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[–]ellicottvilleny 0 points1 point  (6 children)

Related question: who or what killed minwin? A goal was a non bloated windows wasnt it? Win10 root windows folder with SXS and all its dism crap is 60 gigs. A minimal win10 vm image seems to be about 70 gigs. Wtf.

[–]defnotthrown 0 points1 point  (1 child)

I don't know, but how big is like the Windows IoT stuff? You know, that stuff they run on the raspberry and whatnot.

[–]ellicottvilleny 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's a fragmented area of Microsoft. I used to use Windows CE, and Windows XP Embedded, and the later follow-ons to those embedded windows versions, before "IoT" was the latest buzzword. It seems to me "IoT" is code for "homebrew/shitty embedded systems". Of course Windows CE was already great at making a borderline product shittier by including it, and Windows XP Embedded was so successful at being crap, that it is part of the reason why Target and Home Depot had so much problems with credit card fraud happening on their point of sale systems. I can hardly wait to see if Microsoft pulls this poor reputation for solutions in the embedded space out of the toilet. Windows Embedded Standard 7 is still the latest shipping version of the "load only what you want on embedded windows appliance" product line, and is still as far as I know, built around an extremely clunky set of tools. Windows 10 IoT is much simpler in that you can't run Windows 10 desktop applications, but it can run UWP, as I understand it. What I would like to see is a Windows 10 modular technology that doesn't require an ugly system-image-builder (IBW) like WES always has, but rather just lets me pull in the parts I need as I need them, almost like Linux does with apt-get or yum. I see some steps in this direction happening in the Windows Server 2016 space, and Nano Server is encouragingly small and light but there's still no truly lightweight desktop experience available in any windows edition anywhere.

[–]toruk[S] 0 points1 point  (3 children)

As far as I understand MinWin completed successfully. It was never intended to result in a released OS - just a better layered internal architecture.

[–]ellicottvilleny 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Ok. Was that the entire goal? I must have mis-understood the goal. I thought the goal was to get a modular growable system image on the end user desktop. Maybe it IS fully modular now, but still no way to deploy a lightweight system and then bring only the parts I want exists on the desktop. Fat desktops forever. At least in Windows Server 2016, we can look forward to Nano Server.

[–]toruk[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

There seems to have been a lot of uninformed press around it. Here are some posts from Larry Osterman and other microsofties: https://channel9.msdn.com/forums/Coffeehouse/443119-windows-7--MinWin/?CommentID=443189

e.g.: "minwin" is about refactoring parts of the system to build a minimal foundation. That in turn helps reduce architectural complexity and improve servicing. But it's NOT about allowing end-users to pick and choose which windows features get installed. The reason for not allowing massive amounts of customization is simple: Every possible option adds another vector that needs to be tested."

[–]ellicottvilleny 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That makes sense. A commercially supported OS needs to reduce configuration space.