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Software Tool Strips Windows Vista To Bare Bones
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."
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.
This tool works by modifying the original install disk and you make your own more compact version of the installer. It does not work by modifying your currently installed OS.
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..
which is totally what she said
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.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
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.
CDE open sourced! https://sourceforge.net/projects/cdesktopenv/
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.
+++ UGUCAUCGUAUUUCU
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!
The unwashed masses can just install Ubuntu. I was a doubter until I tried it a month ago -- it installed in 10 minutes painlessly and everything Just Works.
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.
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).
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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So: http://www2.grisoft.com/doc/buy/us/crp/0 2 years AVG Antivirus: $39
- 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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The Apple is cheaper over 3 or more years.
Kevin Smith on Prince
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.
Rivatuner can plot a nice graph of local and non-local video memory in use, among a zillion of other cool things.