Microsoft's current OS has been shrunk to a ridiculous 100MB in size, but only by getting rid of windows from Windows

M500 , 4 months ago

Baldurs gate 3 has gone from from 140gb to 200mb by changing it to a text based adventure.

Mr_Blott , 4 months ago

A Dark Place is great tho

planescapers , 4 months ago

but the kisses!!!

linearchaos , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Oh, good, they reinvented DOS.

I wonder if Microsoft put a team of a couple hundred people on it for a few years how small they could get the current OS. Given, obviously, it's a fool's errand, but how much of the size of the current OS is just because disc and ram are cheaper now?

bruhduh , 4 months ago

This iso and blackbox window manager and done, debloated windows

nyan , 4 months ago

Still a far cry from the days when the whole thing fit on a handful of floppies.

ramble81 , 4 months ago

That’s always one thing I hated about Windows Server Core. It still uses the graphical subsystem but only offered you a command prompt…. Which was in a window. I would have loved to see them go true text mode only, bit it seemed parts of the graphics subsystem was embedded in the kernel so they just went with it.

HootinNHollerin , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

Reverse Xzibit Pimp my Ride meme

coffeebiscuit , 4 months ago

So,.. DOS.

LazaroFilm , 4 months ago

That’s a Win..

coffeebiscuit , 4 months ago

… small klap.

nyakojiru , 4 months ago

With Microsoft killing Windows 10 and windows itself , a new era of pirate forks will come.

syd , 4 months ago

deletes Windows iso

I’ve shrunk Windows to 0MB! It’s more lightweight than Linux (maybe)!

WallEx , 4 months ago

Still same functionality as before

BloodSlut , 4 months ago (edited 4 months ago)

not quite, now you have to manually delete your bootloader instead of windows doing it for you

wahming , 4 months ago

What's the point of this? The article managed to miss that somehow

JeffKerman1999 , 4 months ago

I guess for containerization?

jerrythegenius , 4 months ago

Why not?

ShittyBeatlesFCPres , 4 months ago

Windows Server is basically useless in the modern era of containers and cloud computing. If they’re ever going to compete in that space long term, they need a minimal viable version of Windows that can scale however customers want.

They also have embedded Windows, which is the type of thing that runs on ATMs or IoT devices. Not sure why anyone would use it instead of Linux but I guess the license fees are worth having someone to call (or blame) for some companies.

lud , 4 months ago

Windows server is still wildly used for ADDS.

I don't think windows server is that threatened by containers.

steal_your_face , 4 months ago

What’s adds?

lud , 4 months ago

Active directory domain services.

exu , 4 months ago

ADDS is basically the only thing I might use Windows Server for.

BearOfaTime , 4 months ago

I'm not sure I follow that server is useless. In the SMB and Enterprise, it's still required for a domain/exchange, user management, software distribution, etc.

Yea, it can be virtualized, and is, even in SMB. It's pretty standard to run a VMware host even there - it's a better cost against utilization. More importantly, virtualized server provides better uptime, better load balancing/management, a much better backup process, and brings a bit of disaster recovery capability to the SMB space.

Patch , 4 months ago

In the context of the people who did it, I think it's just a "bit of fun"; a hobbyist hacking project to see how far you can take something.

But that said, it is absolutely insane how much disk space Windows needs. Windows Server 2022, with its most minimal "core" installation option, still has a minimum requirement of a baffling 32GB of hard disk space. By comparison, Ubuntu Server's published minimum requirement is for only 2.5GB (with more specialist minimalist distros like Alpine coming in at well under 1GB).

nybble41 , 4 months ago

The ubuntu:24.04 Docker image is only 77.30 MiB.

alpine:3.19.0 is 7.38 MiB.

Of course those sizes are without a kernel. Typical everything-included distro kernels are generally a few hundred MiB as they include drivers for everything that might be needed, but a custom build for known hardware can reduce that to just a few MiB.

btaf45 , 4 months ago

I think this could be useful as a server OS. If you wanted to run 1 specific piece of software as efficiently as possible, you could start with this DOS system and add in only what you need.