Tiny11 takes up more space than a standard installation

[oood]

Description:

While creating a Windows 11 LTSC system using Tiny11 Core (Nov 24), I discovered that Tiny11 occupies more disk space than a standard Windows 11 LTSC installation.

What I Did:

1. ISO Creation:

   • Used the Windows 11 LTSC ISO downloaded from MSDN (en-us_windows_11_iot_enterprise_ltsc_2024_x64_dvd_f6b14814.iso).
   • Utilized tiny11Coremaker.ps1 (Nov 24) to create a Tiny11 ISO, opting for the IoT version and including .NET 3.5.
   • The ISO size was reduced from the original MSDN 4.79GB to 2.67GB.

2. System Installation:

   • Installed the system using VirtualBox 7.1.5 test build with default configuration (80GB disk space and 4GB RAM).
   • Observed that Edge, Microsoft Defender, and Windows Update were disabled (note: Edge WebView was not deleted, occupying 700MB+ disk space).

3. Post-Installation Steps:

   • Disabled the page file and hibernation file.
   • Restarted the system.

4. Observations:

   • Disk usage was 7.97GB.
   • RAM usage was 1.2GB + 599MB (as shown in the attached screenshot).

For comparison, I created a new virtual machine and installed the full en-us_windows_11_iot_enterprise_ltsc_2024_x64_dvd_f6b14814.iso. I similarly disabled the page file and hibernation file. The disk usage for this installation was 5.68GB and RAM usage was 1.5GB + 1.1GB (as shown in the attached screenshot).

Issue:

The primary issue is that Tiny11, despite being designed to be a smaller and lighter version of Windows 11, actually uses more disk space (7.97GB) compared to the standard Windows 11 LTSC installation (5.68GB).

Analysis:

The RAM usage is significantly higher in the standard installation due to Edge, Microsoft Defender, and Windows Update running in the background. However, the disk usage is notably lower compared to Tiny11. It appears that Microsoft's original ISO can detect the virtual machine environment and optimize disk usage accordingly. Tiny11, designed to be smaller, is paradoxically larger in terms of disk usage in this scenario.

[LiuYimin]

I have the same situation

[G0phix]

Same problem with the standard version: Windows 11 Home 10.0.26100 (4.47GB) vs 5,57 from tiny11

tiny11.log

[Karl-WE]

Thanks for reporting.
related issues #321 #317 introduced by a major code change
I am waiting for feedback from maintainer ntdev.