I often hear folks in the Linux community discussing their preference for Arch (and Linux in general) because they can install only the packages they want or need - no bloat.
I’ve come across users with a couple of hundred packages installed (likely fresh installs), but I’ve also seen others with thousands.
Personally, I’m currently at 1.7k packages on my desktop and 1.3k on my laptop (both running EndeavourOS). There might be a few packages I could remove, but I don’t feel like my system is bloated.
I guess it’s subjective, but when do you consider a system to be bloated?
I’m asking as a relatively new Linux user - been daily driving for about 7/8 months
My definition of software bloat is when the feature set creeps up to including features that the vast majority of users do not need to a degree that starts impeding the usefulness and usability of the software.
FreeCAD, for example. FreeCAD has several workbenches that it did or still does ship with that no one has a use for. The Robot bench, for example, which simulates those giant robot arms that build cars. The venn diagram of people who work with those robots and people who use FreeCAD are two circles 284 miles apart. There is/was a Ship bench that could draw a boat hull in one click. No one on earth needs that. A working Assembly bench? Still years away. Who on earth needs that? I’ve hidden a full third of the stock workbenches just to reduce the noise in the dropdown menu and it’s made the software more comfortable to use.
Linux Mint includes a LOT of little utilities, lots of little CLI programs and whatnot that the majority of users will never use, but other than occupying a few dozen MB of disk space it’s not really a problem. It doesn’t get in the way.