The 4Gb Project

Sustainability is on the lips of everyone at present, especially in schools. Therefore, getting the best from lower spec devices is important. During Covid the school's market was flooded with 4 Gb devices from multiple manufacturers, which served a purpose, however if you want to make a better user experience what do you do?

Well, when your 4Gb device gets sluggish you can look the options, you can buy new devices (if your budget allows) or you can look at reprovisioning the device with a different OS, to see if you can improve the user expereince and the lifecycle of the device.

So, I wanted to look at what options there are on 4 Gb devices. In my case I am reusing a 4 Gb Core I3 Surface Pro.

Tiny, tiny, tiny

The first option tried was Tiny 11. Tiny 11 is a lightweight version of Windows 11 (it's so lightweight it does not even include a browser) which is designed to run on old PC that don't meet the Windows 11 requirements (TPM etc) Through policy it has all the bloatware removed and therefore can run in 176 Mb of ram, so that is roughly 27 times smaller than the official requirements. It is still fully functional, so supports AAD (or Microsoft Entra ID as we now call it) management through Intune and deploying apps of your choice.

Check out the world of Tiny 11, working in 176 Mb ram in this YouTube video. As with Windows 11 you still need a valid license, and again before thinking of converting all your old PCs into Tiny 11 machines, test, test, test and test again, as this is an unsupported version of Windows and you run it at your own risk. Saying that it breathes new life into old machines with a UI that people are familiar with!.

As mentioned this is a minimal OS so you will need to goto the store and pick your browser of choice, or indeed make an app policy in Intune and push your favourite browser that way.

You can download the Tiny11 iso from tiny11 : NTDEV : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Am I a Linux lover ?

My next experience in turbo charging my 4Gb Surface was Linux, and I have to say I was never a Linux fan in the past, but bear with me on this !

However, on this occasion I thought I would give it a try, now let's set some expectations here first of all, I am a Microsoft man I use Office 365 daily therefore this was only going to work for me if I can access these services.

Attempt 1 - Ubuntu 22.04 simple to download and create a bootable USB and install the OS. All went well, however when loaded the UI did not set the world on fire.

Due to the specific hardware of the touch screen, pen etc, none of this was working. The machine would boot instantly in comparison with Windows and felt super responsive. However, from a user interface it was far from the Windows environment as it could be! How would I get on with the sidebar, and what if Firefox? (Nah just kidding!

Attempt 2 Zorin 16, this distro is more Windows like and mixes both a bit of Windows 10 and Windows 11 together which is quite nice. As you can see below:

The favourites located on the taskbar can also be moved to the centre giving you that Windows 11 feel and look. I also loved the transparencies (took me back to Vista)

So this could be super viable for users as an alternative OS if they work in the web! However, for me still no Surface hardware support. So, I did a bit of research, and of course there is a patched Linux Kernel that supports Surface which can be found GitHub - linux-surface/linux-surface: Linux Kernel for Surface Devices

This means you simply replace the Kernel, reboot and hey presto you are good to go. Not as simple and this is why Linux will never be mainstream desktop for me. Of course, there are many distros that have grown over the years and that is part of the appeal of Linux, but when your distro is a heavily mudded version the instructions of changing over the Kernel don't always work! No doubt if you have time on your hands, you can but I didn't, I just need something to work and work fast in 4Gb.

So reading the instructions attempt 3 became, yes you guessed it Ubuntu! So reinstalled worked through the Kernel changes using terminal and all is well hardware that was not working burst into life

• Touch Screen
• Surface Pen
• Camera

Can I use it though to access mSo, the answer is yes, primarily due to the fact the Microsoft Edge browser supports Linux. First thing was to download Microsoft Edge and install into Ubuntu, this then allows me to sign in with my Office 365 account giving me access to all my stuff in the form on Office Online.

Progressive Web Apps

I have often spoke of the benefits of using Progressive Web Apps (PWA's) these day on devices, and I first created a PWA for Outlook and Teams (my main tools) and pinned them to the sidebar as per the picture below

So, this gives me a great way of creating those websites into application for use on my small footprint machine.

In conclusion

Breathing life into a 4Gb device is always good, in an era of sustainability, if we can get a few more years out of a device at an acceptable speed is good for the school, the user and the environment.

Tiny 11 is a sure bet, Windows without the bloat. Makes you think Microsoft should develop that out as a SKU in its own right! Fully functioning but not supported by Microsoft :-( However works well and does what is says on the tin.

Linux is not for the faint hearted .... ideal for a personal machine but I would not want to be managing this in the enterprise, with how modular it is. However, its performance is outstanding and much improved on full Windows on a 4 Gb device. If you are not a power user and you just need a web browser, and you are using services like Office 365 or Google Workspace, then this is a click a go OS that you can deliver new life to your device.

Its plus point is speed and reliability, however against Windows it lacks things like utilising the hardware to logon (aka Windows Hello), so I am still reliant on password authentication. So I finish this article with the fact that my 4 Gb Surface is now running Ubuntu, next project is to play with Linux Windows managers and see if I can pimp my experience.

So school IT Pro's what's your trick to get extra mileage out of those older smaller devices out there, please let me know !