Live data from Hacker News

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

tomshardware.com

141–150 of 415 posts

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

#141

There really should be a penalty for gratuitous waste of resources. Energy consumption is neither free nor without adverse impacts. The era of planed obsolescence, bloatware expanding to gobble up and justify ever more hardware is over. A fresh take on the desktop given the monstrous devices that are now available in terms of cpu, memory etc may completely redefine the footprint of personal computing

No there should not. Laggy bullshit software is already bad enough and developing low latency user experiences is only getting harder.

There are applications that are extremely vulnerable to energy saving crap. Anything real-time is simply going to need to consume more power. Waiting 15.625 milliseconds completely breaks some applications.

You will take timeBeginPeriod(1) and friends from my dead, cold hands.

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

#142
I just assume this 'release' has no malware or backdoors in it. I love the work of NTDev and even follow them on Twitter, but since this is closed source there's no way of eyeballing what changes have been made. I would run this an offline sandbox VM not connected to the Internet and for trying out different Windows software, but I wouldn't connect it to The Internet.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which? I've only noticed lack of right click on taskbar, which sucks, but I don't see other things that need fix

Can I put the taskbar along the left side of the screen yet?

In all seriousness, this is the main reason I haven't checked out 11 yet.

Changing the position of the taskbar like this is "OS Smell", and I can't ever see 11 becoming more than the next ME/Vista/8.

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

#144
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have another one to add: does Windows Update work? I'd like to keep receiving security patches

It seems updating is possible only to some extent and done by hand. FTA: "This OS install “is not serviceable,” notes NTDev. “.NET, drivers and security definition updates can still be installed from Windows Update,” so this isn’t an install which you can set and forget. Moreover, removing the Windows Component Store (WinSxS), which is responsible for a fair degree of Tiny11’s compactness, means that installing new f…

Thank you for the help. That's too bad

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

#145
post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the person on a fixed income who has to invest in an expensive new machine because their 2015 laptop (which still has a whopping 4 GB of memory and a CPU that would have been top-of-the-line twenty years ago) has become unusably slow. Software efficiency is a serious equity and environmental issue, and I wish more people would see it that way.

No need to invest into an expensive new machine; a device from 5 years ago, with some more added RAM, would already be pretty adequate. Typing this from a Thinkpad T470 which was introduced in 2017, which is my main workhorse machine. A top-of-the-line laptop CPU from 20 years ago likely just doesn't support addressing more than 4GB or RAM. Forcing it to work on modern resource-heavy Web pages and media is like forci…

20 years ago is pushing it a bit. But 12 years ago, in 2008, I used a computer with 4GB of RAM in order to:

• Read the news

• Post on social media

• Make video calls

• Use instant messaging

• Create and edit word documents/presentations/spreadsheets

Today I use my computer for all of those same things... and yet they all require drastically more memory (and CPU, GPU, etc). What happened, and how does this benefit consumers? Yeah, modern web pages are resource-heavy—but to what end†?

In some cases, the requirements really did change. For example, I can now watch videos in 4K; my 2008 computer could handle 1080p, but I imagine it wouldn't have handled 4K as well. However, I suspect many users of old machines would be perfectly happy to drop down to a lower resolution.

---

† Something I find amusing in all this... people often say they're glad Flash applets died because they were slow. Nowadays, instead of Flash, we use browser apps written in Javascript. I wonder how "slow" those apps would run if you threw them on a computer from the Flash era. (This isn't to discount other problems with Flash, although I do think it has a worse reputation than it deserves.)

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

#146
post #140

I had a similar experience with GrapheneOS on my pixel 6 pro. It got multi-day battery life out of the box, which is far in excess of what Google advertises for that hardware. Once I installed google play services (which have zero end-user benefit, other than enabling compatibility with apps that have bundled google spyware), battery life more than halved, bringing it in line with what Google claims. I suspect anti-t…

Maybe you are Ok with paying for every app or making do with open sources ones that do not benefit from ad revenue stream. Plus, you don't need maps, pay or cast support. But many other people like this features and if they don't, isn't it great that there are working AOSP builds for Pixel 6 Pro so that they can roll their own ROMs on top of that? No need to hack like for Windows 11.

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

#147
post #142

I just assume this 'release' has no malware or backdoors in it. I love the work of NTDev and even follow them on Twitter, but since this is closed source there's no way of eyeballing what changes have been made. I would run this an offline sandbox VM not connected to the Internet and for trying out different Windows software, but I wouldn't connect it to The Internet.

The same could be said for official Windows builds, except we know for sure they contain malware and back doors.

For instance, Microsoft engineers have the ability to pull arbitrary files off Windows 11 machines, at least according to Microsoft press releases from a few years ago. Doing so required “managerial approval”, and was “only for debugging software faults”, but anyone vaguely familiar with the US CLOUD act knows that they’re legally required to provide the same access to law enforcement searches.

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

#148
post #104
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is depressing that I had this same argument in college a decade ago and people are still so cavalier about not optimizing their code.

To be fair, if you forced programmers to write efficient code you would just make everything more expensive and flood the market for unskilled labor with university graduates that can't find their own ass.

If it really did come down to that, I would still rather people had to pay more for software and less for hardware, because software has a comparatively minuscule environmental impact.

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

#149
It really staggers me the lengths some people will go to try and preserve something that is actively against them, when there are alternatives right there.

I'm not saying Linux is for everyone, but the kind of people creating and running these scripts really should have no issue daily driving Ubuntu or even Arch. Or if they desperately need photoshop or whatever, get a mac.

It's like watching people constantly go back to an abusive relationship.

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

#150
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accessibility support was in Windows 95 as far as I remember.

Are you seriously suggesting that accessibility support in modern OSes is less complex than in Windows 95?

I'm suggesting the modern accessibility support doesn't need more memory than the entirety of windows 95. So 4MB extra, or let's say 10x that to be generous.
Post reply on HN