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In Reply to: RE: A generic question about light OSs. posted by beppe61 on April 28, 2015 at 00:09:14
I have been working on slimming WIN 10/64 bit for the last few months.
At this point I am down to 700 mB when you add up the folders and boot files in c: but WINDOWS "says" it is around 850. I figure something similar to what happens in the registry where WINDOWS leaves lots of space for who knows what.
My SXS folder is smaller than SYSWOW at this point - 36 mB for SXS which is now mainly CATALOGs and MANIFESTS. Anyone who has looked within WINDOWS will realize this is almost unbelievable. Many thought that SXS is untouchable. It is not. SYSWOW is around 45 mB.
Of course, it is a very dedicated player at this point. I am using JPlay so it is built around that. I have retained the thesycon control panels and the JPlay ones along with file explorer, and task manager which I keep in the TASK BAR. Everything I need is right there easy to access. Included there is regedit and command line.
Needless to say it loads and closes down very quickly and is completely stable.
I now know what is required to retain. I can post a list if there is any interest.
I recommend starting with NTLite to get lots of stuff out of the way. This gets you started at around 3gB.
I am now starting on the registry which is gigantic and picky about what it will allow you to remove.
I have discovered some good tricks which I would gladly post.
All begins with changing permissions to Everyone.
Still a far cry from the 18mB XP that I used with cMP/PLAY.
JPlay requires almost nothing from WINDOWS other than the basic files which are required for it to work at all, similar to cMP/PLAY plus it sounds very fine. The new one, of course, is what I am speaking about.
In my unhumble opinion all OS slimming owes its existence to "Serge"/Сергей Степанов who brought this to so many people at the cPLAY forum so many years ago.
I find the small(er) OS to sound superior - not night and day but plenty of goodness to make it worthwhile.
Not for the faint of heart or the easily discouraged. You better have something like SNAPSHOT to make images of your last working OS since you will make mistakes and do not want to start from the beginning.
You cannot do this in a day but you can, once you know what you cannot get rid of, get it mostly done in a week. WINDOWS will not let go of everything at once. It will let you delete to you heart's content but it won't re-start.
WINDOWS doesn't really care which files are deleted at any certain time but it will not let you delete too much at one time.
I have found if you leave everything you want to retain running it will not let you delete the files needed for those things to work which is very handy. Nonetheless, towards the end it will let you delete things that it needs to restart!
This is a very scattered and condensed outline.
Follow Ups:
Would be very interested in a list of files/etc. to keep for 10 if you have time. The worst part about OS slimming is exactly that - not having any knowledge beforehand of what you can keep and what you cannot, and having to painstakingly backup/snapshot/etc. and rebooting to make sure what you just deleted is not essential (with some educated guesses along the way, of course).
Also, would like to say this is one of the best responses to a post I've seen on this forum in a while. Really lights the fire under one's butt, so to speak, to venture into some largely uncharted territory.Have you also posted over at Tir Na Hifi? You sound similar to another former cMP'er that made his way over there for our discussions of slimming Win 7/8 in jesuscheung's Windows tweaks thread some time ago.
Edits: 05/04/15
Hi and thank you sincerely for the very valuable reply.
Unfortunately my knowledge of SW is very poor so i cannot take profit of all the precious advice and recommendations.
So i have to stick with an OS in its stock form. The risk to damage it is very high. I am sure i would prune away something needed for the OS to work (already did that).
However my question is very basic, maybe trivial.
There are OSs able to run on very weak HW platforms, like mini pc with even Atom cpus or similar, 1GB of Ram and some GB of mass storage.
I see these OSs as clearly basic but also very efficient because they are able to get the most out of very little HW.
So this for me is the direction to go.
I see Android intended mainly for mobiles ... it is not a complete OS in its present distributions. Drivers are also an issue.
I do not know the Apple world and the fact that it is a very closed world i do not like.
So i decided to stick with Windows also for a reason of drivers availability mostly.
Windows 10 is too new.
To me a reasonable choice is then Windows 8.1 Core.
I am quite sure that a stock 8.1 Core with a nice SW player on a decent HW should sound very very good.
I have here a small Pipo X7 ... a mini pc with Atom cpu that comes with 8.1 with Bing preinstalled.
The "thing" has overheating issues (bad design of cooling system, almost not existing) but the sound i have heard even from its headphone out is very beautiful ... musical ... i would not say analog but ...And i am convinced now that is not the Pipo but the OS the reason of this sound.
Another viable option would be Linux in one of its distributions.
But not 7 ... i am quite convinced of this.
So the end all the ramblings the solution for me is to select a OS able to run properly also on HWs with limited resources.
And then install it on a serious HW, like an Haswell with 8GB and some 250 SSD ... and it's done.
So i am leaning in this direction.However i see that HW requirements for Windows 10 are going to be the same that the ones for 8 ... good !
" Windows 8.1
If you want to run Windows 8.1 on your PC, here's what it takes:
- Processor: 1 gigahertz (GHz) or faster with support for PAE, NX, and SSE2 (more info)
- RAM: 1 gigabyte (GB) (32-bit) or 2 GB (64-bit)
- Hard disk space: 16 GB (32-bit) or 20 GB (64-bit)
- Graphics card: Microsoft DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM driver "Very good.
Thanks a lot again.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 04/30/15 04/30/15 04/30/15 04/30/15 04/30/15 04/30/15 04/30/15 04/30/15
If you get something like SNAPSHOT to capture a working OS there is nothing to fear. The worst thing is just having to go back and start again, another reason for smaller steps.
From what I saw of LINUX - those are surprisingly large - not much, if any smaller, than a small WINDOWS.
The most important aspect is the PLAYER. At this point from what I have heard from those I trust is that there is not a LINUX player as good as JPlay or MQN, and for me, MQN just would not work as much as I admire its simplicity. On the other hand JPlay has the advantage of not needing any WINDOWS Media stuff to work which is a great advantage in my opinion.
Of course, one does need access to another computer for making the images and there are files you can remove but not from a working computer. Some things get loaded at startup that are never needed - but once in action WINDOWS will not let go of them. If they are not there to begin with, all is fine. These are mainly icon files - getting rid of icons makes a difference!
The great thing about 10 is you can download it. If you never connect the machine to the internet ... Of course, after you finish with NTLite the machine will not be able to connect to the internet.
Be adventurous - give it a try!
10 makes an excellent platform.
I would not recommend using an ATOM or the variants. You should get a regular MB and a HASWELL CPU. The super small format MBs are crammed full of dc-dc converters and no matter what you do with a power supply you will be listening to lots of switchers, not that all switchers are bad. Nonetheless, you will get better sound from a traditional desktop setup.
The POWERFLOWER power supply, 850 something I will have to look it up, is quite good for a baseline. I am going to eventually install a battery (LiPo) system but not in a big hurry due to how good the POWERFLOWER is.
You do not need a fancy MB - I am using an H97 board from MSI - I paid around $75.00. The INTEL 4160 CPU running at 800 mhz. One stick of 8 gB memory with the lowest latency you can find and you are ready to go. I need this much memory since I am using the SOEKRIS DAC and upsampling my music files to 24/192 to bypass the first filter in the DAC and this uses lots of memory.
CPU usage, while playing is less than 1 percent.
Hi and thanks again for the precious advice.
So i was wrong. The most important aspect is the PLAYER actually.
I was skipping on this. And i understand you recommend JPlay.
And it runs on Windows. This makes easier the OS selection.
Would JPlay be ok also with 7 maybe ?
I could stick with 7 for some time.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 04/30/15
I am sure it would be fine with 7 but you can get 10 for free and for our purposes I think it is better.
The new JPlay is truly something good.
AND do not discount the goodness of NTLite. Yes, you will have to pay for it but the fellow who made is deserving of the money!
Hi just to recap a little.
If i understand well you suggest that staying on 7 + JPlay + NTLite would be better than maybe 8.1 + JPlay ?
And that the best solution could be 8.1 + JPlay + NTLite ?
Could it be possible to rank the different options in some way ?
Sorry but i am a very beginner and quite uneducated.
Thanks again.
Kind regards,
bg
That would be assuming I have compared all of these which I have not.
The basic fundamental files are probably the same in all three. 10 has less of the METRO stuff.
You can download 10 for free. It has less junk in it than 8.1 already.
With NTLite you can get it to around 3 gB and everything works. Sounds good yet thee is more to be had with further deleting.
The good part is you can take you time. No need to rush.
You do need to have a second computer to do this well.
Hi thanks again and i get the message
I will look seriously into 10 then
Then NTLite ... it is an interesting task even with hurdles
Thanks again
Kind regards,
bg
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