and XP Pro.

[rsambuca]

Sorry, but either you are severely exaggerating or something is wrong with your XP MCE install. Basic install is less than 4 Gigs.

[Cloudy]

That's strange..

I installed XP on a clean 20GB harddrive and still had enough room to install World of Warcraft, which is, as most know, a significantly big game.. I'm pretty sure I still had at least about 14 or 15GB after my XP install (and something like 5 or 6 after WoW).

[DoctorMO]

I'd love to see the compression that can get 9GB out of a 700MB CD.

[qamelian]

I agree that it's strange. A default install of XP Home is about 1.5 GB. You can fall into a bloatware trap though when you install drivers using the installers on the driver CDs that come with your hardware. I had a sound card a few years ago that, if you allowed the autorun program to have its way, installed over 400 MB of stuff over and above the actual drivers needed to make the card work. I've seen the same on driver CDs for video cards and other hardware and peripherals. Going that route makes it very easy to blow a few extra GB of hard drive space without even trying.

If you are careful and selective of what you install, i.e., only the drivers without all the extra bells and whistles, a default Windows install should clock in well under 2 GB.

That said, I'm still more impressed that a vanilla Ubuntu install has the majority of what I need in the way of applications and is still smaller than Windows by itself!

[ayasin]

It was off the Dell install DVD that came with my laptop + patches and hardware. There might be significant bloat in the Dell stuff but there's no AOL crap or anything like that which is why I attributed it to windows. Some of the 9 gig could be roll back stuff from the patches...not sure about that.

[Thiesen]

It was off the Dell install DVD that came with my laptop + patches and hardware. There might be significant bloat in the Dell stuff but there's no AOL crap or anything like that which is why I attributed it to windows. Some of the 9 gig could be roll back stuff from the patches...not sure about that.

"Well, there's your problem" *doing a good imitation of Adam Savage from Mythbusters*... :-)

It's needless to say that computer packages from the big companies come with super overbloated software that simply eats harddrive space like nothing else on this earth...

As already stated in this thread a normal oridnary fresh install of WinXP weighs in on about 1.5GB... but Ubuntu is even smaller than that when being freshly installed...

[doobit]

"Well, there's your problem" *doing a good imitation of Adam Savage from Mythbusters*... :-)

It's needless to say that computer packages from the big companies come with super overbloated software that simply eats harddrive space like nothing else on this earth...

As already stated in this thread a normal oridnary fresh install of WinXP weighs in on about 1.5GB... but Ubuntu is even smaller than that when being freshly installed...

If you install Ubuntu server, it's pretty small indeed.

[macogw]

I have XP on a 5GB hard drive, though it hasn't been updated in um....probably ever. A few computer techs told me that it's impossible I have SP2 because SP2 brings it up to 6GB.

[SuSUntu]

I have XP on a 5GB hard drive, though it hasn't been updated in um....probably ever. A few computer techs told me that it's impossible I have SP2 because SP2 brings it up to 6GB.

Sounds like you've been talking to the wrong techs. Maybe you meant Best Buy salespeople? :)

[aretei]

Yeah, Media Center has a DVD image file for you to sample the video on media center. I believe the size of that image file was almost a full single-layer DVD (4.7GB) and that's what is taking up so much of your hard drive space. But overall even if ubuntu did require a bit more than XP, it has all the necessities in contrast to XP and its bare OS form (other than IE and WMP which are useless anyway) so I would still say ubuntu is less bloated.

[SunnyRabbiera]

It really depends, my XP home edition when I had it was about 3 gigs though this can add up after having all these updates installed on top of eachother and having to download or install 3rd party software to take up the slack of MS's security...
a "patched" windows XP can go up to 6 gigs or more 0.o

[macogw]

Sounds like you've been talking to the wrong techs. Maybe you meant Best Buy salespeople? :)

No, it was the guys I work with. Best Buy people are generally stupid. I doubt a pre-SP XP + SP1 code + SP2 code is the same size as what's on an SP2 disc because I don't think any of the old code is actually removed when you update it to the next service pack. Seeing as this started with no service pack and has been upgraded to SP1 it probably takes more space than it did originally (it says my hard drive is 4.75 gb cuz of that base10/base2 thing and that its 3.5gb full), and i wouldnt be surprised if adding in another service pack would probably bring it up to about 5gb.

[IYY]

Personally, I think that taking up space is the smallest problem Windows has.

[macogw]

Personally, I think that taking up space is the smallest problem Windows has.

Tell that to my 2GB hard drive. It's sitting there useless. I guess I can put Damn Small on it. Kinda sad that they make flash drives with more storage than my hard drives...

[igknighted]

Why does it matter? Disk space is sooooooo cheap, whats a couple more gigs for an OS? You know whats even more of a waste? Ubuntu sees my HD as 82GB, while windows calls it 76GB. In ubuntu I can literally see gaps between partitions that windows made. NICE JOB MS!

[anaconda]

It was off the Dell install DVD that came with my laptop + patches and hardware. There might be significant bloat in the Dell stuff but there's no AOL crap or anything like that which is why I attributed it to windows. Some of the 9 gig could be roll back stuff from the patches...not sure about that.

Same with HP the rescue DVD doesn't even fit to 1 DVD.. it is actually 2 DVD:s ~7GB and installetd it takes more than that.

And it doesnt even have so much programs.. MS works, outlook express. and drivers to everything the laptop has..

7GB rescue DVD:s are insanely bloated..

And if that wouldn't be enough it also has 8GB rescue partition..

[rsambuca]

If you have the rescue CD/DVD's you can get rid of the rescue partition.