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)
Slashdot = Clicks (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks, but (Score:1, Insightful)
vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Thanks, but (Score:5, Insightful)
Comparing MinWin and Vista doesn't hold up (Score:4, Insightful)
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:vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:3, Insightful)
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?
Re:vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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.
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.
Re:Comparing MinWin and Vista doesn't hold up (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Insightful)
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?
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).
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:2, Insightful)
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 hardware specs that went into that decision. Compatibility, reliability, user interface, etc.
The true test will be when Vista SP1 is put head-to-head with XP SP3. If Vista can't perform at least EQUALLY as well as XP, then I predict most people will wait the 2 years to see if Windows 7 will be worth it.
Re:We'll see MinWin in 2010... not (Score:2, Insightful)
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 because the people adding the options don't have to respond to clueless people misusing them. I noticed it with wget. The version I downloaded would die on an access violation if I used -np and -L. Which is legal as far as I can see, but the latest build crashes with that command line.
Now since it's free and open source, I just fiddled with the batch file that called it to work in a different way. But if it was commercial and as widely used as Windows that break would trigger an avalanche of tech support calls.
The economics are different in commercial software - you're better off offering a limit set of options and making sure you test every combination of them on the few supported platforms. With open source anyone can add an option, anyone can introduce a bug and anyone can fix it.
In fact I think Microsoft sit in the middle of scale of customizability - somewhere between Linux which is highly customizable and Mac which is almost totally locked down. They do offer embedded versions of desktop OSs incidentally which are more modular and customizable. But those are sold to engineers in very small volumes, and presumably have more expensive support contracts.
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:1, Insightful)
If Microsoft would strip out the DRM and fix the plethora of little minor bugs, I would full recommend it to anyone, because it really *is* a nice step up. Not amazing enough to warrant a "BUY IT RIGHT NOW, UPGRADE YOUR HARDWARE IF YOU HAVE TO", but good enough that I'd say "Yeah, go ahead and keep it on that new computer. You'll like it."
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:1, Insightful)
Oh and one other thing: Search functionality in Vista is a piece of shit. Go back to Windows 2000 and try to find a file on a network share which contains a specific text string within it. Then try it in XP. Finally try it in Vista. Once you have done this come back here and tell me how much MS has improved their search functionality.
Um, no. (Score:1, Insightful)
You can connect your AVG-protected computer to a LAN! You just can't use it to protect the entire LAN (e.g. on your firewall) or install it on more than one computer.
Of course that's entirely irrelevant because AVG is not the only free AV software around.
Benchmarks (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone got any useful benchmarks?
Re:vista ultra-lite - rm /dev/sda1/* (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:3, Insightful)
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:vLite will not turn Vista into a usable OS... (Score:3, Insightful)
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 any say in how I view it. I can view it on my computer or my PS3. I can loan it to a friend who can do the same. I can make myself a backup. I can shift the format and put it on my iPod. It's nobody's business but my own.
The implication of "the copyright holder [choosing to] restrict to a digital path" is that I don't own what I paid for. Here I have, in my hands, an HD DVD. But I don't own that copy of the movie; I have a license, revokable at the holders' discretion, with whatever conditions they want to attach to it at the time of purchase or in the future. Hypothetically speaking, if they could find a technological answer to require me to do ten jumping jacks before the video would play, that would be doable. While that may seem a whole lot stupider than restricting what path I can watch the video on, it's really the same concept. Either the copyright holder has a right to tell me the conditions I can watch his content that I have purchased under, or he doesn't.
Personally, I think he shouldn't and I care very little for what justification copyright holders in the guise of the RIAA/MPAA/etc use. If the MPAA tries to screw me in that manner, at least I would expect it and understand. They have their own interests and they obviously feel DRM helps them accomplish those. Microsoft, however, did not produce the movies or the protected content, so why are they selling out their customer for the MPAA? At the very least, I will never approve such a move.
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.