News Super tiny Windows 11 OS that fits inside your 4GB thumb drive gets a big update — Tiny11 2311 shrinks 20% and allows cumulative updates

[Admin]

Tiny11 has received a big update, called 2311, that adds integration with Microsoft's latest Windows 11 feature update 23H2, quality of life improvements, better functionality, and a massive reduction in file size.

Super tiny Windows 11 OS that fits inside your 4GB thumb drive gets a big update — Tiny11 2311 shrinks 20% and allows cumulative updates : Read more

 

[ekio]

Hey Microsoft, if you want to make your name mean it, could you follow the example??

 

[hotaru.hino]

Hey Microsoft, if you want to make your name mean it, could you follow the example??

I'll just point to my post about the last time Tiny11 was mentioned: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...-installation-to-3-3gb.3825000/#post-23125809

But if you want the tl;dr

• The core OS components, including the 32-bit subsystem, total around 2.35GB.
• Windows 11, macOS, and Ubuntu are all within 10-20GB when installed
• Most of the size of the Windows folder comes from the application library repository
  • Windows is not unique in this. A large portion of Ubuntu's size comes from application libraries.

And considering how cheap even 256GB SSDs are, if you're really hurting for ~10GB of space, you probably shouldn't be using Windows anyway.

 

[USAFRet]

I'll just point to my post about the last time Tiny11 was mentioned: https://forums.tomshardware.com/thr...-installation-to-3-3gb.3825000/#post-23125809

But if you want the tl;dr

• The core OS components, including the 32-bit subsystem, total around 2.35GB.
• Windows 11, macOS, and Ubuntu are all within 10-20GB when installed
• Most of the size of the Windows folder comes from the application library repository
  • Windows is not unique in this. A large portion of Ubuntu's size comes from application libraries.

And considering how cheap even 256GB SSDs are, if you're really hurting for ~10GB of space, you probably shouldn't be using Windows anyway.

How dare you defend Windows?
Don't you know that everything that comes out of Microsoft is de debbil?


But yes....running Windows (or any other mainstream OS) in a minimal footprint is easily doable.
Now, go actually use it for something.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

This makes Tiny11 a great OS for running on older systems and machines that cannot run Windows 11 in its complete form.

No it doesn't, because you can throw 128GB of solid state storage to a machine running Windows 98 (Compact Flash with IDE adapter), but it doesn't mean that the resulting machine is capable of or should ever think about running Windows 11.

There are uses for a very compact, very lite version of Windows (ATMs, POS machines, things that already use Windows XP Embedded or Windows CE), but Tiny 11 to me isn't even a technical exercise since it's not a fully functioning version of Windows 11.

 

[TheBeastFromOz]

Iso link is broken anyway. Gives a "The item is not available due to issues with the item's content." error, even though the directory listing shows that file as existing.

 

[YouFilthyHippo]

Yes, you can install Tiny11. What happens when you actually try to do something beyond opening notepad? The error messages start cropping up. There is a reason Windoze 11 is 30GB and not 4GB. Yes, I know there is a bunch of leftover useless bloatcode from previous OS revisions, and other defunct features/themes/whatever. Ya, Windows 11 could use a trimdown. But trim it down without removing any of its functionality, and it would still easily be 15GB. If it's only 4GB, so much has been removed, that there is just enough to boot the OS and do basic tasks, but that's about it. I don't see this as practical. SSDs 128-256GB are dirt cheap, especially on used marketplaces. You can get those things for mere pennies. Tiny11 is completely impractical. I don't see the point of this other than to cripple your OS

 

[coromonadalix]

you have other links floating around ...

we should have in W11 the possibilities to do a full app cleanup whatever they are, going over the locked ones normally instead of using dsim commands or other tricks

remove all un-needed drivers etc ... to slim it down ....

 

[hotaru.hino]

you have other links floating around ...

we should have in W11 the possibilities to do a full app cleanup whatever they are, going over the locked ones normally instead of using dsim commands or other tricks

The problem is if you give the layman a button to push, they'll push it. And they will likely do something that they think is a good idea, forget that they did it, and run into a problem that was caused by what they did. By making such actions require a deliberate amount of effort, you discourage muggles from breaking their system.

remove all un-needed drivers etc ... to slim it down ....

Drivers don't even take up that much space in the system. Looking at the driver store folder in my system, sure it sits at 2.2GB, but 1.7GB is from the graphics driver. And how do you know if a driver is un-needed? If you plug something in that actually needed that driver... well now it won't work because that device was probably expecting the "unneeded" generic driver.

My Windows install is currently sitting at 21.8GB. 12.7GB of that is the WinSxS folder (which is for application libraries). You could complain to Microsoft that they need to trim this down, but this is what gives Windows its backwards compatibility.

If you want things to slim down, tell everyone else to get with the times and update their software to use updated libraries. But good luck with that.

 

[Alvar "Miles" Udell]

remove all un-needed drivers etc ... to slim it down ....

Which is an argument for 2010, in 2023 where 256GB SSDs are $20 and 256gb SD cards are $15, a very mature Windows 11 install with a Windows folder of 40GB, which includes memory.dmp is only a big deal on the $200 ultra mega low end should-be-illegal-they're-so-garbage Windows laptops with a 64gb eMMC drive.

Is there room for optimization in Windows? Sure, they're working towards it, like being able to remove useless preinstalled programs that nobody uses and replacing antiquated code with new, more efficient code, but someone taking an axe to the core and saying LOOK WHAT I CAN DO WHY CAN'T MICROSOFT!!!!!!!! while also breaking said OS all in the name of trying to cram as much code into as little space is not the way to do it.

Heck, you want to reduce the size of Windows, just tick the box to enable compression, that'll axe several GB off the size of Windows without breaking anything and without a speed penalty on modern systems.

 

[hannibal]

And beside of all the above…. I would newer trust 3rd party modded Windows to be safe to use… in Linux, many eye will look the code. In here one user/croup make changes that you can not verify…
If you really want small windows for some reason, official windows S is the way to go… and to most people. The normal windows is the way to go…

 

[t3t4]

Seems like a mixed bag of opinions here. Well, I'm currently running Tiny 11 on my newest PC and I couldn't care less how big/small the file size, that's not why I installed it. Who isn't rockin at least a 1TB drive now-a-days? I installed the previous version, the one that is I guess 20% bigger and it's been fine for me. I went with it for the sole purpose of being able to install only the crapware I want on my system. It worked great for that purpose and it updates just like any Windows version I've ever used.

But the only reason I can think to install this over the straight from Microsoft version, is so that you the owner/administrator can actually have control over the crapware that automatically installs. All I can say is Tiny 11 is working fine for me. I'd do it all again the exact same way for the exact same reason.