Windows 10 Lean aims to cut gigabytes of fat

Word is going around that Microsoft is toying with a new slim build of Windows 10. MSPowerUser reports the Windows 10 Lean installer is about 2GB smaller than Windows 10 Pro.

It's not entirely certain what Microsoft plans to do with this new version. It may be aimed at low-power devices, or simply be designed for virtual machines.

To get the build smaller, Microsoft cut out of a lot of stuff including very basic things like the wallpapers, drivers for CD and DVD drives, and even utilities like RegEdit:

As spotted by Lucas on Twitter, Windows 10 Lean’s installer is 2 GB smaller than Windows 10 Pro and is missing basics such as wallpaper, drivers for CD and DVD Drives and even apps such as RegEdit. Interestingly these apps are however not restricted, and once imported you can run RegEdit without any issue, meaning while being smaller the OS is not restricted in any way.

Welcome to Windows 10 Lean/CloudE/S (once again?)
This new edition started shipping with this week's Skip Ahead build (17650)
It seems to be heavily cut down, an x64 clean install is roughly 2 GB smaller than Pro
Its edition ID is 0xB7 which was missing from SDK headers pic.twitter.com/2Sn3SVXeZB

— Lucan (@tfwboredom) April 20, 2018