Why is Windows RT so BIG?

[lopri]

One mystery: Windows Phone (8X) is much smaller than Windows RT, despite it also having the same root as RT/x86, Windows NT. Does Windows Phone come with Office suite as well?

 

[ViRGE]

One mystery: Windows Phone (8X) is much smaller than Windows RT, despite it also having the same root as RT/x86, Windows NT. Does Windows Phone come with Office suite as well?

Windows Phone 8 is basically pure Metro. It doesn't have a Win32 userland to speak of. I have to imagine that all of the necessary libraries and other chunks of code necessary to support Win32 are taking up a ton of space on WinRT. It also doesn't help that there's apparently a significant number of x86 binaries included with WinRT for some reason.

 

[Ferzerp]

Windows Phone 8 is basically pure Metro. It doesn't have a Win32 userland to speak of. I have to imagine that all of the necessary libraries and other chunks of code necessary to support Win32 are taking up a ton of space on WinRT. It also doesn't help that there's apparently a significant number of x86 binaries included with WinRT for some reason.

The binaries shouldn't really be that large. But WinRT it is the entire windows 8 os just for a different architecture. This question is like asking why NT for alpha was just as big as NT for x86....

(actually, the OP of this thread seems to just have an affinity for creating WinRT FUD threads)

 

[Nothinman]

The binaries shouldn't really be that large. But WinRT it is the entire windows 8 os just for a different architecture. This question is like asking why NT for alpha was just as big as NT for x86....

(actually, the OP of this thread seems to just have an affinity for creating WinRT FUD threads)

No, the real question is why was MS dumb enough to include the whole Win8 desktop in their tablet OS?

 

[sm625]

The question is... why is microsoft so stupid? There are huge chunks of the winsxs folder that contain files that are either wholly or at least 90% identical and repeated over and over and over. The could have easily compressed that entire folder to 5% of its typical size, if they werent both lazy and stupid. If this is the core of their OS, it should be streamlined into a single file anyway, or at least appear that way to us. (Like how .zip files appear as one file but are actually many files.) They way they handled winSxS is just laughably hysterically bad, and it embarasses me that these guys are such a successful company, given the state of their programming.

 

[Nothinman]

The question is... why is microsoft so stupid? There are huge chunks of the winsxs folder that contain files that are either wholly or at least 90% identical and repeated over and over and over. The could have easily compressed that entire folder to 5% of its typical size, if they werent both lazy and stupid. If this is the core of their OS, it should be streamlined into a single file anyway, or at least appear that way to us. (Like how .zip files appear as one file but are actually many files.) They way they handled winSxS is just laughably hysterically bad, and it embarasses me that these guys are such a successful company, given the state of their programming.

You do realize that the SxS stuff is largely hard linked so that it does only take up a fraction of the disk space reported, right?

 

[sm625]

You do realize that the SxS stuff is largely hard linked so that it does only take up a fraction of the disk space reported, right?

Yeah but if I have a 30GB drive, and "10GB" is occupied by WinSXS, and 10GB is occupied by other system files, then I'm out of space when I use up the remaining 10GB. Hardlinks or no, I've seen that box pop up saying I'm out of space. Whether winsxs is 10GB or 1GB doesnt seem to matter.

 

[Nothinman]

Yeah but if I have a 30GB drive, and "10GB" is occupied by WinSXS, and 10GB is occupied by other system files, then I'm out of space when I use up the remaining 10GB. Hardlinks or no, I've seen that box pop up saying I'm out of space. Whether winsxs is 10GB or 1GB doesnt seem to matter.

Yes, I understand basic math. But that doesn't seem like an accurate representation as the Ars article on the Surface disk space says "On a freshly reset Surface, the operating system, page file (two of them, in fact; pagefile.sys and swapfile.sys), and Office RT Preview total 7.86GB." That doesn't include the ~3.8G recovery partition but it's well below 20G.

 

[gus6464]

It's so big so it can impress the ladies obviously.

 

[lopri]

It's difficult to show off a size when everything is displayed "in proportion."

 

[lopri]

Windows Phone 8 is basically pure Metro. It doesn't have a Win32 userland to speak of. I have to imagine that all of the necessary libraries and other chunks of code necessary to support Win32 are taking up a ton of space on WinRT. It also doesn't help that there's apparently a significant number of x86 binaries included with WinRT for some reason.

Interesting. So is it safe to assume that many of the features that made into RT, but not in Windows Phone, are mutually inclusive? In other words, MS couldn't chop off of the existing Win32 code base as much as it wanted for RT because things are mingled together? As opposed to MS wanting to include as much stuff as possible into RT?

 

[ViRGE]

Interesting. So is it safe to assume that many of the features that made into RT, but not in Windows Phone, are mutually inclusive? In other words, MS couldn't chop off of the existing Win32 code base as much as it wanted for RT because things are mingled together? As opposed to MS wanting to include as much stuff as possible into RT?

WinRT needed Win32 for Office and the desktop (you still need things like Explorer, after all). Windows Phone 8 has no need for that, so it can ditch Win32 entirely.

 

[Nothinman]

WinRT needed Win32 for Office and the desktop (you still need things like Explorer, after all). Windows Phone 8 has no need for that, so it can ditch Win32 entirely.

It's only needed because MS couldn't find a way to shoehorn Office into Metro.

 

[ViRGE]

It's only needed because MS couldn't find a way to shoehorn Office into Metro.

I'm of the opinion that a Metro Office could work. But it's not something MS could have completed in the short period of time they would have had to develop it. The WinRT API would need to be locked down first for something like that, which is kind of hard when WinRT is still in active development.

 

[lopri]

It just came to my mind, but does the size of pagefile.sys count into the ~ 8.0 GB base installation of RT? My assumption is NOT, since pagefile size is not static. Although there is a way to manipulate pagefiles on x86 desktop, but I do not know whether that's possible or even desirable in RT.

That means pagefile in RT cuts into the usable disk space as well? In that case, usable space would be even less than what has been discussed so far.

 

[smakme7757]

I must admit i thought it was strange that buying a 64GB tablet would only leave you with 45Gb and a 32GB tablet would leave you with 14GB.

They really should be marketed as such.

However it's nice to see IamDavid getting such good use out of these tablets.

 

[Nothinman]

I'm of the opinion that a Metro Office could work. But it's not something MS could have completed in the short period of time they would have had to develop it. The WinRT API would need to be locked down first for something like that, which is kind of hard when WinRT is still in active development.

I could see a slimmed down version working for touch, but a lot of features require much finer selection/pointer granularity than a finger can provide. I suppose you could try to work around that with zooming in and out, but that would very slow and cumbersome.

But to get full functionality MS would surely have to open Metro up a lot in both the API and security aspect which I doubt they want to do.