*BSD News Article 19696


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From: niemidc@oasis.gtefsd.com (David C. Niemi)
Newsgroups: comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.386bsd.misc
Subject: Re: Why would I want LINUX?
Message-ID: <250m5t$dmk@europa.eng.gtefsd.com>
Date: 19 Aug 93 20:01:01 GMT
Article-I.D.: europa.250m5t$dmk
References: <MIKE.93Aug19115915@pdx800.jf.intel.com>
Reply-To: niemidc@oasis.gtefsd.com
Distribution: world
Organization: GTE Federal Systems Division
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NNTP-Posting-Host: hengist.lab.oasis.gtegsc.com

In article 93Aug19115915@pdx800.jf.intel.com, mike@ichips (Mike Haertel) writes:
>In article <24vd7h$frk@horus.mch.sni.de> Martin.Kraemer@mch.sni.de (Martin Kraemer) writes:
>This has, alas, been fixed in recent versions of Linux, which seems to
>have come down with a very serious case of The Bloat.  I remember a
>time (early 1992) when the Linux kernel was under 25K lines of
>code.  The 0.99.12 kernel, at 118K lines, is nearly five times
>the size.  It does not offer five times the functionality.

Source code expansion is not necessarily bloat -- there is a large increase
in functionality or potential functionality, much of which is #ifdef'd out
for any given compile.  The true binary size is a much better indicator.

>Similarly, things like the full SLS release have really bloated out--I
>helped a friend install SLS last fall, and the full installation with
>X came in at around 40 Megs.  Just recently tried again, and got
>upwards of 80 megs.  Yeeow.

This is with a lot of goodies!  Take out the goodies, and it will once
again be small.  There are smaller, more minimal flavors of Linux out
there for those who don't want TeX, Emacs, OpenWindows, and/or various
development tools (fortran, pascal, smalltalk, lisp, objective C, etc.).

I still think it is impressive that you can install the SLS "a" set in
12 MB, and it's a fairly reasonable, functional UN*X if a bit minimal.
After that, add what you like!

Linux is still a very lean, fast OS compared to ANY of its competition
(even some versions of DOS!)  There are not many OSes that let you run
X-Windows in 4 MB and that can boot multi-user in 10 seconds (DOS takes
longer than that to boot).
---
David C. Niemi: David.Niemi@oasis.gtegsc.com

Barneyism is the foolish belief that children are purple.