There's no two ways about it: Windows 11 is absurdly heavy. Writing as someone who has been here since the days of DOS 3.3, it is patently ridiculous how pathetic Windows 11 makes multi-gigahertz multicore machines look. If only there was something smaller. Something like... I mean, yeah, Linux, but the download for Bazzite is like eight gigs, and it wants over fifty gigabytes of space once it's installed. What about something like the systems of my youth? What about Tiny Core Linux?
Tiny Core Linux is the extreme alternative to Windows 11, a true example of just how small a functional desktop operating system can be, even now in 2025. The latest release, Tiny Core Linux 16.2, which was published at the end of September, comes in at roughly 23MB for the standard "TinyCore" edition. That's not 23MB of installer data followed by gigabytes of packages, but 23MB for the entire bootable system with a graphical desktop—no Internet required. There's an even smaller "Core" version if you don't need a GUI, at just 17 MB.
