Linux fat/bloated

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Thu, Apr 06, 2006 at 06:48:43PM -0400, Sy Ali wrote:
> I guess the sacrifice is that power users who really do like being on
> the edge are now forced to build their own applications from source. 
> This used to be quite annoying, but it's gotten quite a lot easier.  I
> think that the balance a distro like debian has is quite good.

Actually if you run debian's 'unstable' branch, you are pretty close to
bleeding edge a lot of the time.

> I'd generally agree that there is a very plain "it just barely works"
> solution for most package managers.. but.. the package manager's
> metadata should be thought on at length.. just like the website is. 
> It really should describe things better.  Finding a typo is one thing,
> but not having a clue why an application is different than any other
> application is really annoying.
> 
> Of course, at that point I install it.. and its dependancies.. and try
> it out.  Then I uninstall it.. and.. am left with all the dependancies
> to clean up myself.  =)

aptitude in debian actually flags things installed as a dependancy as
'auto installed' and will remove it when nothing depends on it anymore.
There is also deborphan, although it is a bit more work to use.

Len Sorensen
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