Free utility condenses Windows Vista from 15GB to 1.4GB

[Ron]

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/01/31/free-utility-condenses-windows-vista-from-15gb-to-14gb

A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously
stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest desktop
OS was just too big to believe. "Who can justify a 15GB operating system?"
asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian city on the
Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned to his
creation, vLite.

vLite, a free program that lets users pick and choose which Vista
components, hotfixes, drivers and even language packs are installed, then
builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended installation
of the operating system.

"Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," said Nuhagic
when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to explain.
The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the environment
part is where it gets down to personal preference."

Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every component
of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled screensavers -- to
the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and Play.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/01/31/free-utility-condenses-windows-vista-from-15gb-to-14gb

A Croatian college student has created a utility that installs a seriously
stripped-down Windows Vista, saying the heft of Microsoft's biggest
desktop OS was just too big to believe. "Who can justify a 15GB operating
system?" asked Dino Nuhagic, a fifth-year student from Split, a Croatian
city on the Adriatic. Not Nuhagic, or the uncounted users who have turned
to his creation, vLite.

vLite, a free program that lets users pick and choose which Vista
components, hotfixes, drivers and even language packs are installed, then
builds a disk image that can be burned to a DVD for unattended
installation of the operating system.

"Why did I do it? Well, it's performance and work environment," said
Nuhagic when asked why he came up with vLite. "Performance, that's easy to
explain. The less things running, the more responsive the OS. But the
environment part is where it gets down to personal preference."

Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every
component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled
screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and
Play.

Apparently, it also prevents Vista from being patched..

 

[Steve Thackery]

Hmmm... why compromise the OS like this just to save disk space? Vista
takes a tiny percentage of my hard disk. It's solving a non-problem.

Apparently the stripped down version runs faster, too. That's something I'm
a lot more sceptical about. Just how much faster are we really talking
about here? My processor spends most of its time idle, so I can't accept
that all these background processes are really soaking up many much-needed
processor cycles.

Smaller memory footprint? Yes, that might be useful, although again RAM is
pretty cheap and 2G seems plenty for normal Vista usage anyway.

I'm left wondering why the guy bought Vista and then stripped it down. He
might as well have bought W2K, or DOS.

SteveT

 

[the wharf rat]

Apparently, it also prevents Vista from being patched..

To be technical, Windows Update's misdesign that treats the
enitre target system as a monolith rather than as a colleciton of modules
prevents patches from being installed unless the system looks "perfect".

And Genuine, of course.

 

[Tom Lake]

http://www.neowin.net/news/main/08/01/31/free-utility-condenses-windows-vista-from-15gb-to-14gb

Those preferences include options for leaving out virtually every
component of Windows Vista, from the minor -- such as the bundled
screensavers -- to the major, such as the firewall or Universal Plug and
Play.

Then you have XP!

Tom Lake

 

[the wharf rat]

I'm left wondering why the guy bought Vista and then stripped it down. He
might as well have bought W2K, or DOS.

Ok, well, look, first of all every line of code is another potential
bug, right? So why introduce potential bugs into a system?

Especially if it's in code you'll never use. Look at uPnP. It's
a security nightmare, few people even use it, but you can't chose not to
install it.

Secondly (and this addresses the "faster" question) each deleted
line of code has the potential to eliminate an unecessary check or branch.
"Faster" doesn't usually mean "processes faster" unless your user is doing
number crunching or gaming. To most users "faster" means more responsive,
so skipping checks and branches that take negligible cpu time but add 20-
50% to the real time of an operation (because of I/O for instance) makes
a very big difference to the *subjective* performance.

 

[Mike Hall - MVP]

To be technical, Windows Update's misdesign that treats the
enitre target system as a monolith rather than as a colleciton of modules
prevents patches from being installed unless the system looks "perfect".

And Genuine, of course.

Regardless of how or why, for the benefit of updates/patching, using vlite
is not such a good idea.

I don't see why some are so hung up on size anyway. I keep a huge amount of
graphics, pictures, clipart, videos etc. I also have drivers and service
info for machines going back 15 years, music, my own personal documents,
Vista Ultimate, the complete collection of MS Office 2007 products,
Expression Web, four complete games (Halo, AoE III, Fable, and CFS 3), and a
variety of other applications and bits: Total = 75gb

That would easily fit onto a 120gb drive, relatively small by today's
standards. Many new computers are being supplied with 160 - 320gb.

 

[Roger Van Loon]

Then you have XP!

Tom Lake

Is that REALLY true? Then I'll install it immediately
Roger

 

[Katie]

is anyone going to look into this further? it would be worthwhile to have win
vis working more like xp pro or win 2000! Any advice on how to trim down
winvis ultimate or any plans on ms doing that? any reply is appreciated that
is not *plonk*