Would this be possible? How far could anyone (outside of Microsoft) strip down W...

794CD01 · on March 30, 2016

Since 2008R2, Windows has had a Server Core version that is trying to move closer and closer to that goal.

McGlockenshire · on March 30, 2016

MS is also adding an SSH server to Windows.

If they also add Linux userland support to Windows Server, in the near future you will be able to SSH in and get bash prompt on your Windows infrastructure... natively.

I'm kind of liking the future.

bradyd · on March 31, 2016

The install environment for Windows, Windows PE[0], is an extremely stripped down version of Windows. It's based on the same code base as the main Windows, but basically only comes with the command prompt and task manager. It's available free as part of the Windows Automated Installation Kit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Preinstallation_Enviro...

lmm · on March 30, 2016

I ran bb4win as my window manager for a while. You can get a full suite of userspace applications e.g. KDE for windows. If you're too much of a purist to use cygwin you can (or could until recently) build everything against SUA and then you just need to run a windows X server, but at that point you're still running explorer as the graphical shell/window manager.

mappu · on March 31, 2016

There's at least one free (gratis) version of Windows available (Hyper-V Server) that's missing the Explorer shell and some other parts.

I have successfully installed KDE on this (via Cygwin plus a mesa/llvmpipe build of opengl32.dll). It seemed to work OK.