Good (free!) Anti-Malware suggestions?

[Ironclad Alibi]

..., but there seems to be a "bloat" mentality with developers lately...

... It seems (to me) that once a program gets popular, the powers-that-be get a sudden case of the "Why Not?"s, and start bloating the hell out of what was once a really good package. I've seen it happen to Norton, McAfee, AdAware, AVG, et. al.

You left the MicroSoft operating systems, and other programs, off that list. I think they qualify for first place in regards to bloat.

[barcode]

At the risk of this going completely off topic...

You left the MicroSoft operating systems, and other programs, off that list. I think they qualify for first place in regards to bloat.

Actually, I feel almost all OS developers have "gone bloat". Windows is the most prominent, but even Macs and Linux (Unity/KDE4/Gnome3 anyone?) are getting into the {bad} habit.
It used to be that I could resurrect an old computer by simply installing a flavor of Linux on it, due to the small kernel and app size. That's no longer the case. Due to an apparent effort to out-bloat each other, I've had to stop at Fedora 14 on my machines, as they no longer support the minimum requirements of the newer kernel, Gnome3, and "beefier" apps. I haven't, as yet, tried the vaunted XFCE spin of F16 (soon, I hope!), but the distros that support smaller "footprints" are getting fewer and farther between, and even the "Puppy"-style distro isn't exactly useful beyond having a portable Linux image.
Still, folks like the XFCE, Mint (Cinnamon), and LXDE devs are trying to get back to what makes computing fun...

barcode