FrankForum (Frankness IS Forum)

There can be no doubt that openSUSE Leap 42.3 is mighty impressive Linux distribution but like so many other big players in the Linux world it is full of bloat. KDE Plasma is impressive but system resouces take a severe it. Much the same can be said of Cinammon on Linux Mint and Unity on Ubuntu.

So why do modern mainstream Linux distributions have so much bloat?


Before I go any further with this I will submit that most Linux distributions I run are in a virtual environment. That being said there should be little or no bearing on performance as I allocate more than sufficient resources to the virtual machine (2 CPU's, 10GB RAM). Now heres the rub Windows 7 runs with ease complete with Aero enabled. So there is no reason to expect modern mainstream Linux distributions to be any different.

Yes there are tradeoff lighter desktop environments such as LXDE but there was a time compromises were not necessary. Releases such as openSUSE with KDE 3.5, Ubuntu 10.10 and Linux Mint 10 with Gnome 2 ran fine in a virtual environment on just a fraction of the allocated resouces.

It would seem in an attept to appeal to a wider audience the performance of mainstream Linux distributions has taken a significant hit and its damn frustrating.

Yeppers, and I'm one of the millions in that wider audience. Who are we? Windows junkies, who need a way to stay on Win7 or XP without virtual machines. We are mom and pop shops, under-10 employee shops, and we have no ability to follow some tech guru who sets up a server, no HR department to order and configure our machines.

No, we have to do it ourselves. At night. On weekends. And we don't want our son or brother or cousin to do it, lest they learn personal data we don't want to share.

So the bloat is needed, to make Linux run like Windows. And it does. Depends on the distro, with Linux Mint being the most friendly equipped with media pre-packaged, or Fedora 25 (but not before), or PC Linux OS, which at least until 2014, sought to give you everything.

There is still a learning curve, but it's just as long now, as moving to Win8. Win10 is not an option.

Hope this helps, cuz surely in the UK you can advise folks and make money on configuring them for Linux.

For in less than a day, even the most computer-ignorant person can learn how to surf in Linux alone, so can keep his Windows for other stuff. Later and gradually, learn Wine and how to install many Windows programs using it. But that's a discretionary usage. Big point, is you can keep XP, use it offline, and then when you want Linux, just boot from a stick, do your surfing or housecleaning which only Linux can do well, then reboot sans stick.

If I were younger, I'd make pre-configured Linux sticks and sell them in Amazon. There are sellers doing that, but they don't configure them rightly, so their market share is low. They should configure the sticks to play outta da box for XP users. Zorin OS claimed to do that, but it was awful.

Pick a distro you know will have a good OSD, configure it like Windows and provide the Windows-style options in the same format as XP, and then install that on a stick. Then sell the sticks.