Re: [Trisquel-users] The future of Libre Computing: Crowd Funding Campaign Starts Now

[dguthrie]

> Plus we're talking about free software, the encremental need for more power  
isn't as steep, if I'm not mistaken (probably though, I don't know what I'm  
talking about here).

I don't think whether a program is free software affects whether it is  
bloated. For example, Firefox has been a monster since the beginning and has  
only got bigger. Similarly Android's build process is horrific. And GNOME and  
KDE are monstrous, and keep growing.
Certainly some proprietary programs are bloated because the developers can  
often get away with sloppy code. Windows is bloated partly due to Microsoft  
maintaining compatibility as much as possible with old APIs (I think Windows  
might be quite sloppy and full of crusty code but I think the maintenance of  
compatibility is a major factor in making it the absolute giant it is today.  
it requires around 20G to run on a typical PC, and that is before all the  
crapware manufacturers install).
Although what you are using is generally probably less beefy than a typical  
Mac or Windows OS, this is not a general rule. The Linux kernel for instance,  
is gigantic! It won't scale down to really small embedded devices (4k ram  
etc) because it doesn't need to. The same goes for other bloated programs.