Re: vLite and Win7

Well, it apparently works.

I did a few minimal component removals, and added one NIC driver I know I need as a test.

The entire process was pretty sluggish on my underpowered test machine.

The entire build, from start to finished ISO, ran just under an hour (with my CPU frequently spiking to 100% and RAM usage up around 68-89%} as I expected it would.

My new ISO image tips the scales at 1.87 Gb  vs 2.44Gb (or whatever the 64-bit Microsoft image size is). That's a fairly substantial drop in size IMHO. Especially considering how few changes I made to the default install.

Pretty cool.

P.S. Thanks again f0dder for those components. If I had to download the entire WAIK to get them, I wouldn't be posting this right now.

OK, I stripped everything out that I could stand. The BIG ones were Language Packs, Aero, and Natural Language search. I left out everything hardware related that I definitely don't have a need for(wireless, firewire, fax, etc.) and left out Games and IIS.
STILL Ultimate came out to 1.7 Gigs and Home Premium came out to 1.4 Gigs. 

vLite lets me split the ISO so I could do it with 3 CD's, but...

I guess it's just time to upgrade to a DVD burner... 

I would (I have a 4G usb stick I can spare) but my box doesn't boot the usb. I've looked around for ways to make Grub boot the usb port and floppy-based usb booters, but nothing has worked so far.

You could probably install grub/whatever on a floppy or MBR, and use that to boot from external media, though?

That's not always true, because I have at least two memory sticks that I can't set as active in Windows disk management yet I have absolutely no problems booting from them when I need to. Of course, the BIOS needs to allow you to select the device if you are to boot from it, but what Windows itself says does not really matter.

Bingo! You are absolutely correct. I should have stopped after my first sentence:

You can only boot to a device your BIOS supports and identifies as bootable. AFAIK there isn't any way to get around that.

In my eagerness to give an example with Win7, I screwed up royally.

Thanks for catching my error.

You could probably install grub/whatever on a floppy or MBR, and use that to boot from external media, though?

Yes. And traditionally, that's the way it used to be done.

But a floppy is a BIOS bootable device, as is the MBR. So you're really not booting off the USB if the initial bootloader is someplace else right? Isn't that more like a workaround?

Still, it does work,  so I guess that's one way of "booting" Win7 from a USB key without really booting from it.

Umm, it's the beta that's free...

I'm not sure people here agree with me. But i think microsoft is moving towards Opensource and Free software movement slowly.

IMHO: If they are, it is only to get close enough to hit the F/OSS community over the head when it least expects it.



But seriously, as long as Ballmer and Microsoft persist in sending mixed messages about patent infringement, I doubt any move by Microsoft towards the OSS community should be construed as completely friendly.

Microsoft has been repeatedly asked to formally renounce any potential patent claims that may exist between itself and the FOSS/Linux community.

To date, they have consistently refused to do so despite a great deal of ambiguous and waffling PR talk that tries to portray their position otherwise.

And their licensing arrangements with certain distro developers has succeeded in doing little more than to drive a very large wedge into the whole Linux community.

Having worked with Microsoft in the past, my experience leads me to believe that if they are moving towards an accommodation with Linux, it will be either under Microsoft's own terms - or not at all.

I'm not the world's deepest thinker, but I don't see how you can reconcile the goals and behaviors of a free and open software community with that of a multi-billion dollar corporation whose dominant global position depends on their continued control of a closed, proprietary software product family.

But why should they do otherwise? They didn't get to where they are today by playing nicely with others.

And despite all the negative things said about Microsoft, the one thing you'll never hear anybody call them is "stupid" or "weak." Microsoft combines the ruthless mindset of an entrepreneurial venture with the financial and political clout of a megacorp - which makes them a very formidable factor in the software world.

And as far as the Win7 beta is concerned, I think that it came about more as a "smart business" move than anything else. Especially when viewed in light of the whole Vista debacle.

I don't have any personal axe to grind with Microsoft. I have a lot of respect for them as a business, even though I am less impressed with their products. But when it comes to business, Microsoft will always watch out for numero uno. They wouldn't be Microsoft otherwise.