Compactor VS v86

You can already do the very basic version of that by using Compactor. Essentially it uses Windows 10's compression algorithms to make your games smaller. A lot of variance between games based on what their files consist of, but I generally get ~25% more space on my drives. Of course, a single update to the game might mean that you have to pack them again, but it's still a pretty good upside with practically no performance loss.

This will also help.

ARK practically needs its own 500GB SSD, specially if you start installing mods on top of having all of the DLCs. However, it's possible to bring down its size massively if you use this software, it works exceptionally well in ARK, being able to reduce it to about half its size. For example, my ARK installation went from like 320 GB to 175 I believe, which is still huge, but only about as much as any modern AAA game.

You can chuck compact.exe at it by hand (use the /exe option), or if you'd prefer to avoid the command line there's my Compactor tool, or the venerable CompactGUI.

They actually don't compress it. Using a simple compressor like this one for instance, the size decreases by half, if not a bit more than it. Tested it with the base game and it went from 200GB to 100GB.

I should press on and finish my Compactor rewrite, I guess.

7zip, microsoft powertoys (useful utilities n stuff), hyper-v (VM stuff), OBS, optimizer (https://github.com/hellzerg/optimizer) (privacy stuff + system tweaks), compactor (https://github.com/Freaky/Compactor) (uses windows compact.exe and provides a GUI for a otherwise cmd based tool) also qbittorrent

> As a thought experiment, we're almost there! We could technically have `win95.img + bochs86vm.wasm + autorun.inf + msword.exe` wrapped in a "browser evaluator"

I looked into this and... holy crap! We are there. Not for modern programs quite yet, sure, but this is amazing. You can use Windows 2000 from your browser.

https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows2000

I think you are looking for Shadow.

https://shadow.goose.icu

Or just the whole kitchen sink. Why not?

http://copy.sh/v86/?profile=windows98

Also: https://github.com/copy/v86 - more productized browser x86 runtime, used by eg https://github.com/snaplet/postgres-wasm

Wonder if you could put all those databases in a Linux image and boot it using v86 [0], eliminating the need for a server.

[0] https://github.com/copy/v86

Trying it out in https://copy.sh/v86/?profile=kolibrios , it's also clearly a love letter to Windows 95 in particular. That could be an unstated goal here, create a very particular PC experience under very particular constraints. I don't know anything about the creator but it's very possible that this kind of work was actually their career in the 90s.

It's incredible how much work was done. Maybe this should be an internet curiosity like how TempleOS has become, though Terry's personality was a unique factor.

hmm, why would people still use VMWare? Isn't vbox open source, or even things such as https://copy.sh/v86/ would do most virtualization trick now days?

Oh, there are more OSes one can use at the parent page:

https://copy.sh/v86/

My highlights:

- First version of Windows (1.01)

- SerenityOS <3

- and even ReactOS