I was just reading an article on *OS News about how, in the opinion of the author, "Linux is getting fat... [sic]":

So I was thinking about my initial experiences with Red Hat almost 3 years ago when I switched and why I finally decided upon Slackware and stayed there.

My first desktop PC of my own was a hand-me-down Micron that my dad gave me. It was a 586 with 64M of RAM and a 4.5 gig hd. I put Red Hat on it using the standard desktop install with KDE. I was not the least bit impressed. A while later on I installed Slackware (8.1 I believe it was) with no X-windows system and loved it.

So I hear people talking about "Linux and the bloat..." and when I bought a new PC recently, 3.2 AMD 2500, ASUS motherboard, 1.5 gigs of RAM, etc. I figured well, I'll stick with my minimalist mentality, and do a full-custom install and only load up what I need --I even have a decent window manager now. So I did and the new PC is Hella-fast. Thinking back on it, when I was a Linux newbie I ought to have ignored everybody's advice to me about installing a newbie friendly distro and opted for Slack instead. Installing it isn't nearly as difficult as they say it is.

But that's beside the point...

I was curious because there's a lot of talk about all this recently. I wanted to ask you, without starting any fires what your opinions of the push to get Linux as a desktop are, and what if anything you as individuals have observed as being "done wrong" or "done right" concerning this. And also, do you think that Slack of all distros would stand up well as a Linux desktop OS in contrast to Fedora, SuSE and the others?

There's a nice article about that on *ofB.biz

Any thoughts?

*sorry I didn't insert a hyperlink, I was blocked from doing so because I don't have enough posts yet.

im using kde with slackware and im having no problems with it. the only thing is configuring your gui isnt easy for newbie's but those problems are easily fixed whit sites like these(linuxquestions) and since version 10 the x is like configured immediately to run, not perrfect but its alot more then 9.1

Red Hat / Fedora has a reputation for being a bit bloated, but personally I think that this stems from the fact that many people do a full install, and end up with services running that they simply do not need. "Linux" in general need not be bloated at all. In fact, I run ELKS linux on a 286 laptop with 4MB of RAM, and I have no problem running vi, emacs or even linx or mutt. Running slack with Dropline Gnome and only the services I need probably takes up no more memory than Win95 did back in it's hay-day.

slight

In Slackware Bloat is what YOU make it

I installed RedHat 9 when it came out (overwriting my Slackware installation).

I was so disgusted by the bloat that I was reinstalling Slackware in 5 minutes.

Moved: This thread is more suitable in Linux-Distributions (not a Slack specific question) and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.