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."
Order of magnitude description is not quite right. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:vista ultra-lite - rm /dev/sda1/* (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:3, Interesting)
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 98.5% empty hd.
Re:vista ultra-lite - rm /dev/sda1/* (Score:1, Interesting)
As I point out here [slashdot.org], AVG is not free if you use it outside the home, on a network, or in business. 4 years license for their AVG Internet Security (they sell it in 2-year increments, so 3 years means ypu have to pay for 4) is $140.00. $900.00 pc + $140.00 = $1,040.00
Also, I provided a like where you can get a MacBook for $1,019.
The mac is cheaper than the pc if you're going to keep it for more than 2 years, and you intend to network it (and who doesn't network their laptop) or you intend to use it outside the home (and who doesn't bring their laptop outside the home, and connect to wireless networks).
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.
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:3, Interesting)
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 firing up qemu or xen or vmware)
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:4, Interesting)
Cheers.
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Very good news for VMWare and gamers (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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.
DX10? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anyway, whilst I'm no gentoo fan, I love debian and ubuntu. You can run openoffice.org on either and I challenge you to tell me what it is you use on MS Office that OO.o doesn't provide. You can probably run MSOffice under Wine anyway.
And as for games... Well the Orange box works as well under Ubuntu as it does on Vista. Load times are slightly quicker too.
What Adobe software were you talking about?
Adobe make a lot of software.
Re:Vista XP is here! (Score:3, Interesting)
Bare Necessities (Score:2, Interesting)