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To the Editor:

Linux software bloat

I was referred to your article through a fellow member of the Libretto user group, and found it fascinating. You've put your finger on one of the things with current linux distributions that's really bugging me: processor and memory (particularly memory) hungry applications that are offered simultaneously with the perceived wisdom that 'you can do useful stuff on older/low spec machines'.

I use an ancestor of the machine you refer to in the article - a Libretto CT70. It's been goosed to a 150MHz processor and a 20G disk, but still has a screen only 640*480 and a maximum memory of 32MB. Running any sort of linux in a graphical environment on this system is less than easy.

After a lot of experiments - most of which involve swapping hard discs between the lib and a desktop, because the installation programs won't work in 32MB - why on earth does it take over 32M to copy files, for Pete's sake? - I'm forced to the conclusion that the latest and greatest versions are simply unusable on this system. The practical approach leaves me with the Mandrake 7.1 distribution with KDE loaded for some of the apps, but using Icewm as a desktop manager. Time tests show slowdowns - almost all, I believe, due to excessive thrashing of the swap partition - of between three and ten times between M7.1 and KDE1.1, and M8.1/KDE2.2.

The big giveaway? From a graphical login to a usable desktop: Icewm - six seconds. KDE2.2 - three minutes 45 seconds. There's not really any contest. We won't even mention the number of set-up or preference screens that won't fit on a 640*480 screen...

Your article hit it exactly: Linux is suffering from feature creep and bloat as much, or worse, as MS has. Worse than this, the 'have to have the latest library' approach for software development means that I can't even compile current apps without, at best, major headaches and other upgrades. The argument that 'it runs ok on an Athlon 1GHz machine' is indefensible for Linux for the same reasons it's indefensible for MS windows - as you point out in your article, most people don't have the latest hardware.

Linux has been able to produce excellent and small gui applications in the past - perhaps the developers can be persuaded to work that way again. But as it stands at the moment, I have no intention of even trying KDE3.

Thanks for your thoughtful and stimulating article,

Regards,

Neil Barnes, Project Manager