> My favourite library used to compile on a box with 64 meg ram. (gcc2.95) > Then gcc 2.96 came along, and that library now requires 256 meg to compile.
Presumably your library also grew in functionality. How much of this functionality was direly needed to bring things up to the third millennium? Gcc has had a huge amount of work done since 2.95. A lot of it went into producing faster code. Compiling faster code requires better optimisations, and better optimisation algorithms often require more buffer memory to look at a larger part of the code at once. Neither of this can justifiably be called bloat. If it's that important to you, I have a C64 here - perhaps it'll connect to the internet, run a C compiler, and write your letters. Perhaps not. What could be called bloat is all this scheming and skinning nonsense, instead of having one thing which works, and works well. However, the big advantage is that it can be used to alleviate the biggest bloopers from those who have not one yota of clue about user interface design. Which is your side of the fence? If you compare KDE 2000 and KDE 2005, the latter is noticably bigger. It's also a usable desktop - the former is little more than an incomplete draft. Where do essential features stop and the bloat start? > If you look at distros like dam small linux, they fit everything onto one > CD, with a total space requirement of 60 (or so) meg. The main question I have is, what did they *not* fit on? No doubt there is a use for this, on old or limited (eg portable) hardware. Running barebones Linux is better than winceing. But you wouldn't want it on your desktop. Volker -- Volker Kuhlmann is possibly list0570 with the domain in header http://volker.dnsalias.net/ Please do not CC list postings to me.
