Windows 10 AtlasOS is an unofficial modified version of Microsoft’s operating system. From the beginning, the goal of “eliminate all negative Windows drawbacks that could affect performance” and therefore focuses primarily on players. Also for users looking for an operating system that requires fewer hardware requirements to install on older machines. The version was just updated with Windows 10 base 22H2 and it takes “light Windows” to the extreme and disables all kinds of features.

If we put this project into context, it should be noted that today’s official Windows are real monsters, full of services and applications that are often unnecessary. For one, Microsoft needs to cram more and more code to support a huge hardware and software ecosystem. Added to this is a large number of services from Microsoft itself, system applications and others that have little to do with the basic operation of the system. And to top it off, we have terrible Bloatware from Microsoft and other manufacturers when they sell their OEM equipment.

As a result, official Windows is a very bloated system and therefore It’s no wonder that third parties are developing lightweight variants that users demand.. Tiny 10 and 11 are good examples. And another AtlasOS that concerns us in this post.

What is Windows 10 AtlasOS

This development is hosted on GitHub and claims to be a open source project. This statement must be qualified because the main tool used to create it is NTLite, which is a closed source software just like Windows itself. AtlasOS source code is available to allow you to audit or modify it. In the future, its creators say they will provide a method for users to create their own version.

Start of lesson. The goal of this MOD is significantly reduce running processes. Compared to the standard version of Windows 10, it reduces the number of running processes from almost 200 to around thirty. It also significantly reduces RAM usage, from 1.5GB to 600MB. Process latency is also reduced from 3.09 to 2.55.

This release also disables the mitigations implemented against the Specter and Meltdown security vulnerabilities that affected Intel and AMD processors. The industry had to rush to produce these types of patches against side-channel vulnerabilities because they were critical to security but reduced chip performance.

Other components are disabled in this development, there are telemetry functions of Windows and Bloatware that every user should check in terms of performance, but also to protect the privacy of their data. Trusted Platform Module (TPM), BitLocker, voice recognition, RAID configuration, or storage configuration were also removed.

The latest version of AtlasOS takes the idea of ​​slimming down Windows to an extreme, removing other features such as the Microsoft OneDrive cloud storage service and the Edge browser. In addition, it also disables restore points, system restore features, and the built-in Microsoft Defender security system.

The removal of these security and maintenance components has caused some controversy on the Internet, but the developers have already announced that they will remove all components that were not crucial to the performance of video games, their main goal. In response to the criticism, the developers say they will pick it up in future updates to get the system “even more secure than official Windows 10”.

How to install Windows 10 AtlasOS

The installation is somewhat different from the official distribution of Windows 10 or GNU/Linux because the developers do not supply the ISO image directly. For installation you need:

• A USB drive with a capacity of 8 GB or larger.
• A bootable media creation app like Rufus or Ventoy.
• Backup copies of files you want to keep in the cloud or on an external drive.
• Official AME Wizard Assistant.
• .abpx file for the Atlas wizard Playbook.

After creating the installation media, the installation is the same as the official version of Windows 10 22H2. We’ll leave you with an installation guide video in case you dare to try it. They also have good documentation and a discussion forum.

final remarks

Windows 10 AtlasOS is not supported by Microsoft, like any other from the group of “modified” systems, although it can be activated with a valid license. Note also that feature reduction includes, as we saw above, some of them they are essential for security and other important maintenance tools. Therefore, we do not recommend using these types of versions for general productivity tasks. That said: it works very well and does what it promises, the lightweight Windows that millions of users sigh for.