Can I "strip" 7 down to barebones?

[dragos240]

Hello,

I've been a Linux user for 4 years now. There's only been one thing I missed, and those were games. There's no debating that windows is the operating system you will want to use for that. Though, I can't find anything even close to the level of customisation that you can do with Linux for windows, you can do nearly anything. Now sure, there's WINE for running games, and many of them play well, but not to the extent that they would on windows.

I do not own windows 7, but I may buy it in the near future and I wanted to know how much of the operating system can be stripped. What I'm looking for essentially:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e8/Windows_2008_Server_Core.png

I want all of the fancy GUI things stripped down. I want it to only load the drivers that are absolutely required, no extra services loaded that are absolutely necessary. My question is this: How would I go about doing this?

Thanks in advance,
Dragos240

 

[pparks1]

By default, Windows 7 runs very well out of the box. While I am a Linux admin for a living, and turn off most everything unnecessary there, there is really nothing that I do with Windows 7 to trim it down. There really is no server core equivalent in the desktop OS.

You might find it funny, but if you turn down all of the GUI stuff, it can actually cause your Windows 7 to slow down. Reason being, the light weight graphics stuff gets taken care of by the actual CPU, rather than using the GPU. I've actually found best performance is to leave the aero stuff on and utilize power of both the CPU and the GPU.

I've tested fairly extensively with a stopwatch and starting turning services off in Windows 7. And mor often than not, my box gets slower the more that I get rid of. It's hard to believe, but MS got a lot right with this operating system.

 

[dragos240]

Hm. Do you think it would be possible then to get cygwin installed and turn the graphics system off, then install Xorg? I've never heard of Xorg for windows, but it may exist. If I get windows, I want to see if I can't get some sort of hybrid system working. So I can run linux programs and such whilst running windows as well.

Thanks again,
Dragos240

 

[Advice Pro]

I suggest using virtualbox.org!