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this post was submitted on 19 Feb 2024
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Linux
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Jesus
Installation size:
Fedora - 7.7 GB
Arch (actually EndeavourOS) - 45 GB
Ubuntu - 49.2 GB
Windows - 72 GB
How the hell is Fedora so small? That's insane.
He just look at how much empty space the file explorer showed... I don't know how good of an indication that it is. The OS may choose to conserve a decent amount of space for things like swap, hibernation file etc.
Also, preinstalled apps.
I mean, I think it's fair to lump that all together as space taken by the system, no?
It's not like you can use that space for storing files
I don't think we know how performance and stability behave when the disk gets full. You can't really use that space if it would cause your system to crash because it can't create a hibernate file for instance. It also will vary by system configuration a lot (you need way less swap with 8Gb of swap than 64gb of ram) which makes the comparison only valid for the creators specific configuration.
What are these sizes from? All my Linux installs start with <20G root disks and end up with some spare.
And Windows at 72G? Whilst it's more than Linux it's not that much.
I think the videomaker may be failing to account for swap space. The latest Fedora releases use zram (swap that lives in memory instead of hard disk) by default, while the rest do not. Windows in particular does not take 72G and tends to be aggressive in swap allocation. The fact that he presents this data as “free space available” adds confusions while seemingly burying the simplest answer.
"Swap space that lives in RAM" No... just .... no. Swap is for when RAM runs out/low. It literally cannot live in RAM...
Are you familiar with ZRAM ? I do not understand your certainty that I am incorrect.
Zram is swap in ram. It uses fast compression to quickly compress memory instead of moving it to disk.
The disagreement here might be a semantic one. When people say "swap" they're usually referring to the swap partition on disk, not just any memory that can be used to "spill" to.
What you are describing with zram serves a fundamentally different function from swap space. If the OS dumps its memory to swap, the PC can lose power and still recover. If it compresses LRU memory to zram, and loses power, it cannot recover.
Both are useful in low memory situations, but swap covers more than that. Most familiar with swap space would agree that its location on a nonvolatile disk rather than in volatile memory is critical to what makes it "swap" space.
"Some of the use cases include /tmp storage, use as swap disks, various caches under /var and maybe many more. :)"
https://docs.kernel.org/6.1/admin-guide/blockdev/zram.html
I think maybe you think I said "zram offers a subset of features of swap space". Rather, zram offers a fundamentally different function from swap space as it resides in memory rather than on disk. It does not and cannot replace the function of disk-based swap space.
Edit: again, I don't want to argue semantics, generally when people say "swap space" they mean the on-disk partition and not just any memory that can be spilled to.
TIL that zram actually does advertise itself as somewhere you can swap to, and generally their terminology is correct, but I think most Linux users colloquially understand swap space as residing in nonvolatile memory.
I think this is like calling a usb-connected flash drive a 'usb'. That's one of the use cases, but not purpose of the thing. (This sounded better in my head, it's more like calling a usb port a 'flash drive')
Better one - Firefox's use cases include watching videos but you wouldn't call it a video player.
How the hell is arch so large? My laptop is only 27GB and that includes all user data and several years of crap being installed as well as several docker images. A fresh install should rival that fedora install.
Yea I don't understand either
I've recently installed arch in a VM and it didn't take more than 8GB. That's with firefox and vscode installed
7GB is a reasonable size for a Linux install with a GUI and some software. The rest are excessively large. I've never gone over 30GB of disk usage in my root partition, even with a large number of programs installed.
It seems quite likely that, in the Arch ( EOS ) system at least, a tonne of that space is being used up by the package cache. By default, the system keeps copies of the packages for all software you install. This can indeed take gigs of space but it has nothing to do with your running system. A simple command purges them all and reclaims the space. You would obviously want to do this before reporting installation size. I bet he did not.
Arch package spliting is not as hard as Debian/Fedora.
But IMO, it's because Fedora uses BTRFS with compression enabled.
If Windows 10 immediately destroys itself while trying to do its first update, you didn't actually fit it in 16gb. It hasn't fit inside of 32GB for several years now.
Ya, I am not going to trust anything coming out of a post that cites that numbers for install size. As others have said, even the Windows one is bonkers.
As an EOS user myself, I love the conclusion but have no faith at all in the methodology.
If you want an article to make Linux look good, a test of the new Damn Small Linux would be interesting. It fits a basic version of practically every program you need into a 700 MB system. It also includes the APT package manager and full access to the Debian 12 stable repos so you can easily add anything you want on top of that.
It would be interesting to know what footprint it would require to run the “tests” he runs here.
My guess will be hibernation file and swap. If any of those had suspend to disk enabled, the hibernation file will be the same size as installed Ram... which can take up a good percentage of that used space. I have a pretty bloated xUbuntu install on my system right now and it's sitting at 10.6GB. Including swap and /home, but no hibernation file.
Hibernation I've found handy on my laptop, but I wish there was like a fastboot option with Ubuntu. I know windows 11 does it to boot faster.
Because it runs everything stock