How difficult would it be to completely tear out the Windows desktop experience and just use the system and display drivers without the rest? Has anybody attempted such a feat?
There is Windows Server Core which removes everything but a CLI, but you still have the normal login experience, you still have a "desktop" (no start menu, taskbar, etc), you can still launch normal Win32 apps... for the most part (task manager, notepad, and so on).
Win32 is also responsible for core Services, which means you can't de-Windows-ify Windows and strip it down to an NT API-only. All other personalities (OS/2, POSIX, SFU) have a dependency on Win32, as well.
You're still running the WindowServer of course; it's part of the Executive.
That said, with a bunch of modifications, NTDEV did get Windows 11 down to it's bare minimum, and text only to boot. So I guess it's technically possible, though not useful.
> There is Windows Server Core which removes everything but a CLI, but you still have the normal login experience, you still have a "desktop" (no start menu, taskbar, etc), you can still launch normal Win32 apps... for the most part (task manager, notepad, and so on).
Yep, they've replaced nearly every UI with text (the login window is a TUI), though there's still some shell DLLs and the whole thing still uses a window manager. That's honestly for the best, since it allows you to migrate full installations with some UI-based apps to a Core installation with them intact.
> That said, with a bunch of modifications, NTDEV did get Windows 11 down to it's bare minimum, and text only to boot. So I guess it's technically possible, though not useful.
Windows has had a "text mode" since at least Windows XP IIRC, but it's really not that useful, if at all. Even for rescue operations you're better off with Windows PE.
