Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones 472
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."
Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Insightful)
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).
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Of course unused RAM isn't wasted if you're not doing anything. I want my OS to use some ram, but most I want to be used by the applications I'm running on top of the OS. Most people don't do most of their work inside the OS itself. They do their work inside the applications running on top of the OS and if the OS is hogging all of the RAM then their work will take longer as RAM constraints get tight and everything slows down. No OS in this
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Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Funny)
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OMG! You got GoogleNewsed! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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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. There is absolutely no reason to keep the old cruft in the OS just to support the odd nostalgia trip. (I get them too, but I have no problem f
Virtual PC doesn't run on Vista Home Premium (Score:4, Informative)
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This is wrong. The Video driver subsystem in Vista is entirely different; however what you area referring to is a specific feature removed from the NVidia drivers.
So you have a couple of choices, use the Vista Dual View mode (if you only have one card) and run your game inside a Window instead of full screen (tell the game to remove the Window Border so it looks full screen). The game will play inside the WDDM Aero inte
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This I realize; however, I remember that ATI was working on enabling this for Vista, but not sure of the status of that project.
NVidia has said several things 'couldn't' be done in Vista, and then ATI provides the feature and NVidia runs back to the drawing board with a me too version in their driver. This has been a large part of the driver fight NVidia and Microsoft have had, as NVidia keep not wanting to implement features, claiming tec
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Dosbox is an x86 emulator that's specifically designed to run old games properly; clocks them down, provides a virtual soundblaster card (amoung others) and so on. Works great.
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Informative)
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!
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512M is not miniscule. (Score:3, Informative)
Any OS that needs 1 Gig of RAM to run properly is a bloated , badly written POS which should never have escaped from the lab.
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers.
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:5, Informative)
Vista isn't perfect, but it's better than most of the (uninformed or lacking in experience) critics give it credit for.
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Bullshit. It isn't installed by default, but can easily be activated:
Use software explorer or Click Start, Control Panel, Programs, and then Turn Windows Features on or off. In the list, scroll down and select Telnet Client
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He means VGA when he says analog. And it's supported, but "crippled" so that with many forms of media, performs only somewhat better (540p) than that S-Video port, or is completely disabled.
Your S-Video port isn't crippled below its full capabilities because in the MAFIAA's eyes, it's already sufficiently crippled to begin with. (Limited to 480i output.)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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
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You know plenty of games (crysis [neowin.net],hellgate, etc use their full DX10 capability [techmixer.com] on DX9 and DX10 capable hardware and also in windows XP, right? It's not like vista uses up a drastically larger amount of memory or actually adds features you couldn't find in say linux [ubuntu.com], is it?
All DX10 has done is added small graphic effects for transparency with water and smoke, that although they look beautiful, aren't the real reason DX10 was created. DX10 was created with virtualization in mind [chase.net.au] so microso
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(although the first page with charts I see is here: http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=3044&p=1 [anandtech.com] )
If Vista has better memory management than XP, then explain how the same program uses 250 to 500MB MORE on Vista than XP.
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That's not entirely true. There's a great deal of activity that occurs in virtual memory that is not bound discreetly to "actual memory". Particularly:
When an application loads, the lower segment of the address space is allocated to the kernel (which is shared between all programs). Next, space for application code is allocated, and then libraries are allocated. When instruction segment
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Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Funny)
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But otherwise, you really shouldn't run into any deal-breakers as long as your machine has enough RAM (2-4 gigs), and RAM is cheap.
I think this really helps your argument. If I'm going to buy a new computer it's probably going to have 2-4+ GB of RAM anyway, so it makes sense for me to take advantage of the latest and greatest technological achievements with the new features provided by Vista.
Hardware is cheap, let the programs that want to use it use it. If I install a program on Vista that needs more RAM because I'm running low on system resources, I can just go get more.
If it works it works.
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As the unfortunate soul in my company that has to primarily deal with Microsoft, I was in the unique spot of writing our company's position document on it. In short: Vista is unsupported. There's a lot more than hard
Re:vista ultra-lite - rm /dev/sda1/* (Score:5, Insightful)
3 years running Ad-aware, Spybot, and CCleaner: $0
Now, I don't run Vista either, but saying it's cheaper to buy an iMac is a little disingenuous.
AVG not free for use on LANs or outside the home (Score:3, Informative)
From the AVG free version license: http://free.grisoft.com/doc/98/us/frt/0 [grisoft.com]
So: http://www2.grisoft.com/doc/buy/us/crp/0 [grisoft.com] 2 years AVG Antivirus: $39
- or -
2 y
Re:AVG not free for use on LANs or outside the hom (Score:3, Informative)
- or -
2 years AVG Internet Security: $70
So, 3 years of AVG Internet security is another $140.00. - total is $1,040.00
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By the time you add the cost of 3 years antivirus,
Free as in beer [grisoft.com]
3 years other malware/bugware,
Free as in beer [safer-networking.org]
etc., its cheaper to buy an iMac.
Not free as in $1199. [apple.com]
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That being said, for a good user, spyware isn't really a problem (my spyware problems essentially are zilch just by a) not installing any random program that promotes itself, and b) using Firef
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Sure I did - look at the title: vista ultra-lite - rm /dev/sda1/*
That won't work in Windows, but it will work great on Windows :-)
Actually, "fdisk /dev/sda, d, 1, w, q" works even better.
We all know step 2 - reboot.
Beta worked well (Score:4, Informative)
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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
Wouldn't it be better to wait? (Score:2)
Slashdot = Clicks (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Slashdot = Clicks (Score:5, Funny)
The next step... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The next step... (Score:5, Informative)
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1. Make a crappy bloated OS that even non geeks think is a stinking pile of poo.
2. Release a program to strip out all the unnecessary stuff (90%??)
3. Add a virus to said useful piece of software.
4. ???!?!
5. Profit!! \o/
Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones.. (Score:5, Funny)
vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think many peoples' problem with DRM is the implication of that point. It's the movement to a society where nobody owns anything, and customers become renters subject to whatever whims the licensor wants to make--even if we "purchased" our product before they had those whims.
In other words, it's the issue of license versus ownership. If I own something, for example my copy of an HD DVD, then nobody has
Re:vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:4, Insightful)
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)
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)
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)
Re:Comparing MinWin and Vista doesn't hold up (Score:5, Funny)
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.
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Re:Comparing MinWin and Vista doesn't hold up (Score:5, Funny)
That depends if they [gnu.org] Hurd [wikipedia.org] him.
Even if they did, it might not Mach [wikipedia.org] any difference.
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Add free version (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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>> I thought that was deemed non competitive? I'm looking for a summary on that
Not The Operating System (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
Order of magnitude description is not quite right. (Score:2, Interesting)
Very good news for VMWare and gamers (Score:5, Informative)
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.
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Default XP Install [flickr.com] - 22 processes, commit charge 105 MB
Custom XP Install [flickr.com] - 17 processes, commit charge 52 MB
The difference is astronomical. It installs faster, boots faster, runs faster, and shuts down faster. Definitely worth the time, even just for one install.
We'll see MinWin in 2010... not (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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It's hard enough to test the current limited set of installation options. vLite gives far more possibilities and would therefore need far more testing. Most likely a commercial company that did it would get a reputation for producing unstable software. Microsoft don't have a perfect reputation with the limited options they offer now of course, but offering nLite would make things worse.
Open source stuff can do this of course, but that's
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Now microsoft can prove it (Score:5, Funny)
MinWin? What's next? (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Who cares about 15GByte? (Score:2, Interesting)
a) New PC. Has at least 400Gbyte HD (ok, maybe 120 if its a laptop). 15Gbyte is a very minor fraction.
Windows 3.1 used a larger part of the 120Mbyte HD my first PC had.
b) You buy it, and pay $$$ for it: 15Gbyte right now is the equivalent of 3 bucks. Thats about 1% of what you payed for the OS. Neglectable.
I rather have the convinience of never having to touch the install medium again, _and_ shadow copies of system files, ect, than having a 99.5% instead of
Benchmarks (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone got any useful benchmarks?
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WARNING: Use with care!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Thanks, but (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Thanks, but (Score:4, Informative)
That is a Convenience Some Cannot Afford (Score:5, Insightful)
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:That is a Convenience Some Cannot Afford (Score:4, Informative)
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Sure, there's no way you're being elitist by referring to the majority as "the unwashed masses"...
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Ubuntu with WINE would still be worth a try, as it is rather newbie-friendly.
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MS makes an OS like this - Windows Embedded [microsoft.com]. The philosophy appeals to me on some level, but for a consumer OS there are some negative implications. For instance, if I buy a new game that uses ActiveX but I chose not to install ActiveX when I installed the OS... well, now there is a search for my Windows disk and a reboot in my future and people will bitch about Windows requiring the original disk and reboots. Even if the reb
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I think this can be true for most Microsoft products. You just have to wade through the menus at intstall time. Their defaults are designed for "most people". I don't install Clippy (or the eight alternativies), and it's smaller and better because of that. I'm just curious how many people have set up a Linux box and then spent the same time (a day or two) configuring a Windows install. Because, I'm willing to bet that Windows becomes more lean and secure etc. w
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