This information isn't something brand new (it's a few months old), but I stumbled across this video yesterday and it intrigued me. It involves downloading and installing a lean mean clean version of Win10 or Win11 on older laptops or PCs. I tried it on a 16 year old PC, and it works rather well.
If anyone has any questions about the procedure... feel free to ask.
And if anyone has a product key from a non-functional Win7 (or Win8 or Win10) laptop or PC they could send me via PM, I'd like to see if I can activate this Tiny10 version of Windows on my old PC. (It actually works just fine without being officially activated, it just that things like personalizing the desktop etc can't be done without the activation of Windows.)
[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 11-24-2023).]
I've never heard of Tiny 10 or Tiny 11, but I certainly think it's possible.
A lot of people don't know, but Windows 10, Windows 11, etc... they all use the exact same kernel that was first used in Longhorn / Windows Vista. The only thing that's changed is the amount of logging that Windows does, the features, and some of the other built in components they've added. So if a computer can run Windows 7, it absolutely can run Windows 11... the only reason why it won't let you install it is because the program is intentionally designed to reject installs for computers that are below the requested specifications.
The only thing I'd be wondering about is whether or not it gets all the updates and how that affects its ability to remain lean.
The only thing I'd be wondering about is whether or not it gets all the updates and how that affects its ability to remain lean.
Windows Update works fine (even without Windows being activated), and the mandatory updates seem to be limited to security stuff. There are also optional updates like drivers etc.
Windows Update also gave me the option to update Windows itself to a newer version, and my concern was the same as yours, as I didn't know exactly what that would entail. So I refused it, but I plan to research this further to see what other people have learned/discovered.
[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 11-24-2023).]
Windows Update works fine (even without Windows being activated), and the mandatory updates seem to be limited to security stuff. There are also optional updates like drivers etc.
Windows Update also gave me the option to update Windows itself to a newer version, and my concern was the same as yours, as I didn't know exactly what that would entail. So I refused it, but I plan to research this further to see what other people have learned/discovered.
Oh, so you did it? Did you notice it running much faster?
Oh, so you did it? Did you notice it running much faster?
I installed Tiny10 on an XP computer (Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E4300 1.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM) which had two identical 300GB hard drives... one drive for OS and programs, the other drive for video capture. I installed Tiny10 on the "video" drive, so the PC is basically dual-boot now... XP and/or Win10.
It's difficult to compare the two operating systems, even though they're using the same hardware, as they're set up for different tasks. For example, I don't go online with XP... but Tiny10 works just fine for any tasks online with this old hardware setup. And I'm not a gamer, so I can't make any comment in that regard.
[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 11-24-2023).]
From what I understand, Win11 (the full blown version) really isn't up to snuff (compared to Win10), so Tiny11 might not be too impressive. That's one reason why I decided to try Tiny10 as opposed to trying Tiny11.
I installed Tiny10 on an XP computer (Intel® Core™2 Duo Processor E4300 1.8 GHz, 2 GB RAM) which had two identical 300GB hard drives... one drive for OS and programs, the other drive for video capture. I installed Tiny10 on the "video" drive, so the PC is basically dual-boot now... XP and/or Win10.
It's difficult to compare the two operating systems, even though they're using the same hardware, as they're set up for different tasks. For example, I don't go online with XP... but Tiny10 works just fine for any tasks online with this old hardware setup. And I'm not a gamer, so I can't make any comment in that regard.
I think I once had a Dell with about those same specs (minus the 2nd hard drive) and didn't really find the original XP lacking much to begin with. It was a big improvement over w9X.
...and didn't really find the original XP lacking much to begin with.
In the early 2000's I was teaching video editing at night school, and a sideline of that was building/selling PCs for my students to use for capturing/editing home video (which was almost exclusively still tape-based). I installed XP on all those computers. Especially when unnecessary background services were turned off, XP was quite snappy. I liked it.
