Atlas OS for gamers / low latency performance

I ran across this OS that was designed for gamers and is based on NTLite. Has anyone here tried this out for Live Music?

https://atlasos.net/

I was looking to get some feedback on it because it says it squeezes more out of lower resource laptops and PCs making some of them usable for gaming as far as latency and screen redraw time is concerned.

The Faq gave this set of points for it.

The following components and features are removed in Atlas:

  • TPM (Trusted Platform Module)
  • Windows Defender
  • Storage Spaces
  • eMMC Drives
  • RAID Disk Configurations
  • BitLocker
  • Biometrics (Face Recognition/Fingerprint)
  • Voice Recognition
  • Restore Points & System Reset

Unsupported Software/Features:

  • Alternate Languages, due to a Windows Bug. With luck, you may be able to install a different language.
  • WSLv2 - Requires Hyper-V, v1 is supported
  • Modern Flyouts
  • Projecting
  • Oculus Software Check Here
  • Cracked Software - In the event they do not work, there will be no support.
  • Cheating Software - In the event they do not work, there will be no support.

No language support is bad thatā€™s for sure. Also Iā€™m not sure if @brad - Cantabile would be affected by some of these functions being removed. I might just have to build a clunker to put it on to see what itā€™s about.

Thanks for any thoughts!

Dave

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Sounds like something worth trying out, as we know that Windows is bloated

From my read it uses your existing license of Windows so no legal issues I see.

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TBH, even if you had to buy another license, there are places like Software Geeks where you can buy legit ā€œOEMā€ licenses at prices where itā€™s not even worth worrying about that. :slight_smile:

I canā€™t see anything obvious in that list that would preclude Cantabile from running.

What version of Windows is it actually based on though? So long as it can run .NET5 it should be ok.

Please let us know if you try it and how it works.

Curious, somewhere that atas page mentions GPT file system
and the 1803 update, probably based on either windows 10 or 11 at a guess

Iā€™d love to see a fully stripped bare bones windows. My hardware is a bit old
i think for any of this. I couldnā€™t see any suggested hardware specs.

Edit: another quick look at it, shows itā€™s based on windows 10

Great tip - Iā€™ve been looking for a stripped down but reliable version of Windows for a long time - I will try it out soon

There have been a few projects over the years that strip out all the useless junk the Microsoft marketing department continually throws in. The problem is without my Oculus headset how am I going to see my imaginary fans :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Iā€™m going to give this one a shot on an old laptop

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I have bought and happily used the volume licenses that find their way to online sellers.
They are legit but, from what I can tell, are linked to your hardware once activated.

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From what I understand most come from corporate PCs that are retired and salvaged. Whatever the case may be, they work great but are bound to hardware. But hey, I havenā€™t paid more than $5 for a license in a decade now!

Moving from win7 to win10 can be a living nightmare (ok not that serious).
I did it with one of my Dell E6430 laptops (the other remained win7)
With win7 it was a veritable powerhouse with its 3740qm cpu.
With win10 it lost 2/3 of its Cantabile performance (despite glitch freeing it)

Agreed, the bulk OEM licenses are tied to a machine, but at the price - usually between $10 and $20 then it is not even worth thinking about :slight_smile:

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I installed Atlas OS on a gaming pc.
It is certainly barebones. I have a good feeling about it.
There are scripts to re-enable things like SMB, so you have some flexibility.
Thereā€™s no windows update, so youā€™ll need to manually install updates if needed.
Iā€™ll be installing it on a music pc v soon.

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Finally tried this out, on a virtual machine at least.
Cantabile installs and runs ok though havenā€™t tried any MIDI or audio, key things that need to work :smiley:.

Outside of this being used for Cantabile is anyone using it as a replacement for Windows 10. I understand something would be needed in place of Defender but otherwise could it safely be used for online business activity and as your main desktop use? My PC doesnā€™t have the required hardware to upgrade to Windows 11 so Iā€™m wondering if I can bypass all of that by using Atlas. Iā€™d love to hear what our IT pros have to say about this. Thanks.

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Hi @Tweaker
if your needs are only web surfing (and not daily MS office usage) you can consider also some linux variant. They work nicely on old hardware and pretty good for daily activities.

DISCLAIMER: I donā€™t want to start a Windows vs Linux vs ā€¦ war :slight_smile:

Iā€™m using Atlas OS for Cantabile on my performance laptop. This particular Windows install on the laptop is dedicated to the band and music performance only. It stays offline. However, the laptop is multiboot, so if I wanted to do something else on the laptop I would boot into ā€˜the other sideā€™. I would not use Atlas for my regular machine, you would run into missing things and it would be unsafe, but for Cantabile (only), itā€™s perfect. A windows core, a startbutton and a windows explorer, is all you need, and itā€™s close to that. It happened to me more that once that normal Windows decided to start a virusscan, or re-index or whatever it does to amuse itself, during a piano solo, resulting in a crackle of some sort. That is all over now.

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Adding to my last post: You have to be pretty handy with computers and backing up images, and have 1,5 free sunday to carefully and securely set Atlas OS up. The biggest troubleshoot I ran into came post install: Everything seemed fine but when left alone, my laptop got ridiculously hot. Even or especially when it fell asleep. Iā€™m glad I caught that in time. Atlas runs its own powerscheme, constantly blasting volts and clocks. You have to set the power scheme to ā€˜balancedā€™ to make it relax a little. At the same time I suspect some laptop specific power/temperature/fan drivers did not come through in my fresh install. So Iā€™m not sure if I would have fried my laptop, but it is fixed now. I cannot let it fall asleep nor do I let the screen turn off now.

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Iā€™ve been hacking and using computers since 1981. Iā€™ve been on beta tests for various Windows versions and have been programming since the beginning. I was the IT Director for a national engineering firm for 18 years. I know Windows internals inside and out. Iā€™m not bragging; just letting you know some of my credentials.

It used to be mandatory to strip down Windows for engineering, graphics and audio work. Iā€™ve tweaked many a computer even before methods became widely available on the internet. That said, I no longer ā€œstrip downā€ ANY DAWs I use. At some point around 10 years ago, I noticed very little gain for a lot of work. I did notice more issues with the computers, thoughā€¦ So I started experimenting on what things made real world differences. As time wore on, I found that a stock version of Windows usually runs great now with few changes. Bradā€™s excellent guide covers everything to look at, but only some are needed. I usually try to find those that are noticeable or measurable issues before changing something.

To recap, Iā€™ve found my computers much more reliable since I no longer try to shut down every service ā€œthatā€™s unneededā€ or make registry changes, etc. Iā€™ll find known offenders that are CPU hogs, and that is it.

Your milage my very, but I find that reliability is traded off when tweaking Windows too much. And to me, reliability is more important on a DAW or live rig than small performance gains from massive overhauls of the OS, especially with todayā€™s CPUā€™s and cheap memory.

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I partly agree with you. What you say is accurate, but it applies more to desktop computers. Laptops are a different matter, as they are already limited for things we all know very well.

I also stopped killing a lot of ā€˜unnecessaryā€™ services, but things have changed a lot since Windows XP, and there are now hundreds of services that are pointless for playing music, either in the studio or live. Itā€™s true that many of them donā€™t bother at all, but others might start during long pauses (like indexing), although fortunately they shut down just as quickly.
However, some topics are not currently covered by Bradā€™s ebook, and
some items are outdated (heā€™s aware of that).
Just to mention two of them: The anti core-parking stopped working after one version (canā€™t remember which) of Windows 10 and permanently on Windows 11, so I need to use an external utility. Another useful thing is to run Cantabile as a high priority process. This greatly reduces the load on the processor, although it doesnā€™t affect the Asio buffer processing time, which is our #1 enemy.

It usually takes me an hour to setup and tune a desktop PC, three hours for a laptop and 10min for a Mac.
And, like you, I donā€™t want to sound like Iā€™m bragging, I started with some 6502 boards, even as a kid, then Apple II, IBM PC, first Macs and so on. Including writing small sequencers for my analog gear first, then MIDI/CV interfaces.

Anyway, this is an interesting topic and Iā€™d love to hear the thoughts of other users. And for the record, I have never installed AtlasOS, although the bullet has crossed my mind. :thinking:

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