Microsoft Windows LE

[Arkaign]

Hi guys, I came up with an idea that has obviously been attempted before by 3rd-party types, but I think it would be great to see from Microsoft themselves.

A 'light-edition' Windows release, or installation option. I'm not talking about a cheaper Windows version, but that might be a possibility. What I'm talking about is for Microsoft to release versions of Windows that include the new infrastructure/code base/driver model/security/etc, but have an absolute minimal amount of processes/extra features loaded by default.

As far I as know, there's no real reason that a Windows Vista version couldn't be made that would run well on systems with 512mb ram. Or 1.x Ghz cpus.

I think it would actually broaden Microsoft's sales penetration, because people that otherwise would be forced to buy whole new PCs could reasonably purchase and run the new OS.

I know that some people (and I am among them) recommend just running the previous-gen Windows if you don't have adequate hardware for the new one, but this would give another option. I also know that you *can* tweak Vista the way it is somewhat, but the results can vary drastically, it'd be nice to see a Microsoft-supported and optimized light windows version. I know other people will say 'what's the point' of running Vista if you're just going to make a light version of it, but I bet that lots of people would appreciate the better security and upgrade path (hardware/software) without the incredible sluggishness that the OS shows on weak hardware. I know that people would say 'it's cheap to upgrade memory', but some people really don't have that much money to spend in the first place, and know so little about computers that they have to not only buy the ram, but pay to have it installed as well (usually at rip-off joints like GeekSquad).

Anyway, just a rant/suggestion. It could be a checkbox during installation even, [^] for a minimal Windows install for older/slower hardware. Then have the modules available off the DVD as needed.

 

[Brazen]

The thing is, they want to force all the bloat on you because it makes you more dependant on Microsoft software. For instance, they want IE to be in your face, because without it more people might decide to use Firefox instead. Firefox is the most obvious example but the same could be said about anything beyond the kernel.

This might interest you: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...mentals_for_Legacy_PCs

 

[bendixG15]

Too late ...MS has a Windows LE that it sells in certain countries for a low price.

 

[soonerproud]

I know that people would say 'it's cheap to upgrade memory', but some people really don't have that much money to spend in the first place, and know so little about computers that they have to not only buy the ram, but pay to have it installed as well (usually at rip-off joints like GeekSquad).

A couple of quick points I want to make.

1. If someone does not have the money to make a hardware upgrade to run Vista, (RAM is really cheap right now) then they probably do not have the money to buy a copy of Vista to begin with.

2. Most people with no technical experience with computers are more likely to buy a new pc preloaded with Vista then to upgrade an older pc. Geek Squad makes their money not on old hardware upgrades, but on upgrades and software installation on new purchases.

3. Vista Home Basic is what Microsoft considers the light edition. It has lower hardware requirements than Vista HP does. Since very few people upgrade operating systems for older computers, it makes no sense for Microsoft to develop for them. Vista is a modern OS for modern hardware. People with older hardware either need to stick with XP, and 2000 or consider moving to a Linux distro like Ubuntu if better security is the motive for a change.

 

[bigi]

Vlite & Nlite

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: soonerproud

I know that people would say 'it's cheap to upgrade memory', but some people really don't have that much money to spend in the first place, and know so little about computers that they have to not only buy the ram, but pay to have it installed as well (usually at rip-off joints like GeekSquad).

A couple of quick points I want to make.

1. If someone does not have the money to make a hardware upgrade to run Vista, (RAM is really cheap right now) then they probably do not have the money to buy a copy of Vista to begin with.

It's not always just a memory upgrade. Vista is hard on processors too, I've seen XP run decently on 400mhz PCs, but Vista utterly crawls even on a P3 1ghz w/1gb PC133. If Vista LE upgrade was $79 or so, it would be *MUCH* cheaper than paying someone for a new mobo/cpu/memory/psu/etc. And obviously cheaper than buying a bottom-barrel $299 new PC.

2. Most people with no technical experience with computers are more likely to buy a new pc preloaded with Vista then to upgrade an older pc. Geek Squad makes their money not on old hardware upgrades, but on upgrades and software installation on new purchases.

That's true, but it also requires a budget of at least several hundred dollars. As far as Geek Squad, I know for a fact that they charge out the rear on upgrades. Thankfully they mostly tack-on sales to new purchases, but if you want a larger hdd or more memory for an older PC, you can bend over. Look up 1GB DDR400 if you want, it's like $120-$130, PLUS installation costs.

3. Vista Home Basic is what Microsoft considers the light edition. It has lower hardware requirements than Vista HP does. Since very few people upgrade operating systems for older computers, it makes no sense for Microsoft to develop for them. Vista is a modern OS for modern hardware. People with older hardware either need to stick with XP, and 2000 or consider moving to a Linux distro like Ubuntu if better security is the motive for a change.

I don't think 'very few people' is the right description for a potential market of millions of customers. Not everyone simply throws the old PC away or in the closet. It's why Microsoft has always sold 'upgrade' versions of Windows. There are literally tons of users who use their computer for basic tasks (Word, Outlook, IE) that could benefit from updating from XP/2000 to Vista, but don't necessarily have several hundred dollars ready to drop on a whole new system. I think it's entirely reasonable that a stripped Vista install would run fine on 1Ghz/512MB.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
As far I as know, there's no real reason that a Windows Vista version couldn't be made that would run well on systems with 512mb ram. Or 1.x Ghz cpus.

There's one huge flaw with your suggestion - Vista does not require a lot of ram. Go into Task Manager, sort all processes by user (include all users), then add the amount of memory used by "system", "local service", and "network service". On mine they add up to less than 100mb (Vista Business 32-bit). Now contrast that with your own programs. Here are my top 3 programs:
emule - 130mb
F@H - 90mb
Firefox - 63mb

The reason it looks like Windows uses a ton of memory is because the Task Manager is a bit misleading. Vista's Superfetch fills all the ram even when you're doing nothing. XP has a similar feature called Prefetch which keeps programs in the memory after they have been closed. Where it says "commit charge", that actually includes the swap file as well as the memory. It keeps stuff in the swap file long after a program has been closed.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Arkaign
As far I as know, there's no real reason that a Windows Vista version couldn't be made that would run well on systems with 512mb ram. Or 1.x Ghz cpus.

There's one huge flaw with your suggestion - Vista does not require a lot of ram. Go into Task Manager, sort all processes by user (include all users), then add the amount of memory used by "system", "local service", and "network service". On mine they add up to less than 100mb (Vista Business 32-bit). Now contrast that with your own programs. Here are my top 3 programs:
emule - 130mb
F@H - 90mb
Firefox - 63mb

The reason it looks like Windows uses a ton of memory is because the Task Manager is a bit misleading. Vista's Superfetch fills all the ram even when you're doing nothing. XP has a similar feature called Prefetch which keeps programs in the memory after they have been closed. Where it says "commit charge", that actually includes the swap file as well as the memory. It keeps stuff in the swap file long after a program has been closed.

Well, just from experience, Vista runs very poorly on 512mb as compared to 1gb or 2gb. Further, I never suggested 'task manager' as a technique to analyze Vista memory requirements.

But anyways, Vista doesn't *have* to run like crap on 512mb, as tuners of budget systems have thankfully discovered. Hell, a lighter official version from Microsoft might be feasible on 256mb.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Arkaign
Well, just from experience, Vista runs very poorly on 512mb as compared to 1gb or 2gb. Further, I never suggested 'task manager' as a technique to analyze Vista memory requirements.

But anyways, Vista doesn't *have* to run like crap on 512mb, as tuners of budget systems have thankfully discovered. Hell, a lighter official version from Microsoft might be feasible on 256mb.

I'm not disputing that a 512 vista computer runs like crap. My point was that it's the programs on the computer that make the memory demands so high.

Back in 2001 I bought a computer with an Athlon XP 1700 processor and 512mb, which was lots at the time, and it was able to run Windows XP with no slowdowns. Now it's 6 years later and that same computer is slower than shit. What happened? It's the same operating system as before (with some patches), and the only thing that ever really changed was the programs on the system. Did Firefox/Mozilla use 63mb ram back in 2001? Probably not. eMule didn't exist at the time, but did Napster require 130mb ram? Hell no. It doesn't matter how small the OS is because the OS is not what's using all that ram. eMule will use 130mb regardless of which OS it's on, be it Vista, XP, or 98.

The bottom line is that if you want to be running 2007 programs, you need as much ram as a typical 2007 computer. Even if Vista's memory demands were trimmed in half, what does that buy you? You can run what? One extra application in the background? Right now my biggest memory program running is F@H at a whopping 220mb (I allowed it to run big units). No amount of OS trimming would ever allow me to run F@H on a computer with 256mb ram.
If you think I'm full of crap with those numbers, here is a screenshot:
http://www3.telus.net/public/d...h1/folding_at_home.png
All of the numbers have magically exploded since my last post. Firefox is now >100mb, and Vista is just massive. I should probably start a new thread asking why svchost is taking half a gig of ram (wtf??).

 

[Sunner]

I'd like this personally.
A more bare bones OS where you add what you want, rather than remove what you don't want.
Like Debian vs Fedora, I prefer Debian by far since I just install the bare minimum and add the stuff I want afterwards 🙂

 

[Nothinman]

Did Firefox/Mozilla use 63mb ram back in 2001? Probably not.

I just downloaded Phoenix 0.1 which was released in Sep of '02 and on startup it uses almost 20M. Opening a handful of tabs pushed it up to over 40M pretty easily too. And that's without flash, once the flash plugin is installed you'll probably be up around 60M easily.

No amount of OS trimming would ever allow me to run F@H on a computer with 256mb ram.

Sure it could, it would be some work and you'd have to do very little else on the machine but it's possible.

 

[Arkaign]

Thanks for the feedback guys, and I understand your point more clearly now Shawn. I do think it would still be a worthwhile project, I think if you got the OS down to ~100mb total usage, that you could have enough free ram to run 2-4 apps very smoothly. It would help to have the OS keep startup crap purely optional (weatherbug, quicktime icon, etc), to where *nothing* automatically ran, but rather showed little bubbles around the icons, and when you clicked them, they would turn on or off (kind of like quick launch, but specifically for the startup garbage that usually accumulates quickly on most home user PCs.).

 

[Nothinman]

It's a tradeoff, you may want less features but other people want to use those features and are willing to give up the extra memory required. MS could definitely do a better job at making those features optional but that would drive up their support costs.

It would help to have the OS keep startup crap purely optional (weatherbug, quicktime icon, etc), to where *nothing* automatically ran, but rather showed little bubbles around the icons, and when you clicked them, they would turn on or off (kind of like quick launch, but specifically for the startup garbage that usually accumulates quickly on most home user PCs.).

Then it's not exactly "startup crap" anymore is it? Having an autostart feature that doesn't actually autostart anything would be really stupid.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Nothinman
It's a tradeoff, you may want less features but other people want to use those features and are willing to give up the extra memory required. MS could definitely do a better job at making those features optional but that would drive up their support costs.

It would help to have the OS keep startup crap purely optional (weatherbug, quicktime icon, etc), to where *nothing* automatically ran, but rather showed little bubbles around the icons, and when you clicked them, they would turn on or off (kind of like quick launch, but specifically for the startup garbage that usually accumulates quickly on most home user PCs.).

Then it's not exactly "startup crap" anymore is it? Having an autostart feature that doesn't actually autostart anything would be really stupid.

Hmm. Well I just think that for many novice users (I see this daily at my shop), it would help to automatically move things that get put into startup into an options group. From there, maybe they could be set to 'green' (autoload all the time) or 'blue' (load only when clicked, and the default setting), or removed by dragging them to the recycle bin. As it is, I ask people, do you use that? The answer is almost invariably : "No, I don't even know what it is". I blame part of this on web-based installs that piggyback other crap along with the installation (IE; getting google toolbar rammed down your throat when you install Acrobat reader). It also sucks how many basically useless crud gets put into startup behind the scenes. Acrobat quick start, quicktime tray (even with the icon removed), powerdvd remote, so many of these are only marginally useful in the best cases, and their removal does nothing to prevent the app from functioning perfectly when it's actually needed.

So I hope that clarifies. Autostart has it's uses, but it shouldn't be abused by software makers, whom ALL seem to think that their product is so ubiquitously important that it needs to run some portion of itself each and every time the OS boots. For you or me, it's almost immaterial, because we can go about selecting only what we want, and we know what we're doing. Joe blow, OTOH, if he goes to msconfig, or the startup folder, or heaven forbid registry spelunking, is probably not going to know what alcmtr.exe is, and so on.

It's a complicated issue, but one I think is worth pondering. Thanks for your input.

 

[Nothinman]

so many of these are only marginally useful in the best cases, and their removal does nothing to prevent the app from functioning perfectly when it's actually needed.

And that's 100% the fault of that software's developer. Any decent OS needs a way to autostart things for people and it's not MS' fault if someone exploits that functionality. And really, if you made startup items option then those developers would likely just convert their apps to use services to ensure that they startup automatically.

So I hope that clarifies.

I know what you meant, but the only way to fix the problem that you're seeing is to educate your users. An OS needs a way to start things on bootup without user interaction and so developers will always find a way to use that with or without your consent. UAC is supposed to mitigate that a bit by letting people know when something is attempting to do something to their system.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

so many of these are only marginally useful in the best cases, and their removal does nothing to prevent the app from functioning perfectly when it's actually needed.

And that's 100% the fault of that software's developer. Any decent OS needs a way to autostart things for people and it's not MS' fault if someone exploits that functionality. And really, if you made startup items option then those developers would likely just convert their apps to use services to ensure that they startup automatically.

So I hope that clarifies.

I know what you meant, but the only way to fix the problem that you're seeing is to educate your users. An OS needs a way to start things on bootup without user interaction and so developers will always find a way to use that with or without your consent. UAC is supposed to mitigate that a bit by letting people know when something is attempting to do something to their system.

I agree. The primary blame rests on the software developers. I do think that Microsoft could help us out a bit by never letting anything arbitrarily get put into active startup without express user permission. By letting these startup items get installed, but having them just sit as options until clicked on, it would probably help most of the regular users keep a clean system. At the times when the user does really want the item to load with windows, he could just set it to 'green'.

It's all a hypothetical pipe dream of mine, anyways. I'm guessing we'll see the status quo of craplets on people's PCs for at least the next generation or two of Windows.

I think we're probably 1-2 generations out from having totally online OSes becoming common in the marketplace. You will just have a secure key, and wherever you go, you have instant access to your personal programs, data, favorites, email, etc, on whatever interface is available that meets spec. You'll probably be able to lease varying levels of computing power and space. This will seem offensive to some, but I think it will be the norm in 10 years or so, as the infrastructure for a perfect QHD feed becomes feasible with no input/feedback lag.

 

[Nothinman]

I do think that Microsoft could help us out a bit by never letting anything arbitrarily get put into active startup without express user permission.

That's debatable because there's no way for MS to know if an app legitimately needs to run something at startup before it'll function properly and most people don't know enough about their apps to make that decision on their own so everyone would just click yes anyway.

It's all a hypothetical pipe dream of mine, anyways. I'm guessing we'll see the status quo of craplets on people's PCs for at least the next generation or two of Windows.

You might but I won't, I don't do Windows tech support for anyone. =)

I think we're probably 1-2 generations out from having totally online OSes becoming common in the marketplace. You will just have a secure key, and wherever you go, you have instant access to your personal programs, data, favorites, email, etc, on whatever interface is available that meets spec. You'll probably be able to lease varying levels of computing power and space. This will seem offensive to some, but I think it will be the norm in 10 years or so, as the infrastructure for a perfect QHD feed becomes feasible with no input/feedback lag.

That's a pipe dream too. It might work for people who don't actually use their computers for much but being able to do things offline is too important for a lot of people.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I do think that Microsoft could help us out a bit by never letting anything arbitrarily get put into active startup without express user permission.

That's debatable because there's no way for MS to know if an app legitimately needs to run something at startup before it'll function properly and most people don't know enough about their apps to make that decision on their own so everyone would just click yes anyway.

It's all a hypothetical pipe dream of mine, anyways. I'm guessing we'll see the status quo of craplets on people's PCs for at least the next generation or two of Windows.

You might but I won't, I don't do Windows tech support for anyone. =)

I think we're probably 1-2 generations out from having totally online OSes becoming common in the marketplace. You will just have a secure key, and wherever you go, you have instant access to your personal programs, data, favorites, email, etc, on whatever interface is available that meets spec. You'll probably be able to lease varying levels of computing power and space. This will seem offensive to some, but I think it will be the norm in 10 years or so, as the infrastructure for a perfect QHD feed becomes feasible with no input/feedback lag.

That's a pipe dream too. It might work for people who don't actually use their computers for much but being able to do things offline is too important for a lot of people.

We'll see. I think that particularly in urban areas where fibre/wifi (soon to be wimax and beyond) are everywhere, it will probably be a reality sooner that we'd commonly imagine. And if you lease computing power, and are only seeing a visual representation streamed to you real-time, then you could have access to much greater power if/when you needed it, than would be commonly possible with just a single-box pc.

 

[Nothinman]

We'll see. I think that particularly in urban areas where fibre/wifi (soon to be wimax and beyond) are everywhere, it will probably be a reality sooner that we'd commonly imagine. And if you lease computing power, and are only seeing a visual representation streamed to you real-time, then you could have access to much greater power if/when you needed it, than would be commonly possible with just a single-box pc.

But would you want to store your financial information, ss#, etc on a server run by MS or Google?

 

[Evander]

I agree with your idea. There are actually additional benefits to this you haven't mentioned- such as systems where you can't buy more memory b/c it's already maxed out, and by allowing older systems to run newer software (you can't install Office 2007 on Windows 2k, the 2k user might have an older system not suitable for Vista, but if a Windows VE came out he could upgrade both his OS and Office software).
Anyone ever tried blackbox for Windows?
http://wiki.bb4win.org/wiki/Main_Page

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

We'll see. I think that particularly in urban areas where fibre/wifi (soon to be wimax and beyond) are everywhere, it will probably be a reality sooner that we'd commonly imagine. And if you lease computing power, and are only seeing a visual representation streamed to you real-time, then you could have access to much greater power if/when you needed it, than would be commonly possible with just a single-box pc.

But would you want to store your financial information, ss#, etc on a server run by MS or Google?

Not really, but I think the paradigm will shift in the public mindset on this. Look how we accept RFID, barcodes on our State and Federal IDs, credit companies using SS for ID, etc.

Personally, I don't like the big brother/nanny idea, or the possibilities this would give 21st-century thieves, but I can also see the convenience and new possibilities that go with it.

I think the big corporations will be on board because it will allow you to spend your money on all kinds of products all the time. Say you're waiting in line at Home Depot for your parts to be brought up front, and a live online connection (activated by your federal ID in your pocket or in your arm) starts streaming optional products at the borderless display on the wall next to you, with options to 'buy now' and promotional pricing customized for you. Or you can bring up a live picture of your home improvement project to show the specialists in the store, and they can manipulate the image at will to show the projected results when you install the hardware they have for sale. Thousands of more possibilities here. I also think that this is when DRM will start to make sense, because you won't have to hold onto any physical media that can be lost, stolen, or damaged, but rather you can pull up your movies, music, etc, anywhere.

 

[Arkaign]

Originally posted by: Evander
I agree with your idea. There are actually additional benefits to this you haven't mentioned- such as systems where you can't buy more memory b/c it's already maxed out, and by allowing older systems to run newer software (you can't install Office 2007 on Windows 2k, the 2k user might have an older system not suitable for Vista, but if a Windows VE came out he could upgrade both his OS and Office software).
Anyone ever tried blackbox for Windows?
http://wiki.bb4win.org/wiki/Main_Page

Thanks, and good point. I'm going to check your link out now.

Man I love AT 🙂 Guys like Nothinman, Smilin, Stash, Bsobel, etc, always make this an interesting place to ask questions, pose ideas, and just unwind.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Arkaign

Originally posted by: ShawnD1

Originally posted by: Arkaign
As far I as know, there's no real reason that a Windows Vista version couldn't be made that would run well on systems with 512mb ram. Or 1.x Ghz cpus.

There's one huge flaw with your suggestion - Vista does not require a lot of ram. Go into Task Manager, sort all processes by user (include all users), then add the amount of memory used by "system", "local service", and "network service". On mine they add up to less than 100mb (Vista Business 32-bit). Now contrast that with your own programs. Here are my top 3 programs:
emule - 130mb
F@H - 90mb
Firefox - 63mb

The reason it looks like Windows uses a ton of memory is because the Task Manager is a bit misleading. Vista's Superfetch fills all the ram even when you're doing nothing. XP has a similar feature called Prefetch which keeps programs in the memory after they have been closed. Where it says "commit charge", that actually includes the swap file as well as the memory. It keeps stuff in the swap file long after a program has been closed.

Well, just from experience, Vista runs very poorly on 512mb as compared to 1gb or 2gb. Further, I never suggested 'task manager' as a technique to analyze Vista memory requirements.

But anyways, Vista doesn't *have* to run like crap on 512mb, as tuners of budget systems have thankfully discovered. Hell, a lighter official version from Microsoft might be feasible on 256mb.

But thats the thing - it DOES have to run slower. Theres no free lunch here.

All of the things that you desire, such as better security - those will require more memory and CPU time than their XP equivalents. You can't really add new features and improve things by removing code.

And at the end of the day, its your programs that are going to be soaking up the majority of your memory.

The HD and memory requirements of Windows has not scaled anywhere near proportionally to hardware over the years. Since XP came out, average memory, CPU speed and HD speed has more than quadrupled, and Vista requires maybe 1.5x the resources that XP requires.

A Vista install is a few GB which is nothing to even the smallest laptop HDs. Just like XP, CPU usage at idle is pretty much zero. The only appreciable difference between the core of the two OSes is a bit more memory usage. Its going to come down to the programs you use, and the updated programs that come with Vista, such as IE7 and WMP11, are just plain going to use more memory - like every other new version of any software. Just like XP, when you hit that physical memory limit and have to turn to the swap file, it just crawls. Vista will just make you hit that point sooner.

XP will be an absolutely reasonable choice for OS for many years to come. I'm a fan of Vista and all, but I still run XP on my laptop for those exact reasons.

 

[Nothinman]

All of the things that you desire, such as better security - those will require more memory and CPU time than their XP equivalents. You can't really add new features and improve things by removing code.

Being pedantic, better security doesn't necessarily require any more resources. The base NT security system is virtually unchanged since 3.51 and it's perfectly fine, the problem is that most people run as admin completely ignoring the security system so that caused MS to put things like UAC in place to bandaid over that fact.

 

[BD2003]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

All of the things that you desire, such as better security - those will require more memory and CPU time than their XP equivalents. You can't really add new features and improve things by removing code.

Being pedantic, better security doesn't necessarily require any more resources. The base NT security system is virtually unchanged since 3.51 and it's perfectly fine, the problem is that most people run as admin completely ignoring the security system so that caused MS to put things like UAC in place to bandaid over that fact.

Well, surely theres a few things that can be changed that probably involve removing code, but stuff like a firewall, spyware/virus scanner, even UAC - those things require resources. Its not as if theres anything magical within vista that can alleviate the need for such things.