Acer Aspire One Cloudbook with Windows now available for $190

… That doesn’t even have enough space to hold the web-browser’s cache!!! 😉

a massive Arch linux install with tons of apps (vlc, audacious, kodi with all repo, gimp, libreoffice 5, Chrome, google earth; telegram, spotify etc…) stands at 10gigs Max. a normal install is about 6gigs. it would be alright with 16gigs ssd. i have an 8gig ssd in an old Mini-itx and i can run linux without problem and stock stuff on a USB stick ♡(*´∀｀*)人(*´∀｀*)♡

Vista 10 is another story, i installed one and after 2 updates it clocked at 25gigs!!!! with no apps installed θ＼(；￢_￢)

Yep, a modern linux desktop shouldn’t need more than 10 GB, it’s true! And that is a fully-stocked distribution. I still remember running OpenLinux off 300 MB HDDs!

But you’re right… Vista 10 is big. Big and fat. Makes you wonder what grot takes up all that space!

Vista was the most bloated Windows ever got, ever since then Windows has been on a steady diet :-p Windows 10 is pretty close to the requirements of XP… The need for a recovery partition is almost eliminated, the OS makes active use of smart compression methods and requires up to several GB’s less space than Windows 8 did… It’s still bigger than a typical GNU/Linux distro but it can actually make it to a 10GB partition… 16GB just gives it a little breathing room for updates, etc. that can take up space over time but most updates are actually replacing existing files now and not adding… but Windows desktop apps can take up a lot of space, which forces using WinRT apps but the WinRT app ecosystem isn’t ready to take over… It’s also a issue with things like OneDrive that are still a issue as that system needs… Read more »

Many readers of Liliputing are interested in this. Probably not the majority. But certainly a sizable %. A writer should know his readers.

Writers, like a person running a business, ultimately has to go after the majority of their customers/readers and can’t always cater to every single minority faction that may also be out there. But it depends on what you mean by locked, for most modern PC’s any OS that can work with UEFI will work. The only ones really locked down are mobile devices and systems based on mobile hardware. Higher end laptops, etc. will usually allow you to alter firmware settings, like give the option to disable Secure Boot… However, some people mean locked by the UEFI even existing at all on the system and would prefer to replace it with something like Coreboot, which was previously known as LinuxBIOS, and is used by pretty much all Chromebooks to date. For those in the later category, they may be out of luck as far as Intel based systems goes as… Read more »

General customers perhaps, but not here. So just get in a habit of always asking sales weasels and include bootloader: locked|unlocked|unknown in the specs along with ram, cpu, etc. We know vendors read the site too, they might decide unknown sounds negative…. which it is but not as negative as locked. In the end, the terrible truth being covered up is that there is zero positive benefit to the customer in a locked bootloader so they don’t want to discuss it at all since every vendor now sells some locked gear. But any hardware that is unlocked IS at a competitive advantage, only the size is debatable, so if it was clear they could actually monetize that advantage by having people actually know it exists they just might go to the trouble of letting it be known. So vendors might be convinced to clear up the confusion and move unknown… Read more »

Vendors? You mean the manufacturers? Not a chance. The market for unlocked Windows devices is tiny compared with the overall market for this class of devices. It’s likely that more eight year-olds will be given a Cloudbook than there are Linux users that would buy one of these if the bootloader was unlocked. I really think you are reaching to claim that anything talked about on this site regarding boot loaders is going to influence the likes of Asus.

Yes, Liliputing does cater to enthusiasts, to some extent, and there is no doubt they (we) are the most vocal readers by far in terms of comments, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they (we) are still a pretty small minority in terms of overall readership.