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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

#341

I feel like a new law needs to be named after this, maybe it already exists and I am just unaware of it, but 'basic computing functions and operating system requires expand to match the standard level of computing performance available" It's crazy how things that were considered basic many years ago so run well within the performance we have in modern systems, yet the basic system has requirements much higher than it…

There's Andy and Bill's law: "what Andy giveth, Bill taketh away". Reflecting on the fact that software will eat whatever resources are available.

In a way, I think this reflects how life works in general. The way I see it, life expands until there's significant hindrance, or resources are exhausted. I don't mean it in a cynical way, like how Agent Smith does in the Matrix, regarding humanity, I just think that this is the nature of life in general.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andy_and_Bill%27s_law

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

#342

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

Not really the same. This Windows is more like an experiment, like Bellard's Linux in the browser. If you'd like to use a less annoying Windows as a daily driver, LTSC is the way to go.

https://bellard.org/jslinux/

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

#343
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…

You can achieve good memory footprints with Linux, just 2 or 3 years ago I was daily driving Arch linux with bspwm as a window manager, it used only 300 mb, for me is pretty darn good, but as soon as I opened my vscode with a JS project my ram usage was at 12gb. We have a lot of bloatware everywhere, that’s pretty sad.

edit: This remind me a some rants from Casey Muratori about VS[0] and windows terminal[1]

[0] https://youtu.be/GC-0tCy4P1U

[1] https://youtu.be/hxM8QmyZXtg

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

#344

Windows 10 pushed me to become a permanent macOS and linux resident. I don't know what went wrong but Windows 2000 was perfect, with 7 being almost as good.

What's wrong is not to realize that these are businesses, not endeavors to create the perfect operating system. Your incentives are just not aligned with Microsoft's, simple as that.

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

#345

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.

I'm on Win11 for 1.5 year or so (Win11 Insider Beta channel) and before was on Win10 Beta/Dev channels - so what I remember so far, I was warned multiple times, suggested to pick a time and only after user (me) not shown any cooperation, system was forcibly rebooted, which for consumer grade (I have Pro version) edition is fine, from my PoV. I don't want [my] system and systems around me be a part of botnets like Linux boxes of all sorts.

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

#346
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…

Hasn't it, though? HDR, fluid animations, monstrous resolutions, 3D everything, accessibility, fancy APIs for easier development allowing for more features, support for large amounts of devices, backwards compatibility, browsers are almost unrecognizable in featureset to the point they resemble an OS unto themselves, email clients have stayed mostly the same at least except for the part that they also ship a browser…

> Hasn't it, though? HDR, fluid animations, monstrous resolutions, 3D everything, accessibility, fancy APIs for easier development allowing for more features, support for large amounts of devices, backwards compatibility,

Soo the feature windows 7 had? I remember running 3D desktop with compositor and fancy effects on 1GB RAM laptop on Linux...

RAM requirements for Windows as OS are ridiculus.

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Windows activation is a simple thing. You need a KMS emulator, and you need to point your Windows to that. If you don't want to set up your own emulator, you can just search the internet for emulators, and point your Windows to one of those. This is what most activators do anyways. But running your own is also easy, if compiling and running a software is easy for you. I personally use vlmcsd.

I'm fully aware of the KMS stuff and how it works. But there are windows editions that are not licensed by and cannot be activated with KMS. I don't think there is any public way of pirating them apart from finding a working MAK key. No one seems to have digged into the SPPSvc and the internal working of Product Policy. (If you find something interesting that I missed, please let me know)

Unlike usual Enterprise editions, I don't think IoT Enterprise SKU will work with KMS. The only possible activation option seems to be with a PKEA key.

For a machine that never sees the internet, the IoT version runs in Deferred Activation state. So it is useful if it's for a intranet machine that never see the outside.

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

#348

I really think Microsoft needs to take a hard look at Windows and realize that it needs the ability to switch, install, or even decide at boot as a purpose built OS. Take gaming for example, I pretty much only use my PC for gaming (I prefer my Mac for general purpose stuff) and there is a lot there that is really unnecessary. But where this really becomes an issue is on devices like the Steam Deck. I installed Window…

"and realize that it needs the ability to switch, install, or even decide at boot as a purpose built OS."

They don't care. This won't bring them money. Showing you ads and tracking you will, so they'll continue doing it.

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

#349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're just proposing to move all the complexity of the browser into some other VM that would have to be shipped by default by all OS platforms before it could become useful. Java tried exactly this, and it never took off in the desktop OS world. It wasn't significantly slimmer than browsers either, so it wouldn't have addressed any of your concerns. Also, hyperlinking deep into and out of apps is still something tha…

> You're just proposing to move all the complexity of the browser into some other VM that would have to be shipped by default by all OS platforms before it could become useful. I'm not proposing that. I didn't propose any solution to this in my comment. For what its worth, I agree with you - another java swing style approach would be a terrible idea. And I have an irrational hate for docker. If I were in solution mod…

My thinking is that, ultimately, if you want to run the same code on Windows, MacOS, and a few popular Linux distros, and to do so on x86 and ARM, you need some kind of VM that translates an intermediate code to the machine code, and that implements a whole ton of system APIs for each platform. Especially if you want access to a GUI, networking, location, 3D graphics, Bluetooth, sound etc. - all of which have virtually no standardization between these platforms.

You'll then have to convince Microsoft, Apple, Google, IBM RedHat, Canonical, the Debian project, and a few others, to actually package this VM with their OSs, so that users don't have to manually choose to install it.

Then, you need to come up with some system of integrating this with, at a minimum, password managers, SAML and OAuth2, or you'll have something far less usable and secure than an equivalent web app. You'll probably have to integrate it with many more web technologies in fact, as people will eventually want to be able to show some web pages or web-formatted emails inside their apps.

So, my prediction is that any such effort will end-up reimplementing the browser, with little to no advantages when all is said and done.

Personally, I hate developing any web-like app. The GUI stack in particular is atrocious, with virtually no usable built-in controls, leading to a proliferation of toolkits and frameworks that do half the job and can't talk to each other. I'm hopeful that WASM will eventually allow more mature GUI frameworks to be used in web apps in a cross-platform manner, and we can forget about using a document markup language for designing application UIs. But otherwise, I think the web model is here to stay, and has in fact proven to be the most successful app ecosystem ever tried, by far (especially when counting the numerous iOS and Android apps that are entirely web views).

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

#350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

debloating does not mean "making it like XP/W7" - it means ripping out the horsecrap and unnecessairy components that are both unnecessairy and a waste of space and being able to control what goes on your system - sort of like what nix allows us to do; it also means having options to turn things on and off, ect. for the non tech savvy - windows is still a great choice for those wanting to simply game and not learn so…

For the enthusiasts who are doing the debloating, it's almost like they are gaming the system as they move from one level to another. Twenty years ago I had already been installing Windows XP to FAT32 volumes directly to be more compatible with W9x multibooting. I didn't know anybody else doing this (some thought it couldn't be done) but every time I installed XP you can see the names of every driver as it loads duri…

and i would wager that w11 system runs pretty fast as well

i do miss the xp's cleanup hotfix cache button though

I hope you have found yourself the MSMG toolkit for you testings

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