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.
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 thatās for sure. Also Iām 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 itās about.
TBH, even if you had to buy another license, there are places like Software Geeks where you can buy legit āOEMā licenses at prices where itās not even worth worrying about that.
Curious, somewhere that atas page mentions GPT file system
and the 1803 update, probably based on either windows 10 or 11 at a guess
Iād love to see a fully stripped bare bones windows. My hardware is a bit old
i think for any of this. I couldnāt see any suggested hardware specs.
Edit: another quick look at it, shows itās based on windows 10
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
Iām going to give this one a shot on an old laptop
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.
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 havenāt 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)
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.
Thereās no windows update, so youāll need to manually install updates if needed.
Iāll be installing it on a music pc v soon.
Finally tried this out, on a virtual machine at least.
Cantabile installs and runs ok though havenāt tried any MIDI or audio, key things that need to work .
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 doesnāt have the required hardware to upgrade to Windows 11 so Iām wondering if I can bypass all of that by using Atlas. Iād love to hear what our IT pros have to say about this. Thanks.
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 donāt want to start a Windows vs Linux vs ā¦ war
Iām 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 āthe 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), itās perfect. A windows core, a startbutton and a windows explorer, is all you need, and itās 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.
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. Iām glad I caught that in time. Atlas runs its own powerscheme, constantly blasting volts and clocks. You have to set the power scheme to ābalancedā 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 Iām 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.
Iāve been hacking and using computers since 1981. Iāve 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. Iām 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. Iāve tweaked many a computer even before methods became widely available on the internet. That said, I no longer āstrip 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. Bradās 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, Iāve found my computers much more reliable since I no longer try to shut down every service āthatās unneededā or make registry changes, etc. Iāll 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 todayās CPUās and cheap memory.
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 āunnecessaryā 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. Itās true that many of them donāt 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 Bradās ebook, and
some items are outdated (heās aware of that).
Just to mention two of them: The anti core-parking stopped working after one version (canāt 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 doesnāt 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 donāt want to sound like Iām 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 Iād love to hear the thoughts of other users. And for the record, I have never installed AtlasOS, although the bullet has crossed my mind.
.