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For me, lightweigth seems to have become just another word for "we will never be feature complete so lets make the lack of functionality a feature!".

I hear ya, and what is going to make this lightwieght offering different? I want to see a different approach to stability, different approach to security, something that makes it unique among its peers.. Im sure this is cool, and the nerd curiosity in me with have me looking into it soon... but it would be nice to see someone offer something that changes they way we work with computers.

Did you install Exclaim and/or did you test it?

It cannot be worse than the mainstream OS'es: "We'll never manage to make this piece of shit running properly so let's make poor security a feature" or the equally true "We'll never manage to optimize our code, so let's sell the bloatedness as in innovative step" ...

Functionality != A lot of code. Bloat != Functionality.

Bloat is unnecessary (and/or inefficient) code to perform a task.

Lightweight != lack of functionality.
Lightweight == efficient, hand-optimized code with much functionality - and little resource usage.

I really think you do unjustice to mainstream developers with your claims.

Concrete examples?

I think you do not understand fundamental principles of software development:

* Within established projects you have to maintain compability, so quite often you do not have the chance to implement a new feature in the most glorious way.
* Within established projects you have to maintain stability, so in many cases doing minimaly invasive changes is much more reasonable, than doing glorious changes, that require complete rewrite.
* When developing new features you shall focus on solving the problem first, instead of wasting time and brain power on micro optimizations. Risk of getting your feature wrong is very high, if you put more effort into micro optimizations, than into concept.

Also maintainers of new projects have to admit, to stand on giant's shoulders: Their work seldomly appears out of the void. Most often they use experience from using, or even studing older code, when designing their improved features.

Sometimes I wonder if some of those brilliant hobbiest coders should put asside their ego, and use their unique knowledge to improve existing projects. Of course this is less joy, and it takes more effort to gain similiar praise - but guess it is more useful.

On the other hand its really cool, to see your code running on real world devices; to see it used by people who do not even know icons like Richard or Linus...

As a former mainstream developer I'll have to say he doesn't.



How does this not make it bloat?



See above.



See above.

You also forgot an important reason for bloat: insane deadlines set by management that prevents doing things properly.
Feature creep is another big contributor to bloat.
It's still bloat though, no matter the reason or excuse.

Concrete examples?

"Vista"

:)

I would prefer lightweight over features I dont need.
At least if that means a faster, more responsive os.

I would prefer features I need over lightweight.

exclaim-os.org? anyway i'd leave it to them...