Software Tool Strips Windows Vista to Bare Bones
 

I just caught this on Slashdot, never heard of it before. Might be tempted to give this a shot...

http://slashdot.org/articles/08/01/28/1514212.shtml

Or you can just get a Mac.

(ducks)

What are you looking to strip out?

Yea, but what if you want something that DOESN'T suck???

It doesn't, you just need to know how to abstract the power of it.

Does it remove the DRM and goofy hardware standards?

I heard i takes it right down to DOS 3.2 :D

I'm sure that's quite true, but, personally, the Mac UI is the only one I've never been able to get comfortable with. UNIX command lines, GNOME, KDE, CDE, OS/2, etc etc blah blah, but never been able to use a Mac productively. And our school system brought us up using Macs, too. The whole system doesn't jive with me. I guess I just don't get it....

Legion, the DRM stuff is built right into the kernel, so, no, it doesn't remove any of that, but you can remove things like the balloon notifications that pop up from the taskbar telling you **** that you already know. I HATE that. Or you can remove all the drivers your computer doesn't need, and add only the ones it does. You can also trim all off the non-essential Windows software.

Sorry, no DOS in Vista:-P Might take it to NT 3.5 though;);)

Got a new Dell desktop coming today and before sundown XP will reside on the hard drive...

looks like it only strips Vista :-( I've been thinking of a new motherboard and then a clean install on of my systems.

Anyone know how many processes is barebones in XP? This computer has 52 open with nothing open.

If you can, Dell is dropping some driver support for XP at this point.

There is a tool that does the same thing for XP as well, I think it is called nLite or something. if you go the the link I posted and do a find (CTRL+F in Fire Fox and I think IE) for nLite or XP, you'll eventually find it.

Remember that when doing this, it's easy to Break Things, so it might take a few tries and it wouldn't hurt to have a techie friend on hand to assist.

I am techie enough to get through, done it a few times.


Another thread got me thinking.... Society is like a Windows installation. You start out clean and crisp, everything seems to work, then you add this cuz it seems like a good idea, then that cuz this happened, and on and on. Soon the installations start to fight over the resources, then the crooks gain control of it for their benefit and use it to enforce only their agenda, and after a while it gets so complicated that nothing seems to work right, it's slow and cumbersome even though the computer is working it's azz off.

We just need to reinstall Govt every 4 years, like Windows. :->

Don't remove Vista - it is a better OS than XP - in my experience. It just needs a little TLC to get it set up to your liking. You will have a tough time installing XP on a machine set up for Vista. Lots of the drivers will not work, your sata hard drives probably will not show up, etc.

As I have said many times on this board, Vista works great on all my machines, its fast, very stable and has some cool features that you will like.

Research the tips and tweaks which are all over the net, load lots of ram and enjoy.

I recently started using Readyboost which is a thumb drive that acts as additional cache space. I plugged in a 4g drive, set it to use 3710mb for Vista and my seat of the pants feeling is that everything runs a little faster.

So far I have to concur with Randy on Vista. The cheap-o Sony laptop I purchased for the MIL has so far been flawless running Vista Home Premium. It was a total pig with 1 GB of RAM but after installing a $40 matched pair of 1 GB sticks it came to life. Everything (wifi network, printers) setup the first time around with no hassles. Runs the latest OpenOffice and AVG just fine. The gadget bar takes getting used to but the MIL loves it (stocks, time, headlines).

I guess the test will be when I throw it some of my media files - mp3s. I'll also try to rip a couple CDs with it and see how it fares.