5 ms·

It does make me wonder where did the rest of the space in a Windows CD go to? I mean they needed a full cd for it and it wasn't even a live cd. And React OS sho

It does make me wonder where did the rest of the space in a Windows CD go to? I mean they needed a full cd for it and it wasn't even a live cd. And React OS should atleast have most of WinXP's features and yet is much smaller. What did microsoft use the rest of the space for?

bonzini 9y ago
Lots of drivers, for one, and a lot more functionality (the live CD certainly doesn't do Active Directory!). Plus, everything in the base system is in two copies, one for the boot environment and one for the installed version, similar to initramfs and RPMs for Linux.
Endy 9y ago
Resource storage (codecs, etc), software not necessarily built into the OS, and similar.
Const-me 9y ago
Just because it shows an Explorer doesn’t mean it includes most WinXP features. Device drivers: Driver.cab is 60MB. Localizations: LANG folder takes 100MB. .NET Framework: 41MB. Various migration tools to upgrade from Win95: 32MB.
kuschku 9y ago
Roughly 20% of the space used in Windows’ exe’s and .dll’s is EXIF and similar metadata in image assets. It’s very wasteful. They probably never tried to reduce the size.
- mmastrac 9y ago
  This seems unlikely, but giving you the benefit of the doubt - is there some research on this?
  - noisem4ker 9y ago
    Windows is Bloated, Thanks to Adobe’s Extensible Metadata Platform https://www.thurrott.com/windows/109962/windows-bloated-thanks-adobes-extensible-metadata-platform https://www.thurrott.com/windows/109962/windows-bloated-than... Also previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192353 It turns out that the overall Windows bloat due to XMP tags amounts to something like 5MB.
    - kuschku 9y ago
      Interesting, I missed the follow up, and had only read https://www.thurrott.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Bloat-Graphs.png https://www.thurrott.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Bloat-Gr...
- you_are_wrong 9y ago
  This is not true, it's a much smaller percentage, negligible overall.
dx034 9y ago
Probably the same reasons why the Facebook App uses 3 times as much space as this whole OS: Legacy Code, Visualisations and using numerous libraries.
- anyfoo 9y ago
  Libraries? What libraries does a Windows implementation use, except for the ones that it implements?
t90fan 9y ago
MS windows ships with a lot more drivers, and translations, or one.
- frik 9y ago
  ReactOS ships with more translations than any Microsoft Windows. But translation does take much space, it's just text in RC files linked to binary files.
badsectoracula 9y ago
Microsoft Bob: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.07.windowsconfidential.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.07.windowsc...

bonzini 9y ago

Lots of drivers, for one, and a lot more functionality (the live CD certainly doesn't do Active Directory!). Plus, everything in the base system is in two copies, one for the boot environment and one for the installed version, similar to initramfs and RPMs for Linux.

Endy 9y ago

Resource storage (codecs, etc), software not necessarily built into the OS, and similar.

Const-me 9y ago

Just because it shows an Explorer doesn’t mean it includes most WinXP features. Device drivers: Driver.cab is 60MB. Localizations: LANG folder takes 100MB. .NET Framework: 41MB. Various migration tools to upgrade from Win95: 32MB.

kuschku 9y ago

Roughly 20% of the space used in Windows’ exe’s and .dll’s is EXIF and similar metadata in image assets. It’s very wasteful. They probably never tried to reduce the size.

mmastrac 9y ago
This seems unlikely, but giving you the benefit of the doubt - is there some research on this?
- noisem4ker 9y ago
  Windows is Bloated, Thanks to Adobe’s Extensible Metadata Platform https://www.thurrott.com/windows/109962/windows-bloated-thanks-adobes-extensible-metadata-platform https://www.thurrott.com/windows/109962/windows-bloated-than... Also previously discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14192353 It turns out that the overall Windows bloat due to XMP tags amounts to something like 5MB.
  - kuschku 9y ago
    Interesting, I missed the follow up, and had only read https://www.thurrott.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Bloat-Graphs.png https://www.thurrott.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Bloat-Gr...
you_are_wrong 9y ago
This is not true, it's a much smaller percentage, negligible overall.

dx034 9y ago

Probably the same reasons why the Facebook App uses 3 times as much space as this whole OS: Legacy Code, Visualisations and using numerous libraries.

anyfoo 9y ago
Libraries? What libraries does a Windows implementation use, except for the ones that it implements?

t90fan 9y ago

MS windows ships with a lot more drivers, and translations, or one.

frik 9y ago
ReactOS ships with more translations than any Microsoft Windows. But translation does take much space, it's just text in RC files linked to binary files.

badsectoracula 9y ago

Microsoft Bob: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.07.windowsconfidential.aspx https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/2008.07.windowsc...