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

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

#191

Post by dagmx »

JoBrad wrote: post #187
dagmx wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which OSes and which GUI frameworks for those are the best or worst, how do they compare? Hands down macOS/iOS are the leaders here with Cocoa/SwiftUI/UIKit etc (ultimately basically the same). The OS also has many hooks to allow third party frameworks to tie in to the accessibility. Windows is second in my opinion. Microsoft does some good work here but it’s not as extensive in terms of integrations and pervasiven…

I switched from windows to macOS, which I’ve been using as my daily driver for the last year or so. Using the touchpad (or maybe the Magic Mouse) is basically a requirement to use “vanilla” macOS. Yes, you can install additional programs to help with window management, etc., but in my experience macOS is absolutely horrible when it comes to accessibility, from this standpoint. Maybe it’s better for colors, TTS, etc.?

I’m not sure what walls you might have been hitting but macOS is completely useable with speech direction. I had to quite recently add better accessibility support to an app I worked on and I was basically navigating the entire system with voice control and keyboard hotkeys.

Voice control in particular is really handy with the number and grid overlays for providing commands.

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

#192

Post by anthk »

zozbot234 wrote: post #183
TacticalCoder wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Let’s pause for a bit and dwell on the absurd amount of RAM it takes to run it even after this exercise. I agree and I find the apologists to be completely wrong. I run a modern system: 38" screen, 2 Gbit/s fiber to the home. I'm not "stuck in the past" with a 17" screen or something. The thing flies. It's screaming fast as it should be. But I run a lean Debian Linux system, with a minimal window manager. It's defi…

The low-end requirements for Debian GNU/Linux (assuming a graphical install and an up-to-date version) are not that low. They're higher than the low-end for Windows XP when it first came out, and probably close to the official requirements for "Vista-capable" machines. So yes, it's a very efficient system by modern standards but it does come with some very real overhead nevertheless.

VIsta capable wasn't that capable. It required 1GB of RAM to run well. Debian with ZRAM and light DE could run with 512MB of RAM and Seamonkey + UBlock Origin with patience.

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

#193

Post by kristianp »

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 was recently boggling at how a running small python script could take up 30+ MB of RAM. The data it processed was probably < 100kb in total.

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

#194

Post by qwezxcrty »

haunter wrote: post #8

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

How you activate that? I think KMS will not work for IoT versions.

I use KMS activated non-IoT LTSC 2021 on my obsolete Surface. MS will not sell that edition to "consumers" like me, so I don't feel guilty at all for pirating it.

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

#195

Post by Genbox »

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've worked on several projects where performance was an afterthought. After the product scaled a bit, it suddenly became the highest priority - but at that time, it was impossible to fix. At least for everyone that created the problem to begin with.

I've taught high performance data structures to dev teams. I've tried to explain how a complex problem can sometimes be solved with a simple algorithm. I've spent decades on attempting to show coworkers that applying a little comp-sci can have a profound effect in the end.

But no. Unfortunately, it always fails. The mindset is always "making it work" and problem solving is brute-forcing the problem until it works.

It takes a special kind of mindset to keep systems efficient. It is like painting a picture, but most seem to prefer doing it with a paint roller.

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

#196

Post by haunter »

qwezxcrty wrote: post #194
haunter wrote: post #8

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

How you activate that? I think KMS will not work for IoT versions. I use KMS activated non-IoT LTSC 2021 on my obsolete Surface. MS will not sell that edition to "consumers" like me, so I don't feel guilty at all for pirating it.

MAS should work https://massgrave.dev/

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

#197

Post by znpy »

mixedCase wrote: post #174
znpy wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

to be honest i'd give up most of today's niceties to get a snappier computer experience. and to be honest, nowadays the biggest issue is the web browser and the sheer amount of memory and processing that modern websites use. it's unbelievable.

It is still possible to have a snappy computer experience. Go Linux, use a very configurable distro (Arch, Gentoo, NixOS), choose a lightweight DE and app ecosystem and it will get you there for the most part. Browsers are still going to be the sticking point, but with agressive adblockers/noscript and hardware that's not terribly old (NVMe storage is priority 1), and you should be set. But of course, snappiness isn'…

I’m on debian and using xfce.

The problem is the web browser.

I’ve got 16 gb of ram and the browser is using most of them. I can literally see the swap space emptying when i have (as in “im forced to”) sacrifice my browsing session (xkill the browser) due to constant swap out to disk.

And I’m using a pci gen 3 nvme disk, and already lowered swappiness.

The problem is the web browser.

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

#198

Post by whartung »

hedora wrote: post #133
grishka wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> HDR, fluid animations, monstrous resolutions That's the job of the GPU driver, mostly. > 3D everything That's the desktop compositor. Windows 7 already had one and ran on 1 GB of RAM. > accessibility Not everyone needs it, so it should be an optional installable component for those who do. > fancy APIs for easier development allowing for more features That still use win32 under the hood. Again, .net has existed for…

Prodigy had vector based graphics in a terminal back in the 1980’s. Granted, that targeted EGA and 2400 baud modems, but I wonder how well it would work on modern hardware if you just gave it a 4k, 24bit frame buffer, and fixed up the inevitable integer overflows.

Actually, I've run Citrix (ancestor of Remote Desktop) on a 14.4k modem. Once all the bitmaps are downloaded and cached (those app launch 1/2 screen splash pages were murder), it ran pretty well. The meta graphic operations (lines, circles, fills, etc.), fonts, etc. worked fine. Any large pixmap operations were crushing, but most productivity apps didn't use those as much as you'd think.

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

#199

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

My biggest issue is disk bloat, I use many vms on my laptop, windows vms regularly end up 60+gb for a pretty standard deploy (windows+msvs or office). It normally comes down to a bloated winsxs folder, but I feel like attempting to fix that is playing with fire.

Compare that to Linux, 10gb with a full gui, and minimal bloat after the fact and it’s extremely frustrating.

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

#200

Post by whartung »

anthk wrote: post #185
mixedCase wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I ran e16 and then e17 as my main desktop back in the day for a good while. I'm sorry but what we had back then was nowhere even near what I'm talking about. It definitely was pretty for the day, though.

Then, OSX. A G4 with 512MB of RAM could perfectly do that at 1280x800.

NeXTSTEP 3.1 ran fine at 1152x832 4 shade mono with 20MB of RAM. 32MB if you were running color.

It was also rendering Display PostScript on a 25Mhz '040. One of the first machines in its day that allowed you to drag full windows, rather than frames on the desktop. High tech in action!

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