GETTING LEAN

Not that we’re about to suggest that cutting down an ISO to its bare minimum is a complete waste of time, but there is an alternative (of sorts) officially sanctioned by Microsoft itself. It’s called, appropriately, Windows 10 Lean.

Intended to be used on tablets with 16GB of storage, Windows 10 Lean cuts the installer size by a hefty 2GB over Windows 10 Pro, and takes up only 6.5GB of drive space when installed —around half the usual average Windows footprint. There’s not much in there beyond Windows itself (only around 200MB of the Lean install is taken up by apps), and it’s very much a modern-only OS; while you can install standard x86 applications, unlike the old Windows RT, basically every legacy component is gone. Control Panel, for example, is present, but eerily empty.

Bad news, however, or perhaps good news if you’ve put in the effort to trim your own ISO: Although it appeared in Insider Preview build 17650, Lean hasn’t been seen since, and it’s disappeared from Microsoft’s UUP servers. That particular build is out there if you look for it, though, and we would be very surprised if it (or something similar) didn’t appear in future Windows 10 builds.

Windows 10 IoT Core runs on just 2GB of storage, and is designed for embedding, so can run on tiny devices like the Raspberry Pi. It’s not Windows as you know it—there’s no command prompt, no desktop, and its GUI is limited to running one Microsoft universal platform app at a time—but it’s free. Download it, and find documentation, at www.microsoft.com/en-us/softwaredownload/windows10IoTCore.