I have to agree here, linux does not have to be bloated.
It just takes a lot of work to get a nicely configured minimal instalation. During the mandrake instalation, you can saftely unselect about 80 percent of the recomended packages. If you are not a developer, you can get away with gcc and not much else. Also, try Gnome, it's a little faster than KDE from my experience. And yes, on my Mandrake 9.2 installation I noticed that turning off a signfigant amount of eye candy really speed things up. At first I was horrified at how slow it was.. I was used to the 2.4 Kernel patched onto an old Turbo Linux 6.0 installation, But like any linux installation, it improves with age.. Unlike Windows, which seems to get worse with age. There is SO much you can do to tweak and improve the typical Linux installtation... that's half the fun.
