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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

#271

Post by qup »

NayamAmarshe wrote: post #250

Windows at this point only exists to provide worse user experience on purpose and collect as much personal data as Microsoft possibly can. Not that I'm complaining though, I don't need Windows anymore and ZorinOS serves me just fine while not making me feel like I'm in a tech prison.

Have you used other flavors? Tell me about Zorin? I'm on Ubuntu out of mostly momentum, but it's slow as hell. I've used Debian, Arch, and Mandrake in the past. I'm a web-dev so I need all my dev packaging etc to work predictably, a good terminal emulator, and ideally firefox.

I love slim systems so I'd really like to trim some fat.

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

#272

Post by bufferoverflow »

josephg wrote: post #229
Andrex wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > browsers are almost unrecognizable in featureset to the point they resemble an OS unto themselves > No one asked for this. My personal opinion is that everything app-like about browsers needs to be undone, yesterday, and they should again become the hypertext document viewers they were meant to be. Even JS is too much, but I guess it does have to stay. People did ask for this, because it made them a lot of money.…

> No one asked for this. What people want is a way to run amazon.com (and gmail and slack and so on), on any of their devices, securely, and without the fuss of installing anything. Ideally the first-time use of amazon.com should involve nothing more than typing "amazon" and hitting enter. It should to show content almost instantly. Satisfying that user need doesn't require a web browser. If OS vendors provided a way…

> What people want is a way to run amazon.com (and gmail and slack and so on)

Guess what, both GMail and Slack have video calls. They use WebRTC. The browser has to support it. So the WebRTC code is a part of it.

> Ideally the first-time use of amazon.com should involve nothing more than typing "amazon" and hitting enter. It should to show content almost instantly.

And it does. Open an incognito tab, type amazon.com, it's pretty crazy how fast it loads, with all the images.

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

#273

Post by cmrdporcupine »

ShaneMcGowan wrote: post #17
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…

We don’t need to worry about memory efficiency until we stop getting gains via hardware improvements. For now developers can just slap a web app into some chromium based wrapper, make sure their code doesn’t have any n^2 in it and you’re good to go.

Prices per GB of RAM are starting to plateau, or at least not fall as quickly:

https://aiimpacts.org/trends-in-dram-price-per-gigabyte/

DRAM density and cost isn't improving like it used to.

Also memory efficiency is about more than just total DRAM usage; bus speeds haven't kept pace with CPU speeds for a long time now. The more of the program we keep close to the CPU -- in cache -- the happier we are.

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

#274

Post by NayamAmarshe »

qup wrote: post #271
NayamAmarshe wrote: post #250

Windows at this point only exists to provide worse user experience on purpose and collect as much personal data as Microsoft possibly can. Not that I'm complaining though, I don't need Windows anymore and ZorinOS serves me just fine while not making me feel like I'm in a tech prison.

Have you used other flavors? Tell me about Zorin? I'm on Ubuntu out of mostly momentum, but it's slow as hell. I've used Debian, Arch, and Mandrake in the past. I'm a web-dev so I need all my dev packaging etc to work predictably, a good terminal emulator, and ideally firefox. I love slim systems so I'd really like to trim some fat.

ZorinOS is a no brainer for me, especially as a web dev.

It's got everything I need and more. Ubuntu was a horrible experience for me, from the UI polish to the general UX.

Here's a comment from me on Reddit, on why ZorinOS is a better choice than Ubuntu: https://www.reddit.com/r/zorinos/comments/10qtzi4/comment/j6...

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

#275

Post by vbezhenar »

gigel82 wrote: post #248
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…

So, how much RAM does it take? You let that bit out.

If they spend money for NVMe SSD, 38" display and 2 Gbps fiber. My bet is 128GB.

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

#276

Post by vbezhenar »

NovaPenguin wrote: post #213
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 go to on this was I remember running Debian on a Pentium 166 with 32MB of RAM back in 98/99. It would boot to the desktop only using 6MB. It wasn't flash but it could handle the basics. Heck Windows XP would boot to Desktop using a little under 70MB. But this isn't just Windows, currently I am on Kubuntu 22.04 and it is using about 1.5GB to get to the Desktop! Yes it is very smooth and flash but it seems like a bi…

Minimal debian on VM eats something like 20-40 MB of RAM. Not 6 MB, but still rounding error by today's standards.

I guess that with careful selection of GUI components one can fit empty desktop to 60 MB.

Until you start browser anyway.

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

#277

Post by neogodless »

mordae wrote: post #37

I've had access to cheap Windows for years, which is why I kept it around as a secondary OS on my desktop to get around the hassle of getting games run on Linux. Games are mostly play/finish/forget for me anyway. But since a few years back, most games I were interested in ran perfectly fine on Linux. I haven't rebooted into Windows for almost a year now. So I think I will, instead of upgrading to 11, eventually delet…

I'm not quite there but... my laptop is mostly just for gaming, with some email, chat and web browsing on the side. So I thought I'd allow Windows 10 to upgrade to 11 and see how it is. (It's not getting anywhere near my desktop!)

But... Windows 11 is just... annoying. The UI is worse than 10 in all the ways that matter to me. So I finally put Linux Mint on this laptop, and it's been pretty good. Not flawless, but really good. By default, I install and play games on Steam.

Notable exception is Anno 1800, which has a clunky multiplayer setup anyway, and just doesn't connect under Linux, but works (begrudingly) under Windows.

Northgard has been awesome, but just tonight I had a bunch of server connection issues - can't 100% blame Linux, though 15 minutes into a multiplayer game, I was dropped while the two Windows players kept playing. But it's not conclusive!

At any rate, I think for many PC gamers, Linux gaming would work, though it's still not 100% "install, join, play" for every game.

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

#278

Post by vbezhenar »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #145
nine_k wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 con…

You can use computer with 4 GB of ram today for all things you've mentioned. It might swap here and there and not be as snappy, but generally it'll work.

I think that Apple just recently stopped to sell 4 GB computers. And their phones from the last year sells with 4 GB RAM while being perfectly able to do all the things you've mentioned as well.

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

#279

Post by connicpu »

terrycody wrote: post #243
zamadatix wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may update regularly but that doesn't mean they only use modern features. E.g. even just Steam itself (not just games in it) is largely still 32 bit on Windows requiring gigabytes of 32 bit compatibility files using interfaces going back decades even though Windows 11 itself doesn't have a 32 bit version anymore.

Sorry but does it mean some games can't play on windows 11 steam?

You can; you wouldn't be able to if you stripped your windows install of all the files that still allow 32-bit programs to run

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

#280

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

firecall wrote: post #227
hsbauauvhabzb wrote: post #199

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.

Reminds me of the pain point I have with Windows Gaming PCs! Both my teenagers have 2x 1TB NVME drives installed to deal with the insane requirements of Steam, Epic and Xbox gamepass games. We live in Australia with ~25Mpbs download FTTN, so installing and uninstalling is a huge pain and isnt practical. I have a similar issue with Apple selling Macs with 256GB hard drives! Even with iCloud photo and docs offload, the…

Apple cloud and Onedrive build conflicts of interest resulting in kneecapping local storage.

Steam is another beast, you could consider a steam cache server or similar, or alternatively teaching your kids how to xfer unused games from primary storage to secondary, and drop a 6-10tb drive in each machine.

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