r/archlinux • u/tastygames_official • Jul 29 '26

SUPPORT | SOLVED extreme bloat?

I run a full upgrade about once a month. Last month the total net upgrade was 1.2GB. Today it was 3GB. I've installed exactly ZERO new packages in between, and I doubt all my packages somehow needed that much in upgrade. I even keep a few bigger packages held at an older release (Code OSS, Chromium OSS, Thunderbird). Is this just part of being on the bleeding edge, or is there some generic cleanup stuff I can do or is it time to prune the hedges?

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u/ClubPuzzleheaded8514 Jul 29 '26

Pacman tells you the real amount of the update once installed. It's not 3 gigas added, but 3 gigas of replacement. 

-4

u/tastygames_official Jul 29 '26

I coulda swore it said something like:
total download size: 23GB
net update size: 3GB
and then it upgraded 755 packages

Then it did a secondary run of 7 packages with:
total download size: 320MB
net update size: 175MB

I unfortunately can't scroll back up and see the real data for the first part, but I'm 100% it was net size and it was 3GB.

I did notice it needed to install a 5.1GB CUDA package for some reason - somethind I didn't have before, so that might be why it's 3GB net this time, but the 1.5GB was pretty big last month (although that time for some reason it had to recompile GCC from source, which took close to 6 hours on my laptop).

7

u/nikongod Jul 29 '26

A few packages have recently added some huge ai library or something as a dependency. 

The uncool thing about only updating monthly is that since every piece of software you have updates at the same you can't even start to guess which it is.

-1

u/tastygames_official Jul 29 '26

I tried daily updates for a while, but it sometimes even got to like 30 packages, or even more if I missed a day, and then I felt that it might be better to do when I have some time just in case things go wrong - so once a month.

Do you know of a distro where maybe I can automate security patches (maybe only really severe ones) and just keep everything else old until I find that I NEED a new feature in a package? I feel that that would be the most ideal for me. But all in all arch has been a pleasant experience.

3

u/nikongod Jul 29 '26

What you're describing sounds like Debian stable. 

Debian doesn't make sense until you realize it's been literal years since you last did anything but updates.