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My relatively fresh macbook pro is sitting at a little over 100GB with just a few apps installed (I'm not even using it fulltime yet because not everything is i

My relatively fresh macbook pro is sitting at a little over 100GB with just a few apps installed (I'm not even using it fulltime yet because not everything is installed). That includes 25GB in the Library directory in my homedir. On my primary work macbook (which ONLY contains work apps and software dev, nothing else), I'm hitting against the 1TB SSD and have to delete caches to get space back from time to time. The Library directory is currently a whopping 220GB (just checked with du) and I have no idea why. Windows was a similar experience before I replaced it with a Debian + Steam install. 37GB for an extreme case of 173 large GUI apps built to 97 different runtimes on a system where I can get the latest and greatest version (or older version) of the app without being hobbled by dependency hell seems like a steal by comparison.

kaba0 3y ago
For what it’s worth, Macs can reboot to previous versions and has many features linux desktops don’t out of the box. Though I would be interested in a deduplicated nix store of the same number of apps — which is still the best solution imo.
- kstenerud 3y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "reboot to previous versions". My macbook can only boot Ventura after upgrading. If I wanted to boot Monterey, I'd have to wipe the drive and reinstall from scratch (or restore from backup). Also, every system has features that other systems don't have out of the box. The extreme 37gb example is already deduplicated and compressed (from over 100gb of data). Plus it doesn't require learning the user-unfriendly nix (which is absolutely necessary for debugging when things break).
frizlab 3y ago
I don’t know how you work but in our company (~ 100 people) everybody has a Mac and literally no one has a 1TB drive and no one has issues with hard drive space either (including devs). Furthermore the Library folder contains application’s data, not applications…
- kstenerud 3y ago
  Yup, I was expecting this kind of nit-picking. Bottom line is that 37gb for such an extreme number of apps and runtimes is actually pretty small, and thus Flatpak is doing a decent job (especially compared to everyone else but the fringe systems that regular users don't want).
  - eviks 3y ago
    You can't get to the bottom line of app size from the top line of app data and cache size, clear that fog away to see that the job isn't decent

kaba0 3y ago

For what it’s worth, Macs can reboot to previous versions and has many features linux desktops don’t out of the box. Though I would be interested in a deduplicated nix store of the same number of apps — which is still the best solution imo.

kstenerud 3y ago
Not sure what you mean by "reboot to previous versions". My macbook can only boot Ventura after upgrading. If I wanted to boot Monterey, I'd have to wipe the drive and reinstall from scratch (or restore from backup). Also, every system has features that other systems don't have out of the box. The extreme 37gb example is already deduplicated and compressed (from over 100gb of data). Plus it doesn't require learning the user-unfriendly nix (which is absolutely necessary for debugging when things break).

frizlab 3y ago

I don’t know how you work but in our company (~ 100 people) everybody has a Mac and literally no one has a 1TB drive and no one has issues with hard drive space either (including devs). Furthermore the Library folder contains application’s data, not applications…

kstenerud 3y ago
Yup, I was expecting this kind of nit-picking. Bottom line is that 37gb for such an extreme number of apps and runtimes is actually pretty small, and thus Flatpak is doing a decent job (especially compared to everyone else but the fringe systems that regular users don't want).
- eviks 3y ago
  You can't get to the bottom line of app size from the top line of app data and cache size, clear that fog away to see that the job isn't decent