5 ms·

I think it's a good thing that Microsoft is reducing the size of their base OS and decoupling many of the apps from the Windows release cycle. It definitely do

I think it's a good thing that Microsoft is reducing the size of their base OS and decoupling many of the apps from the Windows release cycle. It definitely does, however, feel like the end of a era.

toast0 9y ago
I'm not sure I would consider paint at the forefront of bloat, given that the base OS runs in the tens of gigs. I wouldn't be surprised if the default background image is larger than mspaint.exe. To say nothing of the store apps they auto install for you.
- wvenable 9y ago
  It's not necessarily the size of the executable but rather that it's another executable the part of the build and test process of the base image. Pinball had to be removed for this sort of reason.
  - merijnv 9y ago
    > Pinball had to be removed for this sort of reason. What? No. It was removed because it was a 32bit application written by a 3rd party and there was a hard to fix bug on 64bit windows that made it unplayable, so they dropped it. Source: Raymond Chen - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=...
    - garaetjjte 9y ago
      That doesn't make sense, it could be run on WoW64. (even Visual Studio is 32-bit)
      - anonymfus 9y ago
        Visual Studio is not a part of Windows. From Raymond Chen's answer to this question in the first comment to the same blog post: > That would have been even more work, because there was at the time no infrastructure in Setup for having 32-bit-only components. (And then automatically uninstalling it when WOW64 was disabled.)
  - antod 9y ago
    I was under the impression pinball was removed because it was basically unsupportable and too had too much low level hacky graphics code to port across changes in the graphics subsystems. A shame though, it was a fun game.
kalleboo 9y ago
They're replacing it with "Paint 3D" though, which comes with huge 3D models of smilies built-in. The net result is more bloat, not less.
chrisper 9y ago
Hopefully they continue by removing: Candy Crush, "Get Office", Minecraft, ... and all other trash that gets installed by default.
- positivecomment 9y ago
  When that "Get Office" thing first popped-up, I was sure my PC was infected with malware and came to the brink of formatting my hard drive. Later came the random console pop-up from the automatic WSL updates [1] and then I did panic enough to actually format all the things but that's another story. [1]: https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/841 https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/841
  - etatoby 9y ago
    The random console popups give me the jeebies! I still don't know what causes them. Never had such things on older Windows/Lenovo machines.
    - Jwarder 9y ago
      You might want to review the scheduled tasks. My system had "OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration" set to run every hour. It only pops up for an instant, but it would grab input focus and thus do bad things to my blood pressure.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- proactivesvcs 9y ago
  ...the integrated advertising platform, cloud software, the mandatory spying components...
  - BrockSamson 9y ago
    This is my problem with Windows 10. It is no longer an operating system it is an advertising platform.
agumonkey 9y ago
There's so much more before Paint becomes a blip on the map.
mbel 9y ago
6.36 MB, that's how much space takes MS Paint. In era when web pages sizes are no longer counted in kilo- but megabytes is this really a meaningful size reduction? Because it's definitely a meaningful feature loss.
userbinator 9y ago
"reducing the size of their base OS" is completely irrelevant. I don't have a Win10 mspaint.exe for comparison, but the one from XP is 336KB. It's a damn shame that a lot of apps these days seem to be >1MB, yet are even more featureless. If you want to talk about reducing size, there's plenty of other low-hanging fruit of more questionable utility in the OS.

I think it's a good thing that Microsoft is reducing the size of their base OS and decoupling many of the apps from the Windows release cycle. It definitely does, however, feel like the end of a era.

toast0 9y ago

I'm not sure I would consider paint at the forefront of bloat, given that the base OS runs in the tens of gigs. I wouldn't be surprised if the default background image is larger than mspaint.exe. To say nothing of the store apps they auto install for you.

wvenable 9y ago
It's not necessarily the size of the executable but rather that it's another executable the part of the build and test process of the base image. Pinball had to be removed for this sort of reason.
- merijnv 9y ago
  > Pinball had to be removed for this sort of reason. What? No. It was removed because it was a 32bit application written by a 3rd party and there was a hard to fix bug on 64bit windows that made it unplayable, so they dropped it. Source: Raymond Chen - https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=5803 https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20121218-00/?p=...
  - garaetjjte 9y ago
    That doesn't make sense, it could be run on WoW64. (even Visual Studio is 32-bit)
    - anonymfus 9y ago
      Visual Studio is not a part of Windows. From Raymond Chen's answer to this question in the first comment to the same blog post: > That would have been even more work, because there was at the time no infrastructure in Setup for having 32-bit-only components. (And then automatically uninstalling it when WOW64 was disabled.)
- antod 9y ago
  I was under the impression pinball was removed because it was basically unsupportable and too had too much low level hacky graphics code to port across changes in the graphics subsystems. A shame though, it was a fun game.

kalleboo 9y ago

They're replacing it with "Paint 3D" though, which comes with huge 3D models of smilies built-in. The net result is more bloat, not less.

chrisper 9y ago

Hopefully they continue by removing: Candy Crush, "Get Office", Minecraft, ... and all other trash that gets installed by default.

positivecomment 9y ago
When that "Get Office" thing first popped-up, I was sure my PC was infected with malware and came to the brink of formatting my hard drive. Later came the random console pop-up from the automatic WSL updates [1] and then I did panic enough to actually format all the things but that's another story. [1]: https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/841 https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/841
- etatoby 9y ago
  The random console popups give me the jeebies! I still don't know what causes them. Never had such things on older Windows/Lenovo machines.
  - Jwarder 9y ago
    You might want to review the scheduled tasks. My system had "OfficeBackgroundTaskHandlerRegistration" set to run every hour. It only pops up for an instant, but it would grab input focus and thus do bad things to my blood pressure.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
proactivesvcs 9y ago
...the integrated advertising platform, cloud software, the mandatory spying components...
- BrockSamson 9y ago
  This is my problem with Windows 10. It is no longer an operating system it is an advertising platform.

agumonkey 9y ago

There's so much more before Paint becomes a blip on the map.

mbel 9y ago

6.36 MB, that's how much space takes MS Paint. In era when web pages sizes are no longer counted in kilo- but megabytes is this really a meaningful size reduction? Because it's definitely a meaningful feature loss.

userbinator 9y ago

"reducing the size of their base OS" is completely irrelevant. I don't have a Win10 mspaint.exe for comparison, but the one from XP is 336KB. It's a damn shame that a lot of apps these days seem to be >1MB, yet are even more featureless. If you want to talk about reducing size, there's plenty of other low-hanging fruit of more questionable utility in the OS.