Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments
Search

News for nerds, stuff that matters

Slashdot Log In

Log In

Create Account  |  Retrieve Password

Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones

Posted by CmdrTaco on Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:23 AM
from the if-it-works dept.
Microsoft
Preedit writes "A free download that can cut Windows Vista's gargantuan footprint by half or more is developing a big following on the Internet. vLite is a configuration tool that lets users automatically delete a lot of unnecessary Vista components — such as Windows Media Player and MSN installer — to pare the OS down to a reasonable size. The software is catching on. An InformationWeek story notes that a forum that asks users to suggest new features has drawn nearly 50,000 page views. Meanwhile, Microsoft officials have themselves conceded that Vista is "bloated" and are developing the next version of Windows on a core called MinWin, which is smaller than Vista by an order of magnitude."
+ -
story

Related Stories

Submission: Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones by Preedit (1073358)
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones 50 Comments More /

 Full
 Abbreviated
 Hidden
More
Loading... please wait.

  • Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by somersault (912633) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:25AM (#22208278) Homepage Journal
    I'm failing to see any reason to upgrade to Vista at all (I don't even like Halo, so Halo 3 is a no no.. and if a lot of games start requiring Vista then I'll just have to move to console gaming).

    • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Funny)

      by dave420 (699308) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:29AM (#22208342)
      It's much faster than XP, uses your memory and other resources far more intelligently, and the performance benefits of DX10 over DX9 (even with some DX10 trickery involved) are things you simply can't find in any other OS out there, open source or otherwise. That's just an FYI.

      • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)

        by somersault (912633) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:33AM (#22208400) Homepage Journal
        That's funny, I used it on my uncle's 2.2Ghz Core 2 Duo (0.2 Ghz faster than my laptop, and they both have 2GB of RAM), and it was a pig compared to XP. Taking up 15GB of HD space and half my video memory for a fancy 3D interface what is essentially a file and program manager isn't what I call intelligent use of resources either.. even Microsoft seem to have noticed that, if you actually read the article..

        • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Firehed (942385) on Monday January 28 2008, @11:11AM (#22208880) Homepage
          I certainly can't think of a better way to manage resources than to make sure there's as much free RAM as possible. It's not like it's two or more orders of magnitude faster than reading from the hard drive or anything.

          Seriously, is anyone going to ever realize that unused RAM is wasted RAM? As long as it's smart about what's being swapped in and when, then so much the better. I'd love to see apps pre-cached.

          I'll give you hard drive space, not that it really matters these days with half a terabyte at under $100. But the rest of the system's resources are not consumed the same way, and as such unused resources are being wasted. I didn't buy 4GB just so I can win a pissing contest about how much RAM my system has free. I bought 4GB so my computer can use it. I don't care how it's allocated so long as it provides me a snappier experience (and it does).

          • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Insightful)

            by BrentH (1154987) on Monday January 28 2008, @11:08AM (#22208856)
            The GUI is definitely part of the GUI, or were you trying to argue otherwise? The OS is in this case Microsoft Windows Vista in it's entirety, not some arbitrary pieces of it. With Aero being enabled if possible automatically by the OS, and being an order of magnitude more resource consuming than for example OSX and Compiz, the OS is indeed much more sluggish than XP or some others. And let us not talk about the performance benefits of DX10 over DX9. Review and gamesites show time and time again Vista with DX10 is slower when compared to the same game on the same machine with DX9, and the benefits are minimal. Even Microsofts own latest Flight Simulator which was to be a DX10 showcase performs better on XP, and is visually nearly the same (checkout the various FS forums for more anecdotal evidence). Yes, Vista is better than XP in some aspects, but as a whole the OS just offers less than XP for many if not most. The pros are mostly pros on paper where the cons are immeadeately obvious, even for normal users.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by somersault (912633)
            I know fine that the OS does a lot more, but the improvements (which are really good ideas, like leaving out backwards compatibility in DX10 etc to get rid of some bloat) have been totally counteracted by the GUI for one (yeah I know you don't have to use Aero), and DRM, whatever the **** is causing the 'long goodbye' and so on.. and sure prefetching is also a good thing to do in some cases (though if it's done badly then things just slow down even more with loads of stuff that you don't want being prefetch

          • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)

            by Kamots (321174) on Monday January 28 2008, @11:36AM (#22209134)
            Just to help keep your viewpoint balanced... there's negative features in Vista as well (especially the 64-bit version).

            Here's the ones that I've run into as being major issues in my 4-5 months with Vista. There's others, but I either haven't personally run into them, or they're not particularly painful.

            1) Vista removed support for horizontal or vertical span modes with a multi-monitor setup. (well, more of they changed things up so that it's impossible for drivers supporting that to be written) If you're not aware of these modes, horizontal span mode for example allowed your software to treat your collection of displays as one really wide display... so a full-screen racing or flight sim would span all your displays not just one. XP supported this. Vista doesn't. Meaning that if I want to have a decent racing sim setup I've got to go back to XP. This is an issue with both 32 and 64 bit versions. There's a lot of speculation that it's related to the integrated DRM stuff Vista includes.

            2) The 64-bit version of Vista removes backwards compatability for 16-bit applications. I dunno about you, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the games I grew up with... and some of those games are good enough that horrible dated graphics don't matter.

            3) The 64-bit version of Vista requires you to specify EVERY TIME YOU BOOT that you want to use unsigned drivers. (You used to be able to specify in the mbr to always use them, but MS released at least 2 critical updates that disabled that) Perhaps this isn't an issue for the average Joe, but there's a decent number of aps out there that I use that utilize an unsigned driver. Then there's beta releases of video card drivers and the like.

            Long story short, I'm currently awaiting a new harddrive that's going to be a XP drive so that I can continue to use the functionality I should have. Vista may have improvements, but to me it's offset by the functionality they removed.

            As to why I'm not moving back to XP entirely? 64-bit Vista is actually a usable 64-bit OS. (64-bit XP never was really supported by hardware manufacturers) And there's DX10 which will, sometime, maybe, be a reason.

              • 2) The 64-bit version of Vista removes backwards compatability for 16-bit applications. I dunno about you, but sometimes I get nostalgic for the games I grew up with... and some of those games are good enough that horrible dated graphics don't matter.
                I understand the other points, but honestly... If you want to play the old 16-bit applications, run an emulator.
                That would be a solution, except that Microsoft's emulator [microsoft.com] doesn't run on Windows Vista Home Premium. Users of Virtual PC need Windows Vista Business or Windows Vista Ultimate. Apple, on the other hand, included the 68LC040 emulator with all editions of Mac OS X 7 through 9 for PowerPC-based computers and all editions of Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 for Intel-based computers.

          • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Interesting)

            by s_p_oneil (795792) on Monday January 28 2008, @11:52AM (#22209316) Homepage
            As someone who has tried Vista on 3 different systems (64-bit desktop, 32-bit desktop, and 32-bit laptop), I can honestly say the complaints about it are not FUD. It was completely unusable on the laptop and noticeably slower than XP on both desktops.

            I may try it again when SP1 comes out. As for the DX10 features, they can be given to XP and Linux users via OpenGL, which always gets new graphics card features before DirectX. Back when hardware T&L was introduced, it was available on OpenGL as soon as the video cards shipped, but it required a new major version of DirectX. The same is true with features like geometry/streaming shaders. It will be years before any game developer using DX can drop support for DX9. As a game developer myself, this problem will ensure that I continue using OpenGL for a long time.

              • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Insightful)

                by s_p_oneil (795792) on Monday January 28 2008, @04:17PM (#22213110) Homepage
                And you can say this because you're a graphics/games developer? My web site is http://sponeil.net/ [sponeil.net], and I know for a fact you're wrong. I've even written an article in a book published by nVidia. How do you think nVidia demos their new features when a new version of their video card comes out? Do you think they shipped the GeForce 8800 and said "Sorry folks, but you'll have to wait a year before you can even see it run a demo showing off any of the new features"?

                When you see a game that supports both DirectX and OpenGL, they run at the same frame rate. OpenGL might be 1FPS slower on Windows because Microsoft won't allow OpenGL to use full-screen exclusive mode. They made that choice because they were going out of their way to sink OpenGL.

                The only real reason NOT to use OpenGL is that ATI has crappy OpenGL drivers. They've been working to fix them, but I'm not sure where they are right now.

      • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)

        by lucifig (255388) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:36AM (#22208440)

        It's much faster than XP...
        Wha wha what? Maybe on paper but not in the real world. I have a 2 processor 3ghz Xeon machine with 2 gb of ram. Not made for Vista admittedly but still a fairly decent machine. With a clean install of Vista it takes me around 5-10 seconds to delete a file. To delete a simple file sitting on my desktop. Again, I live in the real world things may be different in the Marketing world.

        • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)

          by everphilski (877346) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:49AM (#22208640) Journal
          Something is wrong then because I have a low-end Sempron notebook with 1.5gb RAM, vista home and deletion is almost instantaneous...

          Vista isn't perfect, but it's better than most of the (uninformed or lacking in experience) critics give it credit for.

            • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Interesting)

              by PitaBred (632671) <slashdotNO@SPAMpitabred.dyndns.org> on Monday January 28 2008, @01:12PM (#22210204) Homepage
              So... you're saying that Vista runs great if you throw top-of-the-line hardware at it? Hell, I have a laptop that was near top of the line a little over a year ago, and it doesn't even have 4GB of RAM, or any SD cards for ReadyBoost. Try that machine with XP... it'll FLY. Or Linux even. Just because Vista is fast on new hardware does NOT mean that it's an efficiently designed OS. When you're running as many cycles through there as you are, you don't notice the tons that are wasted.

              If you're gonna recommend Vista, at least throw in the caution that you have to have a machine that you paid over $1500US for in the last year.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by russ1337 (938915)

          With a clean install of Vista it takes me around 5-10 seconds to delete a file.

          I had the same problem. My first experience with Vista was on my Presario c700 with 1GB RAM. After the first boot ( and once everything had settled) I started doing all the things that needed to be done like deleting the majority of the unnecessary desktop shortcuts. After hitting the delete key, I got a dialog something like "Vista is calculating the time to carry out this action"...... And it took about 15 to 20 Seconds for

          • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Interesting)

            by cHiphead (17854) on Monday January 28 2008, @12:19PM (#22209592)
            Try using an off the shelf name brand computer with Vista, without any customization and cleanup, and you'll see the 5-10 secs to delete a file. Out of the box speed is a must for a consumer OS, in that realm, Vista is epic fail. Core2Duo 2.4ghz, 4GB ram (of which only 3 is being used, apparently. !!!WTF!!!) I'm glad its so terrible, though, its great job security. (What, you thought that pos was anywhere near my own machines?)

            Cheers.

      • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Funny)

        by Hatta (162192) on Monday January 28 2008, @02:03PM (#22210946) Journal
        Are you high?

        by dave420 (699308) on Monday January 28, @10:29AM (#22208342)
        Oh, I guess so.

        • Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Informative)

          by everphilski (877346) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:47AM (#22208604) Journal
          Add a gig of RAM ($20-$30) and you will notice a market improvement in Vista performance. I bought a $300 Vista laptop computer back in August and added a gig of RAM. Dual-booted XP and Vista for awhile and wound up getting rid of the XP partition because there was no noticeable difference in performance.

          Yes, Vista loves the RAM, but the other part of the equation is the 512M of RAM you have (which is minuscule by today's standards) is also being shared by the video card. By default, at least on my machine, it would share up to 128M with the video card, that's 25% of your RAM!

  • Beta worked well (Score:4, Informative)

    by psychicsword (1036852) * <The.psychicsword@com> on Monday January 28 2008, @10:26AM (#22208284)
    This software has been out for a while as a beta I have used it and it works well. I haven't used the newer version yet but I assume based on nLite that it can only get better from there.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by russ1337 (938915)
      I used nlite after needing to slipstream my RAID drivers into my windows install. (no floppy drive.) At the same time I removed all the bloat (media player, explorer, msn, explore XP intro etc, and included a bunch of updates with the tool offline-updates [heise-security.co.uk].

      I considered trying vlite on the recovery disks that I made with my laptop (presario c700 (1GB RAM)) right before I overwrote it with Ubuntu. But there wouldn't be much point as the Ubuntu has proven to be much more responsive and offers the encrypte

  • Slashdot = Clicks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ynososiduts (1064782) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:26AM (#22208302)
    Well they (just got/are going to get) a WHOLE lot more..

  • The next step... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Chonnawonga (1025364) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:26AM (#22208304)
    Great. Now somebody turn this into a virus, and we're all set.
  • .. and then pushes it into a freezing lake?

  • vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon (813062) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:33AM (#22208396)
    ... unless and until it removes the draconian, RIAA- and MPAA-friendly DRM from the OS, and returns control of the PC back to the user who bought it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by dave420 (699308)
      Care to enlighten us to this crippling DRM that is dragging Vista down? As I've yet to be stopped doing anything with any media I have. I rip DVDs, I take off DRM from downloaded tracks, everything I've done on XP and Linux.

      • Re:vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by MightyYar (622222) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:48AM (#22208628)
        I think people are upset because it will preempt you from doing these things with next-generation media. DVDs are technically protected, but only the hardware enforces this. People are upset because MS moved some of the support into software, and at such a level that it actually slows things down a bit and makes the OS more complicated even for people who do nothing at all with video.

      • Re:vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Experiment 626 (698257) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:55AM (#22208726)

        Care to enlighten us to this crippling DRM that is dragging Vista down? As I've yet to be stopped doing anything with any media I have. I rip DVDs, I take off DRM from downloaded tracks, everything I've done on XP and Linux.

        Okay, so suppose I wanted to install a backdoor on your system (this is more or less what DRM is, a way for hostile third parties to exercise control over a computer that trumps the owner's wishes). It'll only sap your system resources by a few percent; you probably won't even notice it's there. And in return, you'll gain the ability to do something completely useless with your system, like how DRM opens the door for you to enjoy "protected media".

        Not a very good deal, is it? Vista's DRM may not be "crippling", but it definitely should be an optional install.

  • nLite (Score:4, Informative)

    by Nimey (114278) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:36AM (#22208442) Homepage Journal
    The same people also have a tool called nLite, which does the same stuff for Windows XP. It works well for stuff like slipstreaming SATA drivers, but I've had a few problems when I used more advanced features like removing un-needed Windows components -- when installing stuff like .NET from Windows Update, Windows required me to put in the XP install disc, which obviously is non-workable for user desktops.

    To be fair, that was an older version (1.3?), and they've had a couple of releases since then.

    • Re:nLite (Score:5, Informative)

      by Sentry21 (8183) on Monday January 28 2008, @12:49PM (#22209896) Journal
      nLite is definitely worth mentioning. I took a Windows XP Professional CD (580MB or so) and stripped out all the drivers that I never use, apps I never use, and functionality I never use, and it took it down to about 150MB. I also added in Service Pack 3, Firefox, Acrobat Reader, and drivers for my hardware, then customized it with registry tweaks beforehand (e.g. turning off the 'Welcome to Windows' page, disabling 'hide inactive notification icons', and so on), set it up to join a domain, added a new Windows theme (Royale, from MCE), and then set it up with an automated install with our company's volume key.

      The end result? A tedious two-hour install procedure ('Oh, is it asking you something? Ok, just click 'Next'... greyed out? Click on the... yeah, there you go...') turned into a TEN MINUTE INSTALL. The only thing I haven't managed to do yet is to set up a USB drive as a bootable volume, to install from a flash drive to speed installation even further.

      Definitely check it out if you have to do XP installs more than once a year.

  • Comparing MinWin and Vista doesn't hold up (Score:4, Insightful)

    by adonoman (624929) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:37AM (#22208472)
    MinWin is a non-graphical kernel that doesn't do much more than boot up and host a webserver. It's not exactly a full functional operating system, so yes it's going to be considerably smaller.

    • MinWin is a non-graphical kernel that doesn't do much more than boot up and host a webserver. It's not exactly a full functional operating system, so yes it's going to be considerably smaller.

      Point is that by getting the cruft out of the kernel customization will be easier and the result probably still overall smaller.

      Amazing ideas these MS boys have these days. Imagine an operating system with a small, even micro, kernel. To this the user can add the operating system toys that he needs around that kernel, resulting in a lean, mean operating system that does what he needs and nothing more.

      I hear some crazy Finnish guy had a similar idea once but nobody listened to him.

  • Add free version (Score:5, Informative)

    by christurkel (520220) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:39AM (#22208504) Homepage Journal
    A free software tool that promises to strip down the Windows Vista operating system -- which even some Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT) officials have called "bloated" -- to a minimalist state is attracting big interest on the Internet.

    vLite, created by developer Dino Nuhagic, automatically removes a number of non-essential Windows Vista components in order to pare the OS's heavy footprint by half or more.

    vLite allows users to preselect numerous Vista features for automatic removal prior to installing the OS on their personal computers. Among them: Windows Media Player, Windows Photo Viewer, MSN Installer, Wallpapers, SlideShow, Windows Mail and other utilities.

    "It's not just about hard disk space. There is also an increase in OS responsiveness and you don't have to tolerate all kinds of things you don't use," said Nuhagic, in an e-mail to InformationWeek explaining why he launched the project.

    vLite, however, isn't for the technically timid. The software warns that the changes it imposes on Vista are "permanent, so be sure in your choice."

    Nuhagic said he doesn't know exactly how many downloads vLite has seen -- but a forum that asks users to submit suggestions for the next version has drawn almost 50,000 views.

    The emergence of tools like vLite reflect the frustrations voiced by many computer users over Vista's bulk and resource requirements.

    Loaded with an abundance of features and tools designed to ease navigation and bolster security, the Home Premium and Ultimate editions of Vista both require a whopping 15 GBs of available disk space for installation. By contrast, Windows XP -- Vista's predecessor -- requires 1.5 GB of available space for installation of the Professional version.

    With Vista bearing a footprint 10 times larger than XP's, even Microsoft officials are expressing concerns about Windows' growing waistline. Speaking last year at the University of Illinois, Microsoft distinguished engineer Eric Traut said the operating system had become bloated.

    "A lot of people think of Windows as this large, bloated operating system. That may be a fair characterization," said Traut.

    In response to such concerns, Traut said Microsoft has adopted a new, modular approach to OS development that will yield more streamlined products beginning with Windows 7 -- a successor to Windows Vista that's expected to be available some time in 2010.

    The approach calls for Windows developers to use a bare bones version of the OS -- dubbed MinWin -- as the building block for their next programming effort. MinWin is built on about 25 MBs of data -- making it smaller than Windows Vista by an order of magnitude.

    Until it's ready, there's always programs like vLite.

  • Not The Operating System (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gsslay (807818) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:43AM (#22208542)
    I don't think it's fair to call Vista a bloated operating system. You look at the list of crud that this tool removes; that's not Operating System, that's application crud that should be optional in the install anyway.

    Just because MS wants it to be part of the compulsory install (all the better to monopolise your computer and online profile) doesn't make it part of the operating system. I mean, come on, what makes MSN Installer part of an OS?
  • nLite let you tune the core OS install - exposing uninstall options the 'default' installer, letting you fold in service packs and patches, drivers, pre-sorting license keys, users, and custom settings. When you get done, you can do a clean slate install and end up with something that won't take another four hours of tweaking to get where you wish was a starting point directly from the ISO.

    I started using nLite to build an XP distro that would run on a CF card. Running minimal services, I noticed how much faster it was too -- became the install for my gaming rig. Space was also a concern when building VMWare images, so starting with a mean clean install was a godsend. Granted, it took a couple tries - it is very easy to kill off a critical bit when you do this sort of chainsaw sculpture to the OS. Once you get it right, it is a fantastic (free!) tool. It is wonderful to see the same technology available to Vista.

  • We'll see MinWin in 2010... not (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dpbsmith (263124) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:51AM (#22208672) Homepage
    Yeah, right. A big company's approach to all difficult problems is to imagine a solution for them and create a name for that solution. Problem? Vista is bloated. Solution: create the name "MinWin."

    If Microsoft wanted to reduce Vista's bloat, they'd just reduce it.

    They might, if they had any good faith about it, analyze and SQA vLite and license it or offer and approved version. Or structure the present Vista so that it installs a reasonable core and allows you to "opt in" to the extra stuff.

    What's likely happening is a turf battle between all the managers that want their bloat in the product, are threatened by any suggestions that it be trimmed, and will fight it's being trimmed to the death--or at least for a couple of years when they move on to their next assignment.

    If MinWin happens at all, what will happen is that they'll trim Vista by 20% and then pack on 100% of new bloat.

  • Now microsoft can prove it (Score:5, Funny)

    by jollyreaper (513215) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:53AM (#22208694)
    Microsoft alway said Vista wasn't fat, it was just big-boned. Now they can prove it!

  • MinWin? What's next? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by filbranden (1168407) on Monday January 28 2008, @11:11AM (#22208878)

    First, they said that 95 was buggy and that 98 fixed them. Then, 98 was too unstable and XP was rock solid. Last year, XP was too old and Vista was new and shiny. Now, Vista is bloated and MinWin is lean.

    Could perhaps Microsoft decide if their products are good or bad?

  • Benchmarks (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Toreo asesino (951231) on Monday January 28 2008, @12:34PM (#22209700) Journal
    What I'd be interested in seeing is benchmarks for desktop and 3d performance. It's all very well saying "ooooh look at how much shit it removes!" if it has no actual impact on performance. Most of the things it appears this thing removes will have barely any impact on hard disc space, cpu cycles or memory usage - MSN Installer for instance; removing that will free up a couple of megabytes of hard-disc space at best.

    Anyone got any useful benchmarks?

  • WARNING: Use with care!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Captain Sarcastic (109765) * on Monday January 28 2008, @12:40PM (#22209790)
    I tried it, and it did such a thorough job of stripping down my system that my wallpaper of Pamela Anderson was replaced with a skeleton.

    • Re:Thanks, but (Score:5, Insightful)

      by dave420 (699308) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:35AM (#22208424)
      But what if there are some things you want to load (say, DirectX 10) which you can't load in Gentoo? Are you supposed to rejoice in the fact you got to choose which components you wanted in your functionality-lacking OS install? Being able to customise an OS install is not as important as being able to use that OS to perform tasks you want. I can't use Gentoo because it doesn't run the applications I need (Adobe, Office, games). Not that I'm knocking Gentoo, I just don't see how your argument is anything but fanboyish nose-cutting/face-spiting posturing, desperately trying to ilicit "hear hear"s from the rest of the slashdot crowd.

    • I'll stick with Gentoo. Load what I use, don't load what I don't.
      This is sage advice for you and I. However, we constitute maybe 0.05% of the populace (I do not mean to be elitist). You may find me on the other side soon in the unwashed 99.95% of the populace as I once enjoyed spending a whole Saturday installing a new Linux distro or "emerging" and acquiring a few new packages I didn't have.

      I do not have this kind of time anymore. The other day I received an e-mail from a friend. He wanted to know how he could get the absolute most out of his hardware for a very specific game he plays (World of Warcraft). I began with recommending plain old Linux and then installing wine and trying to run it. But I soon realized how hopeless this would be as I think he has a nice ATI card that once was top of the line five months ago.

      So I told him to get a fresh XP install and not install anything else on it. Perhaps this MinWin or core of a Windows will satisfy him? Perhaps it will also satisfy me in finding simplicity in an operating system that can run my games and programs that are only for win32?

      • Re:Thanks, but (Score:4, Informative)

        by TheRaven64 (641858) on Monday January 28 2008, @10:58AM (#22208748) Homepage Journal
        I've not used Gentoo, but if you want to load what you want and not load what you don't then a source-based distribution has a lot of advantages. Try running ./configure --help on one of the packages you use frequently. There are typically a large range of options and distributing every possible combination in binary form is impossible. By selecting the ones you want, you can often eliminate several dependencies (which have their own dependencies and so on).

All trademarks and copyrights on this page are owned by their respective owners. Comments are owned by the Poster. The Rest © 1997-2009 Geeknet, Inc.