Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

tomshardware.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 415 posts

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

#371

Post by smileybarry »

avinassh wrote: post #125
haunter wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a handy reddit post when I was researching the same https://www.reddit.com/r/Windows10LTSC/comments/qw1qrs/ltsc_... The main difference that IoT has longer lifecycle support, the activation method is different (but you don't even have to), and the IoT version is only available in english But it doesn't really matter they are virtually the same

wait, can I use this as a daily driver on a laptop?

You can try but it probably depends on the laptop and how messy your OEM's drivers are. (they might require/depend on some component carved out of the IoT editions)

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

#372

Post by phkahler »

dagmx wrote: post #46
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…

> That's the job of the GPU driver, mostly. I think you have to reason this one out. Your statement, to me, doesn’t hold water. Let’s start with HDR. That requires the content that’s being rendered to have higher bit depth. Not all of this is stored in GPU memory at once, a lot is stored in system RAM and shuffled in and out. Now take fluid animations. The interpolation of positions isn’t done solely on the GPU. It’s…

>> Let’s start with HDR. That requires the content that’s being rendered to have higher bit depth. Not all of this is stored in GPU memory at once, a lot is stored in system RAM and shuffled in and out.

HDR can still fit in 32bit pixels. At 4k X 2k we have 8 megapixels or 32MB frame buffer. With triple buffering that's still under 100MB. Video games have been doing all sorts of animation for decades. It's not a lot of code and a modern CPU can actually composite a desktop in software pretty well. We use the GPU for speed, but that doesn't have to mean more memory.

The difference between 2000 and 2023 is the quantity of data to move and like I said, that about 100MB

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

#373

Post by smileybarry »

hedora wrote: post #147
vmoore wrote: 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 k…

> 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.

I seriously doubt it. Do you have a source for this?

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

#374

Post by KronisLV »

DavideNL wrote: post #364
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…

What would you say is the best Desktop environment for Debian for an average user (not Development), modern PC, and some gaming (nvidia 3080Ti)?

Personally, XFCE is pretty lightweight, customizable and stable. I actually did a blog post where I ran Linux Mint (based on Ubuntu) with XFCE, so you can get a rough idea of it in some screenshots: https://blog.kronis.dev/articles/a-week-of-linux-instead-of-...

It's not particularly interesting or pretty, but it works well and does most if not everything that you might need, so is my choice for a daily driver. Here's the debian Wiki page on it: https://wiki.debian.org/Xfce

Apart from that, some folks also like Cinnamon, MATE, GNOME or even KDE. I think the best option is to play around in Live CDs with them and see which feel the best for your individual needs and taste. Do note that Ubuntu as a base distro might give you fewer hassles in regards to proprietary drivers, if you don't care about using only free software much.

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

#375

Post by qwezxcrty »

worble wrote: post #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 bac…

Well, maybe I'm a minority for having a EE/physical science hobby, but also belong to the kind of people you are referring to.

I'm pretty stuck to Windows as I need it to drive my home lab. I need to run Windows to

1. Get data from a old optical spectrometer. It was designed for optical endpointing of plasma etching. And one will have a hard time finding anything that is not running Windows in a fab (except lithography).

2. Run a 28 years old piece of software to acquire timestamps from a HP 53310A modulation domain analyzer

3. Grab frames from an old xray detector

4. Work with two NI DAQ cards. Yes, they are supposed to work on Linux, but I always get weird errors on my Ubuntu work computer while they never failed me on my Windows laptop.

5. Use Autodesk Inventor to prepare files for 3D printer/machine shop. Siemens NX used to work on Linux, but apart from that, there is not a single piece of non-toy 3D CAD software that I'm aware of support Mac or Linux.

6. LTSpice simulations and Altium Designer layouting.

Windows is the only first class citizen in many areas, software development and artistic work are two exceptions.

And so far, it seems I can still always be one step ahead of MS in the anti-consumer war, so I'm not too worried.

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

#376

Post by pixl97 »

userbinator wrote: post #268
ElectricalUnion wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 95 can't even stay up for more that 49.7 days before crashing all by itself.

Neither can Windows 10 on default settings, for more than around a month, before force-rebooting all by itself and losing all your work.

For many applications Windows 10 saves state and comes back right where you started on a security update reboot.

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

#377

Post by Wowfunhappy »

wizofaus wrote: post #284
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #26

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.

While I do agree with this, it seems worse than that - I've observed with a number of systems that used to run well 5 or so years ago that they simply don't any more, even with exactly the same OS and essentially the same software. I don't know to what degree that is because of actual hardware deterioration (or least, file system fragmentation), vs additional gumpf getting automatically installed and slowing it down…

"Windows Rot" is definitely a thing but it can be cleared out by doing a clean reinstall of the OS. While this can be time consuming, you'd likely be doing it anyway if you got a new machine.

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

#378

Post by Wowfunhappy »

vbezhenar wrote: post #278
Wowfunhappy wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure, it's possible to get by on 4 GB of RAM today, but it used to work a lot better!

Compare the memory usage of:

• 2008-era Skype and iChat vs Slack, Teams, and Discord.

• 2008-era web pages (including with Flash embeds) vs modern web pages.

• Microsoft Office 2007 vs current Microsoft 365.

And it's not only or even primarily memory, but also CPU requirements and so on.

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

#379

Post by JoeAltmaier »

demetrius wrote: post #171
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Um. Where else do you need it to run in 2GB but embedded? I think the article is informative, fair and correct.

> Where else do you need it to run in 2GB but embedded? I use an eeePC laptop with 2 Gb or RAM as my home computer. It's quite usable with Linux. Not that I'm planning to install Win11 on it, but the assumption that 2GB is enough only for embedded devices is incorrect.

I stand corrected. Embedded is all over the map, but a brief search shows you have to get well above the $10 embedded SOC to get RAM like that.

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

#380

Post by Genbox »

wizofaus wrote: post #282
Genbox wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decade…

And I've worked on systems where months were essentially squandered on performance improvements that never paid off because we never grew the customer base sufficiently for them to be worth while... I'm all for dedicating time and effort towards producing performant code, but it does come at a cost - in some cases, a cost of maintainability (for an extreme example there's always https://users.cs.utah.edu/~elb/folklor…

Performance is not the same as efficiency, and efficiency can't be solved with more hardware.

Let's say I build a sorting algorithm that is O(N^2) complexity and works fine for small inputs (takes One of the corps I worked with went full scalability in their architecture. One-click deployments, dynamic scaling of servers, rebalancing of databases, automatic provisioning of storage. They were handling 40-50k requests pr. second with their 15-ish large server farm, which could sale down to 5 servers, or up to 50-ish before it began to wobble.

I got called in because the company had gotten a large client that needed 100k requests pr. second. They tried scaling the system to fit the need, but the whole thing got unstable and their solution was "more operations people to manage it".

I built a custom solution for the backend. Took about two months. The new system could do about 2100k requests pr. second on one server. Scalability of the new system was ~90% efficient as well, so lots of capacity for the future.

None of their developers understood computers or the science behind them. They were all educated and experienced developers, but none of that were applied to the problem. They were just assembling parts from the hardware store until something worked, and the resulting Frankenstein's Monster was put into production.

Post reply on HN