OS size

M

Mitt Green

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Lightweight, baby (c) Ronnie Coleman

Looking through different operating systems, I found those that had been based on Berkeley Software Distribution (a.k.a. BSD) and one of them I found very nice for me.It is PC-BSD. I watched the video on Spatry's channel
So, I decided to try it, but before downloading, I caught its size, it's about 3.6GB. So, I found another one that also fits me, it's Xubuntu,
http://www.linux.org/threads/x-ubuntu-installation-over-slackware.6067/
it's size is 913MB. I also checked Windows 7 Ultimate, it is also about 3-4GB.

So, why Linux operating systems are pretty lightweight, while the others are so huge?

Thank you!
 

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From what I've seen, this has more to do with what is included on the distro disk.

I installed Suse about 10 years ago, and the disk had KDE, Gnome, XFCE, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, a number of browsers, and other stuff - which made the distribution CD download about 3.2 Gig.

Other distributions only had KDE, and did not include an office suite or alternate browsers, and easily fit onto a CD.

There are differences in the Kernel and desktop, but most distributions are "fairly similar" in size given a similar options set. The difference seems to be more what is included in the initial install, vs. what you have to install over the internet once it is running.

For most, same end result, different approach. If you are looking for a streamlined system without a lot of extra stuff you don't need, then a bit of research may be in order to find that "trimmed distro" that does not have all the extras. Or install what you want and start the un-install process once it's running.
 
The BSDs tend to include development files as well as actual program files.
 
I have FreeBSD 10 on only a regular CD. That's not to bad, though of course you start with only CLI.
 
Linux distros don't weight equal...

Distribution size: kernel + user space software sizes (the last one being often bigger).

Archbang fits many of my needs out of the box and it's only about 480MB. Slackware full ISO images are pretty big (2.3GB), still that OS is one of the most lightweight lying around...
 
SliTaz is also an interesting project with ISOs usually under 40mb.

I guess Slitaz 5 is out now. I might checkout their updates.
 

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