Name Your Favorite Bloat-Free Software

An anonymous reader writes "I prefer software that takes as little hard drive space and RAM as possible. I can't stand bloated software like iTunes, as compared to Foobar or classic Winamp; or Windows Media Player, as compared to VLC or Media Player Classic. What are some of your favorite applications which are a little less bloated?"

Comments

Re:Oh!

[fm6]

So the particular mod awarded doesn't matter? Then let's just eliminate the fine distinctions and say "up" or "down".

But really, if I say, "Sani-Flush makes an excellent dentifrice" and someone who doesn't know what Sani-Flush is mods me up as "Informative", you'd have to admit that they're pretty clueless. Though maybe not as clueless as the person who's never heard the song and mods me down as "flamebait"!

Re:My list

[Rary]

The problem is that people keep equating "bloat" with "memory usage", when in reality "bloat" means (or at least should mean) "unnecessary memory usage".

I don't expect an application to be small. I just expect it to be as small as possible while still being as effective as possible.

Sometimes, it takes a lot of hard drive space and RAM to do all the things an application must do. Really, this shouldn't be an issue in an age where you can get a TB hard drive for under $200. But an application that's loaded with unnecessary, marketing-driven features and consumes more hard drive space and RAM than it should is a truly "bloated" application.

Re:My list

[AusIV]

I agree. Of the original poster's list, I use OpenOffice, Firefox, Google Desktop, Picasa, and the Gimp (occasionally). These may not run on a minimal memory footprint, but that's why I've got 1.5 GB memory.

Firefox may not be the lightest web browser or the fastest, but with its plugins it has all the functionality I want from a web browser. Google Desktop isn't exactly light weight software, but I find the time it saves me well worth the extra processes that run (I might also note that I'm a Linux user, and I've found it to be much more efficient and stable than the alternatives). I don't use Picasa much, but it's nice for basic picture management - it provides what I need without getting in the way. OpenOffice isn't great as far as bloat, and I certainly don't use the pre-loader, but it gets the job done whenever I need an office suite.

Of that software list, the Gimp tries the hardest to run on a minimal memory footprint, and as some others have pointed out, that can be a pain in the ass. If I've got 500 MB of memory going unused, there's no reason for the Gimp to take extra time to avoid acquiring more memory.

Re:Oh!

[fm6]

awarding Funny confers no karma

All the more reason not to mod jokes up as if they were serious comments. Good karma is supposed to help identify people who contribute to the discussion, not people who know lots of good jokes. Especially since Slashdotters differ on what constitutes a good joke.

Not that it matters one way or another. It's not that difficult for a non-troll to achieve good karma, and once you're there, there's really no point in thinking about karma at all. That's why you can no longer even find out exactly how many karma points you have.

Also, I imagine some people turn off or even reverse the "funny" bonus because they think a lot of them are lame. I'm sometimes tempted myself, though I probably won't. Treating jokes as serious posts removes that filter.

But really, if I say, "Sani-Flush makes an excellent dentifrice" and someone who doesn't know what Sani-Flush is mods me up as "Informative", you'd have to admit that they're pretty clueless.

Perhaps, but that doesn't seem to be the situation here.

If you can show me somebody who runs lynx just because it has a small footprint, then I'll admit that you're right.

Oh no!

[robi2106]

500 jobs? Hell, the HP plant I worked at had more than 500 H1B workers from India with Wipro working at our location. Like that can offset the thousands of coding jobs they took?