De-Bloated Windows 11 Build Runs on 2GB of RAM

This removes WinSxS. That's fine for embedded, since you'd just package the DLLs you need with any executables you want to run, but trying to run this as a general purpose OS is a fools' errand. Calling WinSxS "bloat" when that "bloat" is allowing 30+ years of backwards compatibility (and a lot of stuff will break) is creative by the article's author for sure.

Nothing wrong with Tiny11 though, if you know what it is good at and use it for that. Namely, "offline" Windows for some appliance-like usage (e.g. factory controls, display screens, et al) when Linux won't do for whatever reason and licensing Windows IoT isn't possible (small business/personal project/etc).

Re: De-Bloated Windows 11 Build Runs on 2GB of RAM

#5

Post by pancrufty » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 3:15 PM UTC

It’s a great exercise but this is akin to Alpine Linux: it works for some things but you wouldn’t use it as your daily driver

Re: De-Bloated Windows 11 Build Runs on 2GB of RAM

#6

Post by abraxas » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 3:21 PM UTC

Let’s pause for a bit and dwell on the absurd amount of RAM it takes to run it even after this exercise. Anyone here remember when QNX shipped a demo in 2000 with a kernel, GUI, web browser and an email client on a single 3.5” floppy? The memory footprint was also a few megabytes. I’m not saying we should be staying within some miserly arbitrary constraints, but my goodness something that draws UI and manages processes has not grown in complexity by four orders of magnitude in 20 years.

Re: De-Bloated Windows 11 Build Runs on 2GB of RAM

#7

Post by api » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 3:25 PM UTC

abraxas wrote: post #6

Let’s pause for a bit and dwell on the absurd amount of RAM it takes to run it even after this exercise. Anyone here remember when QNX shipped a demo in 2000 with a kernel, GUI, web browser and an email client on a single 3.5” floppy? The memory footprint was also a few megabytes. I’m not saying we should be staying within some miserly arbitrary constraints, but my goodness something that draws UI and manages process…

My favorite is Geos for the Commodore 64:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system...

Obviously there were huge limitations but it shows what can be done. This fit on one 170K floppy and ran on a 1.44mhz 8 bit machine with 64K of RAM.

In the 1990s I ran both Linux and Windows on less than 64M of RAM with IDEs, web browsers, games, and more.

If I had to guess what were possible today I’d fall back on the fairly reliable 80/20 rule and posit that 20% of todays bloat is intrinsic to increases in capability and 80% is incidental complexity and waste.

Re: De-Bloated Windows 11 Build Runs on 2GB of RAM

#8

Post by haunter » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 3:31 PM UTC

Not 11 but the "Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021" is significantly better if you want an (official) full fledged Windows OS without the bloat. I'm using that on the Steam Deck w/ dual booting and it's perfect

Re: De-Bloated Windows 11 Build Runs on 2GB of RAM

#9

Post by Aerroon » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 3:32 PM UTC

abraxas wrote: post #6

Let’s pause for a bit and dwell on the absurd amount of RAM it takes to run it even after this exercise. Anyone here remember when QNX shipped a demo in 2000 with a kernel, GUI, web browser and an email client on a single 3.5” floppy? The memory footprint was also a few megabytes. I’m not saying we should be staying within some miserly arbitrary constraints, but my goodness something that draws UI and manages process…

I remember taking Windows XP to below 100 MB of RAM usage.

Re: De-Bloated Windows 11 Build Runs on 2GB of RAM

#10

Post by bsuvc » Sat, Feb 04, 2023, 3:34 PM UTC

How does this compare to a lightweight Linux distro like Lubuntu?