Windows XP (or now Vista) is like a 500 pound man, who says, "Why do I need to slim down?"

The answer should be obvious, to everyone, but maybe not to the man himself.

Windows XP doesn't realize that it's horribly bloated.

If you could ask it " are you OK? ", and if it could answer you, I'm sure the answer would be, "Sure!".

Bold was on the right track, getting rid of the bloat, but some thought that he was "over the top".

Removing a few redundant files from the HD doesn't really impact how fast a program runs, for instance.
Or how fast a web site appears on your screen.

I too like a clean, lean and mean PC, but simple HD maintenance can take care of that, or most of it anyway.

I was an avid reader of that forum for a long time and gained quite a few "insights" from the posts there by Bold and others. I'm sorry to see it gone.

That's a matter of opinion. I've heard all kinds of explanations about why XP is "bloat" and why Vista is even worse "bloat", but you guys should take a look at every *nix based OS out there. If you have a look at the free memory after a few days use, it's usually below 50MB, regardless of the installed RAM. It's because those operating systems cache pretty much everything.

XP runs very well on pretty much all hardware - even that which is 6 or 7 years old (remember - that's the generation of computers that was around when XP was released). I'd like to see any "modern" distro of Linux handle a system of those specs as well (I've tried most - they don't).

exactly, only yesterday i went to fix someones pc, they were happily running XP until the boot sector became corrupt on wait for it..... a 1.3 athlon and 128 MB of ram!
i got it working again and they were so grateful, and to be honest it wasnt half as slow as i thought it might be.
amazing really.

another point i make in these situations is, what is the point when ram is so cheap,processors are so powerful and hard disks are so huge nowadays, it just doesnt make sense anymore to slim down your install.

This post has been edited by eyeball: Sep 14 2007, 04:00 AM

I have 2GB of memory and can easily use 400MB in maxthon with tons of things opened. I don't need swap. However windows will move data from ram to hd because it is designed that way. In my case it is bad because such swapping is absolutely unnecessary.
On the other hand linux and *bsd (won't say all unix do that) keep as much as possible in ram. Under linux my hard drive can stop itself (laptop) but it is impossible under windows because it doesn't want to use its cache (and see laptop-tools IIRC). Unreal Tournament takes several seconds to load the first time, then if I run the game again, it starts within two seconds because a lot of data is in cache. It would be the same under XP but not to the same point and I would wait 3 or 4 seconds instead of 2 (it's not a matter of seconds, it's a matter of +50% or +100%).

That's not because of how the memory is managed that nix or XP are bloater. XP is (nearly) bloated and OEM XP are certainly. On the linux side, OpenSuSe is very heavy (how the hell can I avoid having all the mono stuff ?) but nor Slackware nor most BSD are.


7 years ago, computers had 256MB of RAM at most and usually 128MB. XP doesn't run that well or maybe but only XP : you can't load anything (yes, I have such a machine which my father uses for his work and which is as clean as when I installed an retail XP SP2 on it and disabled as many things as possible to be a bit further from the 6MB of available memory).
Use slackware upon which is slax based. I guess you know slax and you know on which hardware it boots. 256MB of memory is not a problem for it with kde and several other apps including a compiler (ocaml), emacs...
And you should compile your own kernel : it's not hard and you have enough background (you know enough hardware models).
Oh and slackware is modern. It may be the oldest still around, for me it is the one which works best : it recognizes my hardware better than any ubuntu thing.

One of the reasons I slim my installs is to get rid of windows media player which is as intrusive as an adware. My computer does what I ask it to do, no more, no less and even my mother doesn't have problems (except when she tries to paste a text copied from excel on her usb stick just like a file as she did this morning...).
And another is I want to use my ram for _my_ things, not some of windows I don't care about. Of course 100MB out of my 2GB is not really noticeable but I've already run two virtual machines and other heavy apps. It's just that if you start accepting your ram to be wasted (it is wasted because not available for your own use) at 2MB per app, you quickly lose hundreds of megs.
Btw, I've run Vista. I can run 3 or 4 virtual machines with lots of ram under XP. I couldn't under Vista.

There's the same thing with programming langages : cpu cycles are unexpensive so let's not bother with them.
OK but then you use a scripting langage which casts all over the place : not only int <-> float like in C (this is very expensive btw), but also lists to tables and other structures which is even more unsafe and then even dangerous as you can easily run out of memory.

And one last thing : never ever agree on having less rights or more intrusions in private life because then you will slowly lose everything.

In french we say of some people that when you give them your hand, they eat all your arm. Just don't start and refuse to have the hardware you paid for used by apps you don't want and that in fact also costs you money.

Err... I think you misread my post. I'm not saying that Vista or *nix systems are bloat - I'm saying they're smart about memory management.

Your comment about XP and OEM XP... there's no difference between the two! They're the exact same underlying system. The only difference between the two is licencing. XP comes with a small handful of tools that helps you maintain your system (there are some better third party tools, but let's not go there). I really don't see what's so "bloat" about Windows, nor have I ever understood the definition of "bloat", since people keep talking about different things (memory usage and management, bundled programs/files... etc).

OpenSuSe is only "very heavy" because of all the additional programs that they bundle with it. Pretty much all BSD systems I've tried so far drop you into a console on first boot.

Hey guys,

just wanted to inform you all who asked about bold_fortune's forum. He joined us on WinCert.net and we're hosting his complete work in the new created forum "Slimming Down Windows XP"

Here's the message from him:

A Message From Bold_Fortune

As many of you already know, my site is down. It will remain down. It was never really "my" site, it belonged to a generous lady named Sadie who lives in England. She gave it to me to support my work on Slimming Down Windows XP: The Complete Guide.

The guide was always for you. That is why I created it. It is my gift to those who always wanted to know which files they can delete from Windows XP, but couldn't find their answers...my site was only an afterthought.

WinCert.net is now graciously hosting my guide for you in its entirety. I will keep my guide updated there on WinCert.net.

People have posted my guide on their sites without my permission. These copies are older versions, and are not up-to-date.

Slimming Down Windows XP: The Complete Guide has always been, and will always be, "a work in progress". I edit and make changes to its contents on a continuous basis. I will continue my work there on WinCert.net. So for the best and latest version you will need to look there.

http://www.wincert.net/forum/index.php?showforum=122

Sincerely,

Bold_Fortune

Does anyone know about Bold Fortune site being down?

Hi,


I do whois, I see this:
Domain : bold-fortune.com
Expired : 25 Jul 2008 07:09:38

Hello,

I'm sorry if I'm being a zombie creator but I saw that no one answered the question.

Bold's site is down again, and it's (again) likely that it will not be up anytime soon.

However, one of Bold's friends has a copy of his guide and now has it's own subforum.

Graphix an Stuff

This post has been edited by Norton2: Aug 9 2008, 07:36 AM