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?"

Oh!

[c0l0 (826165)]

Now that one's easy! `ed`. It's the standard editor [gnu.org] for a reason, after all.

Re:Oh!

[eln (21727)]

ed is a bloated mess! It's 47K for god's sake! I use cat for all of my text editing needs. At a lean 19k, it's far more efficient than ed. Hell, if you're comfortable with that much bloat, you might as well just use emacs. At least then you get an operating system included.

As for general favorite bloat-free software, I'd have to go with /usr/bin/yes. Often I find myself needing something to tell me I'm correct about a tough decision, or to provide me motivation to do something, or just for some general personal validation. For that and more, I trust yes. Sure, some people would use more unsure methods such as researching problems, talking to themselves in a mirror, or taking action to better themselves. I'm not much of a gambler though, and I don't like to sweat. So, I use yes. Yes always gives me the answer I need, as many times as I need to hear it. Yes is the perfect solution to life's problems. Take for example the following conversation with yes:

Should I buy that new sports car I've had my eye on? y
Am I really a good person, even after all those felonies? y
Should I have another beer? y
Am I sober enough to drive? y
Do you love me? y
Oh yes, you little scamp, I love you too! y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
y
^C

Re:Oh!

[ArsonSmith (13997)]

I don't know, EMACS stands for 8 megs and constantly swapping. Eight Freaking Megs!!!! No editor should be that large. I mean my god what does it do? Check email?

Re:Oh!

[dknj (441802)]

8 megs for an operating system is pretty small...

Re:Oh!

[mcpkaaos (449561)]

While I agree that Notepad is a powerful editor, I feel that Wordpad's ability to underline text on the same line edges it out for the extreme programmer. Plus, you can write your release notes in Wingdings.

Re:Oh!

[fm6 (162816)]

Pity Homer Simpson [wikipedia.org] didn't know about yes.

Re:Oh!

[Just Some Guy (3352)]

I use cat for all of my text editing needs.

Freakin' wastrel! That's why they made ">". Not vim. Not ed. Not cat. ">".

$ > eln.txt
Hi, I like swap!
^D

"cat". Hrmph.

Re:Oh!

[by Anonymous Coward]

Pfft. I'm waiting for Apple to release iYes. Who cares that yes is tiny and does its job well? It still needs to be simplified as only Apple can. Hopefully they can add some magic playlists in there as well, and maybe throw in a little DRM for good measure.

My machine is quad core and has 1.5TB of disk and 4GB of RAM so I think it can be safely assumed that everyone else does too...and that every application should assume it can have all of it. I mean, it's time to take these command-line utils into the modern age.

I'm also looking for the iTrue replacement for /bin/true, as it desperately needs a GUI. And by God the fucker better be set to load into memory at start-up because I don't want to have to wait for truth.

Re:Oh!

[baryon351 (626717)]

I prefer software that takes as little hard drive space and RAM as possible

I'll have to go out on a limb and say I dropped expectations of absolutely minimal HD and RAM space for EVERY app I use, after continually coming up against programs that would go all out in being light in resource use, but couldn't do their job because of it.

Some are just what the original poster ordered - vim is certainly one of the good cases, it's powerful and manages a light footprint, and there are plenty of other tools that do phenomenal work whether it's running on eight xeons, or a single low-end 386.

One of the opposite cases is some forms of image work when comparing apps like Gimp and Photoshop. In some areas, Gimp is WAY lighter on resource use. I'd perform work on 250MB image, and gimp would use little more RAM than that, no matter how it was configured for RAM use. This would normally be seen as a really good thing for Gimp.

What of Photoshop? It wanted 2GB of RAM to work at maximum speed. That might sound like serious bloat on photoshop's part, but when working on large images it meant two orders of magnitude difference in speed. Yes, where Gimp will use a mere 280MB on a 4GB system, and take 15-16 minutes to perform one filter over an image, Photoshop would chew through 2GB and take about 20 seconds doing the exact same thing.

(That doesn't mean PS was incapable when stuck with ONLY 256MB RAM. Then it'd bog down just like Gimp)

What I want are apps that use the resources I provide them *wisely*. There's more to that than just being totally frugal. Seen too many people running big-RAM systems and being proud of having their OS use just a hundred or two MB out of gigs. Why? Resources are free once they're installed, may as well use them when they genuinely can help you work.

GIMP tile cache size

[by Anonymous Coward]

Using GIMP, did you ever look at the setting called "Tile cache size" in Preferences / Environment? This sets the maximum amount of RAM that GIMP can use before it starts to swap some parts of images (tiles) to disk.

You can set this value to 4 GB and GIMP will happily use as much memory as you have. And it will be much, much faster when working with large images. As a rule of thumb, you should set this value to around 80% of your available memory.

Re:GIMP tile cache size

[fossa (212602)]

Is there a compelling reason that the default behavior is not 80% of your available memory?

Re:GIMP tile cache size

[Raphael (18701)]

Is there a compelling reason that the default behavior is not 80% of your available memory?

There are several reasons, some of which are historical:

• GIMP was designed 10 years ago for UNIX systems. Many of these systems were shared by multiple users from remote displays. On a multi-user system, you do not want any application to consume 80% of the memory shared by all users.
• It is very difficult to have a portable way to know (or even guess) the amount of memory available on a machine. You need different bits of code for each operating system, and sometimes you even have to run external commands and parse their output because a non-privileged application is not allowed to get this information from the system.
• What is "available memory" anyway? It this your total amount of RAM, the amount of RAM still unused after you boot your OS, or what is left after you start your browser and some other applications? In many cases, only the user knows in which context GIMP will be used.
• Nobody bothered implementing good heuristics for setting the tile cache size automatically. I am sure that a patch improving the default behavior would be gladly accepted.

Re:GIMP tile cache size

[by Anonymous Coward]

GIMP was designed 10 years ago for UNIX systems. Many of these systems were shared by multiple users from remote displays. On a multi-user system, you do not want any application to consume 80% of the memory shared by all users.

It is no longer 10 years ago. There are valid reasons to preserve 10-year-old design decisions, but not to preserve 10-year-old default settings! The number of people wanting to install GIMP on single-user desktops is vastly greater than the number installing it on multi-user servers; it is silly to expect the majority to reconfigure a setting chosen for the benefit of a minority.

It is very difficult to have a portable way to know (or even guess) the amount of memory available on a machine. You need different bits of code for each operating system, and sometimes you even have to run external commands and parse their output because a non-privileged application is not allowed to get this information from the system.

There are lots of things it's difficult to do on some platforms. That's no excuse for not doing it in cases where it's easy. Even just implementing this for Linux and Windows would solve the problem for the vast majority of GIMP users, and put a framework in place for users of more obscure operating systems to contribute solutions for their platform.

What is "available memory" anyway? It this your total amount of RAM, the amount of RAM still unused after you boot your OS, or what is left after you start your browser and some other applications? In many cases, only the user knows in which context GIMP will be used.

Now you're getting silly. Anyone with an ounce of common sense will assume that "available memory" is the amount of memory that is available, not your total amount of RAM. In other words, the amount of memory that is not being used by any other programs at the time that you start GIMP.

Nobody bothered implementing good heuristics for setting the tile cache size automatically.

Laziness is no excuse for making a program that appears, to new users, to perform much worse than it really does. Plus, I thought the whole point of this thread was that a good optimum setting (80% of available memory) is known, and the program merely stupidly defaults to a much smaller setting?

I am sure that a patch improving the default behavior would be gladly accepted.

I envy your optimism. Given the GIMP team's less than admirable record at accepting any attempt to improve their program (i.e. they think it's perfect already, and anyone who dares suggest an improvement is flamed to death), I sadly am unable to share it.

No, they would merely reject any patches on one of the spurious grounds you have noted above: that the submitter had not fixed the problem on Irix (so they would refuse to fix it for 99% of users), or the patch would make things worse on multi-user systems (so they would refuse to fix it for 80% of users), or the submitter had not proven beyond a shadow of doubt that he had found a completely optimal strategy (so they would refuse to make it considerably better). Let's be honest - the GIMP developers do not care about end users, they only care about massaging their own egos and pretending that GIMP is a serious competitor to Photoshop.

Re:Oh!

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

When I'm using Windows, here's my selection:

Utilities:
7-Zip (Compression/Decompression)
Editpad (Tabbed Notepad replacement)
SequoiaView (Creates square treemaps of file system)

Multimedia:
VLC (Plays Anything)
Exact Audio Copy (Perfect CD Ripping)
LAME (High Quality MP3 Compression)
Audacity (Record off Line Inputs or Loopback)

Internet:
uTorrent (Bittorrent)
Firefox with FireFTP (Browswer, FTP)
Thunderbird with WebMail (Email Client)
TortiseSVN (Windows Shell Integration for Subversion)
Putty (Telnet/SSH)

Games:
OpenArena (Open source extension of Quake 3 codebase)
Battle of Wesnoth (Open source strategic fantasy game)

Re:Oh!

[An ominous Cow art (320322)]

Other nice un-bloated Windows utilities I'll add:

V, the file viewer [fileviewer.com]
Foxit Reader [foxitsoftware.com] for viewing PDFs
Crimson Editor [crimsoneditor.com] for text files, though I more often use emacs.

Re:Oh!

[PopeRatzo (965947)]

Instead of utilities, I'll list some media production apps:

Steinberg Wavelab (audio editor)
Reaper (DAW)
DVDFab Platinum

I'm not a programmer, so I can't testify to the efficiency of the code or anything, but I use every single one of the features of the above programs. By that measure, it makes them the opposite of bloatware.

Here's one that I just downloaded today, after being prompted by an earlier Slashdot article:

Opera 9.5 (I've been using it for less than an hour and it's already my favorite browser). Maybe there's some bloat somewhere in Opera. Maybe there are some of you fiber-eaters who believe that being able to render javascript automatically makes it bloatware. But this bitch is FAST and it seemed to install in the time it took me to click the FINISH button.

And finally, my favorite, slick tool for breaching the walls of the Corrupt Castle of the Copyright Cabal...uTorrent! It's more than just a torrent download manager, it's a weapon for fighting fascism!

Re:Oh!

[SerpentMage (13390)]

Not bloatware?? Huh? News to me...

Firefox, Thunderbird, TortiseSVN are anything but Bloat-Free.

In the past six months to a year FireFox, Thunderbird regularly take up 130 MB by themselves. I once had Thunderbird manage RSS feeds.... That was a mistake! And don't even ask me about how SLOW Firefox has gotten with larger HTML pages.

TortiseSVN has this annoying habit that it has to cache everything and if you have any SVN projects of any size it takes ages to do anything.

What annoys me about these applications is that they take the attitude, "oh lets just load it into RAM after all everybody has enough." I get annoyed because I run Virtual Machines and these apps keep slowing everything down.

Re:Oh!

[tshak (173364)]

Yes, where Gimp will use a mere 280MB on a 4GB system, and take 15-16 minutes to perform one filter over an image, Photoshop would chew through 2GB and take about 20 seconds doing the exact same thing.


The simple point you're making: Hardware is for us to USE, not "NOT USE". Sure, we don't want our applications to be completely wasteful. But if software developers can focus more on useful features and code with less bugs, I'd rather they do that than save a few megs of RAM.

Re:Oh!

[DrSkwid (118965)]

What's the joke ?

I use ed at least once a week, if not more.

Lynx?

[saibot834 (1061528)]

Lynx [wikipedia.org], anyone? :)

Re:Lynx?

[nacturation (646836)]

Who needs the bloat of Lynx when you can telnet to port 80?
 

Re:Lynx?

[Realistic_Dragon (655151)]

Ever tried it with Slashdot? The *light* version of the front page is 600k!

The only alternative is the mobile interface, which is horribly crippled (top five comments only? the only good thing about slashdot is the comments!).

The content on Slashdot *should* be ideal for reading on the way to work on my mobile - content that can be laid out easily in a linear fashion, lots of content on a single page so I can keep on reading through blackspots, no pictures - but the way it's laid out makes it way too annoying (and this is with an unlimited 3G data plan).

Re:Lynx?

[Nick of NSTime (597712)]

the only good thing about slashdot is the comments!

You must be new here.

At a little over a meg...

[pieaholicx (1148705)]

PuTTy is my clear cut winner. A little over a meg for a full installer with all the bells and whistles, what's not to love?

minimalist

[foodnugget (663749)]

irfanview. Despite plugin capabilities, among many many other features, it is small, free, and faassssst compared to all the other image viewers I've tried (not all that many)

I'd like to see this list include things that are conveniently free of spyware/trojans, too!

Bonzi Buddy

[by Anonymous Coward]

Bonzi Buddy

Re:Bonzi Buddy

[Oktober Sunset (838224)]

true, it saves so much resources. Normally, you would need 3 different programs to annoy the shit out of you, destroy your computer and constantly spy on you, but Bonzi Buddy does all 3 in one.

I've got a summary

[realdodgeman (1113225)]

I would guess that whatever your favorite non-bloat software is, it is most likely in Damn Small Linux...

Re:I've got a summary

[BiggerIsBetter (682164)]

I would guess that whatever your favorite non-bloat software is, it is most likely in Damn Small Linux...

Which suggests that Damn Small Linux is, well, somewhat bloated.

Apple II

[nacturation (646836)]

] call -151
* 300: ad 30 c0 20 ed fd 4c 00 03
* 300g

Hours of random entertainment!
 

In case anyone wonders

[Wolfier (94144)]

AD 30 C0: LDA $C030 - loads the content of the address $C030 to the Accumulator. $C030 connects to the beeper line, this line produces a "click" through the speaker.

20 FD ED: JSR $FDED - prints the content of the Accumulator to the screen - since what you read from the speaker line is technically random, it prints a random character to the screen - potentially including arrow keys and bell characters...

4C 00 03: JMP $0300 enough said.

Putty!

[Prien715 (251944)]

Putty [greenend.org.uk] is 412 KB for an SSH client that supports window resizing and has no installer! Doesn't hurt that it's open source either.

TinyApps.org

[WillAdams (45638)]

http://www.tinyapps.org/ [tinyapps.org]

If you're running Windows, I also like Sumatra PDF

http://blog.kowalczyk.info/software/sumatrapdf/ [kowalczyk.info]

(not sure if that's listed at the former or no, which is why I specifically mention it --- the balance of my preferred small programs are)

William

MS Paint

[IndieKid (1061106)]

I know it's a bit crap, but I must confess to quite liking MS Paint for it's simplicity. When all you need is to crop a screendump and save it as a JPG, nothing beats it!

Other than that, I'd second the VLC and Winamp combo. Ever since there has been iPod support in Winamp (via a plugin or 'out of the box') I haven't used anything else.

Re:MS Paint

[jo7hs2 (884069)]

I too like MS Paint for simplicity, but I disagree that it is a "bit crap." How many programs for Windows have existed almost unchanged for as long as Windows has existed. The actual workings and features have changed slightly over the years, but the interface is basically the same, and anybody who can turn on the computer can use it. And that's from a Microsoft product! I would suggest that it may be one of the top ten most useful programs ever made, largely because of the simplicity of it.

Re:MS Paint

[Orestesx (629343)]

HIM: "I really like MS Paint for screenshots."
YOU: "MS Paint sucks. Buy a new computer so you can take screenshots more easily"

uTorrent

[Telvin_3d (855514)]

uTorrent is one of the cleanest, smallest, most efficient pieces of software I have ever had the pleasure to use. Since switching to OSX a few months ago (I bought a Macbook Pro planning to run XP, and the switch just seemed to happen), my one real regret is that uTorrent is Windows only. I've been reduced to using Azureus, which gets the job done, but is horribly bloated.

So, my nomination is for uTorrent, and if anyone knows of a similar package for OSX I would love to hear it.

My list

[starrsoft (745524)]

Here's my list: OpenOffice [openoffice.org], e-Sword [e-sword.net], Firefox [mozilla.com], Google Desktop [google.com], TightVNC [tightvnc.com], Thunderbird [mozilla.com], Picasa [google.com], AVG Anti-Virus [grisoft.com], GIMP [sourceforge.net], IrfanView [irfanview.com], VLC Media Player [videolan.org], FileZilla [sourceforge.net], 7zip [7-zip.org]

Stupid lame filter nuked my <ul>

Foxit

[j.sanchez1 (1030764)]

Foxit Reader [foxitsoftware.com]

Re:Foxit

[GoatEnigma (586728)]

Absolutely the best de-bloating move I ever made. I was so sick of Adobe's Reader phoning home, downloading slower and slower updates with more crap, crashing my web browsers, and generally taking 30+ seconds to start up. If you've never heard of Foxit reader, I strongly recommend it!

Pine, of course

[zifn4b (1040588)]

Still the best mail client around. :)

Xvid vs. DivX

[gc8005 (733938)]

Xvid download: 628K, simple install DivX download: 22.5MB, loads of crapware, nagging reminders to upgrade, etc.

Well nobody's really chimed in with IM yet

[CaptainPatent (1087643)]

There was someone above who mentioned Trillian, but by far my favorite pick is Pidgin IM [pidgin.im] (formerly Gaim)

You avoid all of the bloat of AIM and MSN Messenger (which is now beyond ridiculous) plus you rid yourself of the need to install several messaging clients which further saves space and startup time plus it keeps your system tray (in windows) much cleaner. And the best part, it's available as open source for Windows and Linux!

uTorrent

[JohnnyBigodes (609498)]

uTorrent (http://www.utorrent.com), hands down.

219kb for an incredibly fast, RAM-efficient, full-blown, full-featured GUI Torrent client, with Web administration, scheduling, and all the stuff.

Now if the whole world could only code as well as uTorrent's author...

Re:Opera

[spyrochaete (707033)]

If you use Windows I cannot sufficiently recommend Miranda IM [miranda-im.org]. It's very lightweight (3MB download, 8MB RAM active) multi-IM client. You might call it the Foobar of Windows IM clients. It's got a fantastic community writing plugins and providing support on the official forums. The plugins are really numerous and cool too - Skype APIs, LCD display functionality, log analyzers, IM platform add-ons, out-of-office automators, a Windows uptime util, and hundreds more. It's also got great multinational localizations.

I switched to Miranda from GAIM (which I switched to from Trillian) and I haven't regretted it for one moment. It's very snappy and responsive, it automatically resizes vertically depending on how many contacts are online, it appears and disappears with a single click of the tray icon, it auto-updates the base program as well as the plugins... I could go on and on.

Give it a try. It's free! http://www.miranda-im.org/ [miranda-im.org]

Re:Weird criteria

[kryptkpr (180196)]

I must respectfully disagree.

I absolutely abhor the iTunes interface. It is 2nd last on my list of good music management programs, one small notch above Music Match Jukebox. Seemingly simple tasks like copying music from your hard drive to your mp3 player have to be done in roundabout ways which for some reason involve playlists. I gave up after half an hour and just installed RockBox [rockbox.org] on my Nano so I could be free from it's horrors.

I would imagine that iTunes is great for the casual user that doesn't need nor want much MANUAL control over their music library, but for more advanced users the non-standard UI (on Windows) and strange "simplified" ways of doing simple things make it near useless.

Re:Weird criteria

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Seemingly simple tasks like copying music from your hard drive to your mp3 player have to be done in roundabout ways which for some reason involve playlists.

Hmmm. I don't have any playlists in iTunes (I prefer dealing with albums), and I have zero problems with simply dragging an album (or other batch of songs) onto my iPod in the pane on the left. I guess that's too difficult and "roundabout" for some people, though...

Re:Weird criteria

[truesaer (135079)]

Even with 2GB of memory my system still feels sluggish, because everyone in the world thinks their software needs to run as a service or have some persistent background process eating up memory. 5-10MB of memory times a zillion apps and suddenly your computer is slow.

Why does iTunes have to have like 3 services running on my computer at all times? Its absurd. iTunes is not user friendly either, it just seems that way because other media players are even worse.

Re:Is it just me?

[swordgeek (112599)]

It's not just you--in fact, it's far too many of "you," and you're wrong.

There are two reasons for bloat: Accidental (i.e. shitty programming) and deliberate (adding pointless features.) By buying into the "let's just throw money at it until the problem goes away" mentality, you're encouraging bad programming and endless marketing-driven upgrades. It's a hundred bucks on RAM now, another hundred on a new hard drive, and then next year it'll be a new CPU. You're going to end up spending about $500-1000 per year on maintaining the same level of productivity as you've always had. This is key!

Windows 2000 required a 133MHz processor and 64MB RAM.
Windows XP required a 233MHz processor and 128MB RAM. The ONLY FUNCTIONAL DIFFERENCE between them was the thumbnail view mode. Everything else was eyecandy and toys, but it wasn't a huge upgrade cost.
Windows Vista requires a 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, a DirectX 9-compliant video card, and an internet connection. Oh yeah, and TEN TIMES as much disk space. Now what extra value does Vista provide to you, the end customer? What advantage does Vista give you over XP?

Consider Office suites. Office 97 ran on a 486, with 12MB RAM for all features. Office 2007 now requires a 500MHz processor and 256MB RAM, and contains very few features that weren't already in Office 97. Moreso, only a tiny fraction of those features are actually used by any appreciable chunk of the population.

The ONLY REASON to keep writing bloated software is to make you constantly spend more money staying exactly where you are, and your answer is to reward them by spending that money. Bloatware is capitalism gone wrong. It's forced consumption (and the forced aspect is getting worse with OSes now requiring online license activation and continued polling), and so much of the population is EAGER beyond words to consume while getting no value.

Re:The Mother of All Bloat-Free Software...

[Jerry Coffin (824726)]

printf("hello, world");

Quite the contrary! You've used printf when all you really needed was puts. For that matter, even puts hides a big, complex buffering library. If you want it bloat-free, consider something like:

main() { write(1, "hello, world", 12); }

Even though I'm (at least mostly) joking, the difference is real, and at one time would have given serious consideration to doing things this way in real code. In reality, you've shown exactly how a lot of bloat really happens. Much of it stems from people using large, general-purpose libraries where they didn't really need them. In some cases (including this one) they didn't really even gain much from the library. The C stdio library provides buffering that can help speed when/if it reduces the number of times your program calls the OS write routine. In this case, the code calls write exactly once either way, so it's gained you nothing, but cost you extra memory usage and data copying, as well as making your program quite a bit larger.