I have about 3000+ packages installed in my system (nix-system) right now. As I search for neofetch on the internet, it seems people only have about <500 packages. Am I doing something wrong?

  • spencer@lemmy.caEnglish
    14·
    1 year ago

    It depends if you’re using them all. Systems where I have lots of applications installed (especially graphical ones) will have lots of packages, my bare-minimum container hosts will have few. I think there’s also an element of selection bias here, because people posting screenshots of neofetch on their system are also likely to be people who intentionally run very minimal systems focussed on minimizing the number of packages so they can brag about it on the internet.

    TL;DR - the right number of packages to have is as many as are required for your computer to do what you need it to do, and not too many more than that.

  • SwingingTheLamp@midwest.socialEnglish
    6·
    1 year ago

    Careful, too many packages on one drive becomes unstable, and may collapse into a singularly— technological, astrophysical, or worse, both!

    Seriously, though, it’s fine. The trend these days is to isolate network services/apps, each in its own virtual server/container, for security reasons. If that service gets breached by hackers, or the configuration breaks, no other services are affected. A lot of installs, each with only the minimum packages for one service, is bound to bring down the average package count.

    A user workstation is bound to have many more packages installed. Install what you need and prosper.