Torvalds: Creeping feature-itis bloats Linux

Linus Torvalds is getting nervous about the growth of his creation.

At a LinuxCon conference in Portland, Oregon, Torvalds said the Linux operating system is "bloated."

In 1991 Torvalds, then a student in Finland, created the original Linux kernel -- the base of the free operating system -- and is still involved in developing the kernel.

According to Slashdot:

... while the open-source community has long pointed the finger at Microsoft's Windows as bloated, it appears that with success has come added heft, heft that makes Linux "huge and scary now," according to Torvalds ...

My own thoughts here: You mean he finally figured this out?

Before the DVD became popular, the size of a Linux download was measurable in CDs. I always preferred the smaller, lighter versions that would take up, at most, one CD. One version of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, though, weighed in at 14 CDs.

This bloat factor took off as Linux packagers tried to make a more user-friendly (read: more like Windows) system. And one of the selling points of Linux -- that you can run it on computers long deemed obsolete with each new version of Windows, became more of a stretch.

My own favorite Linux distribution, the Slackware-based Vector Linux, morphed in the past few years from a run-on-anything download of less than 400 megabytes to a bit over 700 megabytes. More features, more eye candy, but ... more bloat. To be sure, you can still get some extremely usable out-of-the-box versions that can run on anything from a Pentium on up, but they're getting a) harder to find and b) less visually appealing than before.