I'm going to be building a new computer soon for myself. (Going AMD for the first time, since intel microcode issue.)
I would say I'm an expert or advanced user, as been using pcs for 25 years and set up arch and slackware in the past. I have tried many distros and would like some feedback.
I mainly use my pc for gaming. I want something customizable, KDE ish, and without bloatware. A good wiki is a plus.
I think that i may end up with arch... is it better for gaming since it's bleeding edge and isn't steamos built off it?
Non-running software doesn't affect performance as it isn't anywhere near your RAM or CPU. What often people perceive of bloat is frequently software dependencies that are likely to be used over the course of the OS's usage.
Often I have found bloat free setups end up taking hours of digging out dependencies on multiple occasions. Life is too short. I have things to build.
It still takes space on the drive. It takes an icon on the start menu.
And then there's that little devil in me that I don't want to send feedback back to servers of what I do with my system.
Maybe I'm paranoid or maybe I just want to squeeze all the pure power (and space) I can. It's like an old hot rod, there's no radio; there's no heated seats; it's made to go fast and have fun.
It does take space on the hard drive. Can easily remove desktop shortcuts. Telemetry on open source software doesn't usually happen without consent and you can turn it off (Firefox for example).
This is more of a feeling type thing. If it makes you feel good though, go ahead.