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Heya!
It's good to finally be engaging with you guys again. It felt like an eternity since the last time I've done a thread on RetroGameTalk, but I'm here to show you guys an INCREDIBLE form of Windows 11 that you may (may not) like: Tiny11.
I've been running this bad boy on both my MSI Pulse Gl66 Gaming Laptop and my HP Pavilion College Laptop, and it's been an incredible experience seeing how I don't have to deal with any of the stupid BS Microsoft decides to add to my computer whenever it feels like it (except for Microsoft Edge, which I'll tell you how to remove later down the post).
Good 'ol fastfetch on my Gaming Laptop..
Now what is Tiny11 you may ask? Well, its a simple mod of Windows 11 similar to other mods of Win11 such as ReviOS, AtlasOS, and Ghost Spectre but instead of modifying the experience to make it suit for specific needs (more specifically gaming), this one delivers what normal people who had used WIndows 11 for but without the unnecessary features, apps, and, most importantly, bloatware that Microsoft has plagued onto the operating system that could've been great had they not use Artifical Intelligence in their code and other stupid stuff.
While this may or may not make a huge impact for newer machines since they can run base 11 just fine even with the issues (according to myself with my Gaming PC without knowing about tiny11), this does add a significant performance boost to older or less powerful hardware that Microsoft official Windows 11 system requirements said that they wouldn't run... With Tiny11, you're able to make the Windows 11 that can only be ran on computers with a mere 2GB of RAM. It may not be a pleasant experience, but it'll still work even without those harsh limits!
And let me just show you the mere size of the ISO file alone. Below is the original Windows 11 image provided by Microsoft:
And here is the one that I've made with the tiny11builder. The difference is extordinary!
Though I do have to address an elephant in the room: many people are skeptical about Tiny11, and I get it—it's an unofficial, modified version of Windows 11. This is especially going for the option of downloading the ISO through other means, But I don't fully understand the hesitation.
Sure, switching to Linux is often the best option for older hardware, as it's lightweight and secure. However, with Windows 10's end-of-support having passed (October 2025), many users who aren't ready or willing to switch to Linux face limited choices: stick with Windows 10 and pay for Extended Security Updates (for a limited time) before eventually needing a new PC with the bloated Windows 11 pre-installed, or continue running an unsupported Windows 10 and risk getting viruses sucked into the vents of your desktop/laptop.
This is why I reccomend Tiny11 as it offers a great alternative to both options: it brings the Windows 11 experience onto older, unsupported machines by removing bloatware and bypassing Microsoft's strict hardware checks. And contrary to what Microsoft warns about unsupported installs not receiving updates, my personal experience has been positive. I have an HP EliteBook 840 G1 that used to ran Windows 10 Home that wasn't officially compatible with Windows 11, to not even show the SSD in the setup process, but all it took was removing the SSD, putting Windows To Go on the tiny11 iso using Rufus on my gaming laptop, and put the SSD back into the PC for me to be met with an outstanding surprise: Windows 11 works flawlessly on here.
another fastfetch but on the Elitebook in question. this used to run Windows 7, mind you.
I will mention something really important about doing this though: While running this is perfectly fine at least on my machines, There are some apps that Microsoft will forcefully add to your system without notice. Edge primarily, but who knows if anything else gets on your PC via an update or on random occasion?
Well, through the power of PowerShell, you can use a special script to remove those apps (and anything else that TIny11 doesn't remove!) called Win11debloat. This tool allows for the user to automatically removes a set of preinstalled apps on their PC as well as any other telemetry or whatever Microsoft adds onto the PC.
For my case, since Tiny11 took care of mostly the obvious, I just want Win11debloat to remove any other Windows component that isn't required to run Windows onto this machine.
And that's all! If you combine the efforts of both Tiny11 and Win11debloat onto a newly installed Windows 11 machine, you can make Windows only use up to 26GB of data! I wished I had the screenshot of such though...
And this is much less than the 60GB that was used on a standard install of Windows. I hope that by sharing this information with you, maybe you'll want to add a new life of Windows to your older PCs without having to use Linux or an older version of Windows. If you know about this, let me know your experiences with this!
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I do apologize if this was a bit messy of an article, but I had to get this information across to y'all.
