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Linux code is small The term "code bloat" is often used to describe popular Windows software. This refers to the fact that Windows programs increase in size - sometimes substantially - with each new release. This is why it's common to replace your hardware when you upgrade to the next major release of Windows. Your machine's processor has more instructions to execute to accomplish the same task and your hard disk must store more code. You may think that replacing last year's computer with the latest machine will improve performance but newer versions of Windows and Windows applications tend to neutralize any hardware advantage. In The Practical Manager's Guide to Linux, the following paragraph gives an example of code bloat. The GNU C/C++ optimising compiler on Linux occupies 10 MB of disk space, and the associated editing, debugging and project management tools together account for less than 2 MB. Microsoft Visual C++ Professional Edition, on the other hand, requires 290 MB of disk space. Even the fact that Visual C++ is a visual tool with an integrated editor and debugger doesn't seem to justify such a large difference in size. The Linux development tools are about 4 percent the size of the Windows development tools. Why are Microsoft's programs so much larger? This question may be answered somewhat by examining a report on the code bloat in a Microsoft application. The report shows that the Microsoft regclean application is far larger than it needs to be due to sloppy programming and the inclusion of code and resources into the program that are never used by the program itself. |