PC enthusiasts are inspired by tiny11, a compressed Windows 11 22H2 build and its relatively modest hardware demands. On Friday, the tiny11 developer reported on NTDev. NTDev claimed that Microsoft’s cumbersome OS he whittled down to a staggering under 8GB, and that the slimmed-down system performed “greatly” with 2GB of RAM he did. NTDev followed up today with the following: bragging His work “works with as little as 384MB of RAM”. Pride usually comes before it falls. Another tiny11 user didn’t take long to share a screenshot proving that he was able to boot tiny11 with less than 200MB of RAM.
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according to HP’s (opens in new tab) PC Timeline (since my memory isn’t what it used to be) It’s been 20 years since PCs shipped with about 256MB of system RAM as standard. It was the era of Pentium 4 (desktop), Pentium M (laptop) and Windows XP SP2. This puts the achievement of running Windows 11 on less than 200MB of RAM in some perspective.
Setting up NTDev with a tiny11 with 384MB of RAM is indeed “very slow, but it works”. In the screenshots provided as evidence, the tiny11 developer’s system appeared strained from multiple issues. Out of memory, high disk usage, and 100% CPU usage during session. This system “runs” Windows, but any real-world user would appreciate the breathing room of the OS and the small amount of RAM for running applications.
It didn’t take long for Windows Insider Xeno to arrive Cried It contains claims (and screenshots) that tiny11 was started with only 200MB of RAM available. Again, users were open about the utter impracticality of this endeavor. Xeno said that booting at 200MB would require him to suffer a BSOD four times before reaching the desktop. Then he was able to start tiny11 with 196 MB of RAM assigned to the virtual machine (VM). However, the 4MB RAM reduction resulted in a boot process where the user saw “his BSOD for about 30 minutes”.
Running a modern Windows OS within these tight storage/RAM limits is definitely fun. However, there is a serious side. Because many PC users have older systems, they can get another lease on a less demanding but modern OS. So tiny11 and others can be useful choices alongside various compact Linux builds and Chrome OS Flex.
