New Tiny10 – the streamlined Windows 10 OS – could be your best bet for bringing an old PC back to life

Tiny10 came out with a new version back in June, and now it’s been considerably improved by the developer, so those looking for a lightweight spin on Windows 10 to put on an old PC might be more tempted to take the plunge.

You may recall that the improved version of Tiny10 released a couple of months back was the 64-bit (x64) variant, which offers numerous advantages in terms of better security and performance over the old 32-bit incarnation. (This means you should run it, providing you have a 64-bit CPU, which is most likely the case – we cover this in more detail here).

That was the first release of Tiny10 x64 and now the developer, NTDEV, has pushed out a major refresh (the 23H2 version) which applies a lot of fixing work and more besides (as Neowin spotted).

We’re told that Tiny10 x64 23H2 fixes “lots of nagging issues” and the rebuild of the OS ensures that it has full compatibility with “most” Windows components, meaning you can add bits and pieces back in post-installation, if critical parts of Windows 10 that you really want are missing.

Analysis: Sizeable improvements to a Tiny OS

While Tiny10 is all about streamlining Windows 10 and cutting everything right back so it’ll run on very old hardware, it’s good to have the ability to, say, reintroduce Windows Media Player into the mix if you want to. (Previously, the app didn’t work with Tiny10 x64).

This refresh of Tiny10 has also stripped back the Windows 10 installation provided even more, removing some little-used features such as, for example, OCR (optical character recognition).

The end result should be a smoother-running OS, and a slightly more compact one, albeit you do have more scope for reintroducing key Windows components should you want to.

In theory, Tiny10 can work on an ancient PC with as little as 1GB of RAM (although the official requirement is 2GB) and 16GB of storage space. The caveat with the OS (and Tiny11, the equivalent streamlined spin on Windows 11) is that you are using a modified Windows installation (ISO) file, and you cannot be exactly sure of the contents of that file.

You may want to be cautious in that regard, then, but both Tiny operating systems have been used quite considerably at this point with no complaints. Still, as ever with software downloads from the wild, you proceed at your own risk.

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