Well, I think we're talking two definitions of bloat. Yours is: useless software running in memory. His, I think was: Too much disk space occupied by useless files.

So don't even install it unless it's being used. Keep it on the install media and have it require you to insert it when you install a card for which it doesn't currently have a driver. For God's sake, it makes you do that most of the time to copy over files it's already got when you change an IP address, or something else equally innocuous.