Why do Linux much heavier than Windows XP?

[sam1275tom]

Hello.
First, you didn't read the title wrong, yes I mean Windows XP is the best OS I have ever used, I can get it to use only about 80MB RAM and 800MB HDD, on a official release with some tweaks (I don't even need to touch the registry or manually delete system files), it's very fast and fully functional.
I hate Windows 8 and later, and Windows 7 is too heavy for old computers, but Windows XP is out-of-support anyway, so I tried a lot of Linux distros, but I can tell that most mainline ones are much heavier than Windows XP, Debian needs about 4GB HDD with GUI, not to mention Ubuntu, and I also tried CentOS, and even BSD series, none of then can work on less-than-2GB disk.
I know there's a few special ones like Puppy Linux, but from my experience, they are very limited in function, expending ability, and they are still much slower than Windows XP.
So this thing really confused me, why can't a modern OS keep a small footprint while maintain a perfectly usable platform, just like the good old day XP?
Thanks.

 

[Darthutos]

with xp, you ever heard of service packs?
with vanilla xp sure you have very small foot print but as soon as you get them service packs it's going to be like a camel walking through the usa from east to west coast.

 

[captaincharisma]

sdervice packs are just a bunch of windows updates packaged together. Linux has security, bugfixes, and program updates daily so depending on the distro it can take up the same amount of space like XP over time

and windows gets bigger with every version because it has to be backward compatible with old programs and old hardware. linux doesn't get much support for hardware so it can be a slimmer OS

 

[Darthutos]

sudo apt-get remove should get rid of all junks in ubuntu/debian/linux mint.
every time I do sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get dist-upgrade it's just 300 mb. that's the first time after a clean install. afterwards it's just 10 mb per month at the most. vs xp service pack/bugfixes/security every time it's almost 1gb or more.

 

[atljsf]

the modern os will run more services, will be 64 bit

the older machine will have slower resources, less resources

os development has moved on to hardware less limited, new os doesn't have to work perfectly with as low ran and hard disk than what you mention

you don't have to keep using old hardware form the year 2000 in 2017, ypu would like to but is more problem than anything

 

[sam1275tom]

Thank you everyone.
To be clear, I'm comparing XP SP3 with Linux, all clean official versions.
I have this question because, XP is working perfect even today, I can do everything on it without any problem, so, what are those GBs of bloat for? Even Linux are many times larger than XP, and a XFCE GUI itself require 1.3GB(If I remember correctly), larger than whole Windows XP OS, seriously?

 

[atljsf]

xp was abandoned years ago so no security updates

the service pack 3 was released in 2006 iirc

after that, the os was left to abandon basically

linux kept moving on, to support new hardware, use more resources and be more compatible with newer technologies

some things you need to use on xp are not cooperative, some things like chrome is not available for xp anymore

time has passed, old apps for xp with his low ram requiremens were nice 15 years ago, now, if you buy a 2 gbs laptop, you could be considered as a dumb person, like i did 😀

xp had his time, don't compare it on older hardware from 17 years ago with newer os, newer programs, let it rest

 

[sam1275tom]

xp was abandoned years ago so no security updates

the service pack 3 was released in 2006 iirc

after that, the os was left to abandon basically

linux kept moving on, to support new hardware, use more resources and be more compatible with newer technologies

some things you need to use on xp are not cooperative, some things like chrome is not available for xp anymore

time has passed, old apps for xp with his low ram requiremens were nice 15 years ago, now, if you buy a 2 gbs laptop, you could be considered as a dumb person, like i did 😀

xp had his time, don't compare it on older hardware from 17 years ago with newer os, newer programs, let it rest

Yes there are some new useful core functions that don't exist in XP, such as TRIM support, Bitlocker. But that's not an excuse for the rapid bloated and resource hungry OS, they are many times bigger!
Yes there are more programs not support XP, and security updates are stopped, that's why I'm wondering on finding a alternative, otherwise I'll just stay on XP...
I don't mind how people consider me at all, I'm already strange enough.
I like to play with old hardwares, I just installed XP on a HP thin client, which use Transmeta CPU(Yes, neither Intel nor AMD) with 256MB RAM, I upgraded the DOM from 512MB to 2GB. It works just fine.
It's sad that programmers never mind to optimize their codes, even Linux are just getting bigger and bigger too rapidly.

 

[Darthutos]

are we talking about linux installation media or after installation?
because linux installation will contain all the stuff the distribution think every may need. e.g. debian has 8 4.5 gb dvd disks you can download, but realistically after installation only 1 gb is on your hard drive, if that.

 

[sam1275tom]

are we talking about linux installation media or after installation?
because linux installation will contain all the stuff the distribution think every may need. e.g. debian has 8 4.5 gb dvd disks you can download, but realistically after installation only 1 gb is on your hard drive, if that.

We are talking about the used HDD space after installation.
Err, If I remember correctly, Debian takes about 3GB+ HDD space on a clean install with LXDE.
I may confirm this again if needed.

 

[atljsf]

those 3 gbs sounds mostly accurate

a decent linux this days uses 10 gbs but with all things, a small swap of 2 or 4 gbs, perhaps more and the rest for \home or data

 

[Darthutos]

ok I can believe those linux numbers, what about xp numbers? are we saying xp will cost less than 10 gb on hard drives?

 

[atljsf]

iirc, it consumes with office 2000 or office 2003 around 7 gbs, with antivirus, drivers and all that stuff

i'm in front of one of these old xp machines under a restricted domain, apart form wird stuff, temp folder and drivers the windows, documents and settings

program files and windows weights 12 gbs, with all the rest weights 50 on this particular old install, which has a bunch of users and temp files form god know when

i used to have a instasll like this and used 30 gbs more or less, back then i had two 40 gbs ide hard disks

 

[sam1275tom]

ok I can believe those linux numbers, what about xp numbers? are we saying xp will cost less than 10 gb on hard drives?

A default Windows XP SP3 installation use about 1.3GB HDD space, after I remove craps like IE/media player/outlook/messager etc, and disable system restore, page file, hibernation to disk, then it use about 800MB.

 

[atljsf]

that is for windows alone, with calclator, explorer, internet explorer and notepad

a linux install usually has at least libreoffice or abiword minimum, between many many other useful tools, the minimum linux install is really very useful, and is not minimum at all, a windows xp install, well, a windows install is now cortana, notepad, edge and file explorer and calcular

how times have changed!

 

[sam1275tom]

that is for windows alone, with calclator, explorer, internet explorer and notepad

a linux install usually has at least libreoffice or abiword minimum, between many many other useful tools, the minimum linux install is really very useful, and is not minimum at all, a windows xp install, well, a windows install is now cortana, notepad, edge and file explorer and calcular

how times have changed!

Thanks.
So How can I get a real minimal Linux install, but with GUI?

 

[atljsf]

the smallest gui would be something like enlightenment or xfce, there is one smaller but can't remember which one

as you mention puppy linux is kernel, some drivers and a couple tools and that's it

you can find mini versions of other linux distros in their sites

but if your only concern is have less space in hard disk, well, buy a bigger paralel ata hard disk or install windows xp on a board with sata ports and put a ssd, the space doesn't mean it will not use lots of ram when you push it with chrome or firefox

when you push hard linux it can use lots of gbs of ram, check free command on a console to see how it eats ram and how fast it eats it

the oldest pc i would use this days for linux is a pentium 4 or a athlon xp with 2 gbs of ram, to really do something useful at decent speeds with a 40 gb hard disk

less han that is play with a pc and waste real time and electricity, on that point or over it, you get a real usable pc that can do somthing more than complain about very little ram and hard disk space

 

[Darthutos]

of you know your way with linux just download archlinux and get xfce as gui. and maybe a graphic driver with pacman.
then you will be able to boot into linux and have a gui. there is nothing beside the operating system.
to see how to install archlinux there is a archlinux wikia.
google archlinux wikia and you will be able to find it.

 

[Sgt_Sykes]

A few years ago when I moved to a new place and didn't have a computer yet, I put together an old machine from parts I had lying around, with a 800 MHz CPU and around a gig of RAM, some old IDE HDD I still had, everything just on the table without a case.

I ran Xubuntu on it and it was fairly usable. Look for distros with small footprints, they'll generally be running Xfce or LXDE. I personally like LXDE a lot and use them in virtual machines.

Apropos virtual machines, I usually run every VM with 2 GB of RAM or less. My current installation of Kubuntu with LXDE (installed about 2 years ago but kept updated) takes up some 400 MB of RAM after boot. Which is comparable to fully updated XP3 I believe, no chance that would take up just 80 megs.

I also have a VM with PC-BSD 9 x64 (!) that IIRC took less than 200 megs of RAM after boot, with full LXDE GUI and all.

In any case the OS RAM footprint is almost irrelevant once you start doing anything on the machine. Open a few tabs in a web browser and you're at 1.5 gigs RAM usage like nothing.