Why is the Raspbian so large?

[Level7]

Just learned about these cool boards about a month ago.

Was easy to setup took less than 30 minutes to go from shipping box to a useable wifi enabled computer.

So far, all I got to say is 3,138mb for os? Reminds me of M$Windows bloat ware.

[jamesh]

That 3.8 also contains a lot of other stuff, not just the OS. Linux itself (the kernel) is about 3 MB or so IIRC.

Mathematica, Scratch, Sonic Pi, loads of other stuff make up the rest of the space etc.

[Woll]

There's a link with some code to get you started.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/resources/

And a link to download MagPi magazines free PDFs.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/issues/

[Level7]

That 3.8 also contains a lot of other stuff, not just the OS. Linux itself (the kernel) is about 3 MB or so IIRC.

Mathematica, Scratch, Sonic Pi, loads of other stuff make up the rest of the space etc.

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3,138mb is over 3 gig that's huge for a linux distro. I understand about all the other just not use to that size. I've been using puppy linux for quite some time and that took me off guard. I thought that maybe since the RPi is aimed at education they would have started with less of the extra stuff. But then again we live in an un-perfect world where bloatware is the norm.

Still the RPi2 is awesome, waiting now for a wireless keyboard/mouse and a 7 port powered hub. I'm learning there is so much that these little boards can do. Have a feeling that this is not going to be my last RPi2. Just Awesome.

[fruitoftheloom]

Just learned about these cool boards about a month ago.

Was easy to setup took less than 30 minutes to go from shipping box to a useable wifi enabled computer.

So far, all I got to say is 3,138mb for os? Reminds me of M$Windows bloat ware.

Start with TinyCore Linux

http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.ph ... ,57.0.html


Comparing TinyCore to Raspbian on the RPi is a fair comparision

Comparing Puppy Linux to Ubuntu on a x86 PC is a fair comparision

[kusti8]

Because of their educational aim they include the bloat ware. All of that is to get kids started programming and their selection of programs is great for that. That's why we have Jessie Lite and Tiny Core. Jessie Lite is about 1.4 GB. Tiny Core is about 30 MB. That's great. Doesn't sound like M$ bloatware now?

[fruitoftheloom]

........and a 7 port powered hub.

You do not appear to have more than 4 USB Devices, surely having this is Peripheral Bloat...

The RPi B+ & 2B can deliver 1200ma total for USB if you use a good quality 5V 2A+ Power Supply

https://projects.drogon.net/testing-set ... berry-pi-b

https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#power

[DougieLawson]

So far, all I got to say is 3,138mb for os? Reminds me of M$Windows bloat ware.

It all fits really nicely on an 8GB SDCard (even without purging some of the junk). You'd have a hard job to find any version of Windows that fits in less than 8GB.

8GB SDCards are cheap. Now even the 16GB cards are also cheap.

[Level7]

........and a 7 port powered hub.

You do not appear to have more than 4 USB Devices, surely having this is Peripheral Bloat...

The RPi B+ & 2B can deliver 1200ma total for USB if you use a good quality 5V 2A+ Power Supply

https://projects.drogon.net/testing-set ... berry-pi-b

https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/faqs/#power

______________________________________________________________________________________________

I have 4 350GB USB hard drives and a printer to hook up yet. So I need the extra ports. I'm looking at using my Pi as a desktop.
I maintain several websites. Tho I have been watching the price of the larger USB HD's just haven't got down to where I want to lay out the cash for them yet.

[r3d4]

Start with TinyCore Linux

+1

[hippy]

You'd have a hard job to find any version of Windows that fits in less than 8GB.

Hardly. People were running Windows since before a gigabyte disk was imaginable. I once pruned all the cruft from Windows XP and got that down to about 250MB and it was far less for Windows 98. A default install of XP is around 1GB. As time has gone on, it does seems to me there has been a lot of bloat for not much gain, and Linux seems to have also followed that path.

Wolfram (450MB) and Java (300MB) seem to be amongst the largest culprits in the NOOBS install of Rasbian. Not a problem if one uses those but a bit of a pain if using a 4GB card. Getting rid of those plus Scratch and Libre Office recovers about 1GB (25%) of space.

Does anyone have a break down of what various installed by default applications use ?

[DougieLawson]

I meant supported versions of Windows, not their old unsupported and unsupportable versions.

Best of luck running a copy of XP on the public internet, it's about four minutes before that thing will be hacked to destruction.

[expandables]

I meant supported versions of Windows, not their old unsupported and unsupportable versions.

Best of luck running a copy of XP on the public internet, it's about four minutes before that thing will be hacked to destruction.

Best of luck of running Raspbian with port forwarding and the username|password is default.
Less than one minute of destruction.

[drgeoff]

I had Windows, the very first version. IIRC it came on about 6 floppies. That was about the same time a hard disk was added to my office 286 PC. I had said that a 10 Mbyte drive would be enough but someone else decided we should have 20 Mbyte ones. (For those who were not even born at the time, those 'M's are not typos!)

I also had Windows 2. That too came on floppies. And Windows 3 and 3.1

I still have an unopened pack of 23 floppies for Windows 95.

[fruitoftheloom]

I had Windows, the very first version. IIRC it came on about 6 floppies. That was about the same time a hard disk was added to my office 286 PC. I had said that a 10 Mbyte drive would be enough but someone else decided we should have 20 Mbyte ones. (For those who were not even born at the time, those 'M's are not typos!)

I also had Windows 2. That too came on floppies. And Windows 3 and 3.1

I still have an unopened pack of 23 floppies for Windows 95.

Mac System6 also had a small footprint, but totally irrelevent to original mis-informed statement from the OP

[stderr]

8GB SDCards are cheap. Now even the 16GB cards are also cheap.

One should be able to use 2 gig cards and have plenty of space free for adding whatever one might need. Perhaps not in the main download but in some sort of "Lite" version. 8gig cards might be cheap but 2gig ones can be free. If you're paying $5 for your board, that's a good price for the boot part.

[stderr]

Start with TinyCore Linux

Certainly this will give you the other side of the argument. Before people would stop complaining, Tiny Core was really a gem not even including things beyond enough to just boot and access their repo for things the support for formatting a disk. Now they have several versions which actually include support built right in for wifi.

[DougieLawson]

Best of luck of running Raspbian with port forwarding and the username|password is default.
Less than one minute of destruction.

Nobody but the most insane, stupid, cretinous moron (or naïve newbie) would do such a thing.

The difference with Raspbian is that it IS possible to secure it (albeit there some massive holes that need plugging). With XP you can NOT do that, because Microsoft have stopped spending money on supporting that ancient pile of steaming stuff.

[DougieLawson]

8GB SDCards are cheap. Now even the 16GB cards are also cheap.

One should be able to use 2 gig cards and have plenty of space free for adding whatever one might need. Perhaps not in the main download but in some sort of "Lite" version. 8gig cards might be cheap but 2gig ones can be free. If you're paying $5 for your board, that's a good price for the boot part.

16GB Samsung branded cards cost £5 ($7.50).
http://www.ebuyer.com/704182-samsung-16 ... b-sp16d-eu
there's no possible reason left to use anything smaller.

[stderr]

So far, all I got to say is 3,138mb for os? Reminds me of M$Windows bloat ware.

It is often remarkable that the most basic command line program that one might try to use is *not* included in all that stuff. I don't mean in Raspbian specifically, this is true of Debian and Ubuntu and I suppose the others. They also like to cut things up into tiny pieces so you won't add more than you need which suggests they care about every byte but then they start out by including the kitchen sink even if your computer is going to be out in the garage.

There are directories that are "share", e.g. /usr/share , that you can share via your network and do so among even different architectures. Depending on your installation, this can be of substantial weight. Here is a bit of explanation: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HighQuality-A ... O/fhs.html .

Do get another sdcard and try out the lite versions of the OS and even try other Linux distributions in particular Tiny Core which might make you long for the days of not having to figure out how to install the kitchen sink.

[stderr]

8GB SDCards are cheap. Now even the 16GB cards are also cheap.

One should be able to use 2 gig cards and have plenty of space free for adding whatever one might need. Perhaps not in the main download but in some sort of "Lite" version. 8gig cards might be cheap but 2gig ones can be free. If you're paying $5 for your board, that's a good price for the boot part.

16GB Samsung branded cards cost £5 ($7.50).
http://www.ebuyer.com/704182-samsung-16 ... b-sp16d-eu
there's no possible reason left to use anything smaller.

I thought that I'd given a reason for using 2 gig cards by pointing out that they can be free. If £5 doesn't matter to the user, then why are people so excited about the Pi Zero? Perhaps I'm missing something but I think that this excitement is proof that price is important.

That said, I understand the value in making sure that you have enough disk space so you can avoid starting a thread asking what to do when you don't have any disk space left and you can't update, install applications or maybe even run your programs. So I'd agree with you and get a 16gig (at least) card for the main pi board especially if I was setting it up for someone who didn't enjoy troubleshooting trouble.

[gordon77]

They've issued raspbian Lite, doesn't that meet the need?

[W. H. Heydt]

I have 4 350GB USB hard drives and a printer to hook up yet. So I need the extra ports. I'm looking at using my Pi as a desktop.
I maintain several websites. Tho I have been watching the price of the larger USB HD's just haven't got down to where I want to lay out the cash for them yet.

Excuse me? You're complaining about the size of Raspbian (around 4GB) and you're planning to add 1400GB of disk space? I think your space priorities are a little out of line.

And here I thought I was being overly generous by running a couple of Rasbian systems using 60GB SSDs to hold everything.

[stderr]

I have 4 350GB USB hard drives

Excuse me? You're complaining about the size of Raspbian (around 4GB) and you're planning to add 1400GB of disk space? I think your space priorities are a little out of line.

He can't boot from those drives so it is a little unfair to compare them to boot drive bloat. But if 4gig, some of which is crap, is enough to make things work more easily for people, I guess that's a price to pay that could be worth it.

[rpdom]

I have 4 350GB USB hard drives

Excuse me? You're complaining about the size of Raspbian (around 4GB) and you're planning to add 1400GB of disk space? I think your space priorities are a little out of line.

He can't boot from those drives so it is a little unfair to compare them to boot drive bloat.

Not unfair at all.

The boot card only needs to be large enough to contain the contents of /boot (about 70MB). The rest can be on the disks. I've got a 128MB card in one Pi, with a 1TB hard disk for the OS and other files.