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!

[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.

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).

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

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...

Apple II

[nacturation (646836)]

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

Hours of random entertainment!
 

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.

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!

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...