Greetings! Recently, i have ditched Windows for Linux. Why? Well, This all started with a Windows Update. I was working on a Discord bot, until my PC decided to restart without my consent. What was it? A Windows Update. I was like: "no big deal, ill just wait". Well, it was over 100+ updates. After all the updates completed, i saw the Windows 11 setup screen. Keep in mind that I was on WIndows 10 before the updates. Now at that point i really got angry. Like, I hate Windows 11. So then i went and completed the setup, and got met with ALL THE BLOATWARE REINSTALLED. So ofcourse, since i did NOT wanna use Windows 11, i backed up my data, and switched to the Secure and Free operating System, Linux. I went with arch, since i have used Ubuntu before, and it's terrible. And since i didn't wanna use any fancy Desktop Enviroments, such as GNOME, KDE, HyprLand, XFCE. I went with dwm. It looks very mininal and customizable.
Now that brings me to the question, What apps should i get rid of?
I know i did the same post like a few weeks ago, but for the sake of Privacy, i know Some apps contain Telemetry, and some Don't. But still.
I forgot the exact number but while installing Debian (Bookworm and Sid) this weekend I was shocked by how small the base install, with a window manager ("big" one by your standards, i.e KDE), was. Maybe 2Gb, definitely less than 4Gb. It all worked fine, I could browse the Web, print, edit rich text, watch video, etc.
I installed a ton more stuff since, e.g Steam, Inkscape, Python libraries for computer vision, etc and it's still not even 10Gb.
So... my suggestion is the same as I shared earlier in https://lemmy.ml/post/20673461/13899831 namely do NOT install preemptively! Assuming you have a fast and stable connection I would argue stick to the bare minimum and all add as you need.
In fact... if you want to be minimalist I would suggest to do another fresh install (it's fast, less than 1hr and you can do something else at the same time) and stick to the bare minimum right away.
TL;DR: don't get rid of, just avoid adding from the first place.