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Bloat: How and Why UNIX Grew Up (and Out) - Rusty Russell,Matt Evans

Linux.conf.au 2012 -- Ballarat, Australia · talk · Watch on YouTube

Software performance & optimizationLinux & open-source ecosystemsOperating systems & kernels

What it is

Rusty Russell and Matt Evans examine why Unix utilities like ls and cat grew from a few kilobytes to over a hundred kilobytes. They take apart common tools to see where the growth comes from.

Why Hacker News recommends it

Used in software bloat debates as a measured look at why binaries got larger.

  • 2 people recommended it
  • 2 different months
  • 0 strong recommendations
  • first 2014, last 2015

What HN commenters said

  1. “There was an interesting talk on this at Linux.conf.au a couple of years ago, trying to figure out why modern binaries are so large.”

    Investigates why modern binaries like ls grew so large

    pdw, 2014-05 · Recommendation · in “Pokémon Crystal disassembled source code”

  2. “Well worth a viewing.”

    Compares sizes of Unix utilities over decades

    vezzy-fnord, 2015-07 · Recommendation · in “Software bloat makes me sad”

Excerpts from Hacker News comments, linked to the originals. Summaries and labels were written by a language model from those comments.

Topics: unix, binary size, coreutils, linux, bloat

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