Do you remember Tiny11? A fresh take on Windows 11 with the workload removed that works on older and less powerful PCs? Well, now you can run a simplified operating system on the Raspberry Pi.
This feat is due to the fact that the developer (NTDEV) created the installer Tiny11 ARM64 (opens in a new tab)and our sister site Tom’s gear (opens in a new tab) went ahead and put this version on the Raspberry Pi 4.
For the record, the Pi 4 is a simple computer (a board to be exact) with 2GB of RAM (which is the minimum requirement for Tiny11) and a 1.5GHz processor.
The big news is that the Tiny11 works, although Tom’s does not recommend installing to a microSD card – as that’s too slow – but rather to a USB flash drive.
Still, the confused version of Windows 11 worked fine – well, almost – allowing applications to run, for example, Microsoft Edge was launched and webpages could be browsed, although items such as images took a while to render.
Analysis: A small piece of Pi that is edible but not tasty
It’s no big surprise that the Tiny11 runs on a Raspberry Pi 4, given that we’ve already witnessed it working successfully with a ridiculously low amount of system RAM.
However, while the Tiny11 was usable on the Pi 4, the performance wasn’t fast enough to be acceptable for everyday use. So installing Windows 11 in this way is more of an interesting experiment than a practical application of a stripped-down version of Microsoft’s operating system.
There are other issues here besides bogged down performance, including dodgy wireless connectivity: Tom noticed the Pi’s Wi-Fi didn’t work with the Tiny11, and while you could successfully connect to Bluetooth, it didn’t work for sending files over. However, connecting via an Ethernet connection allowed access to the Internet.
Tiny11 for ARM64 is still very rough around the edges, although that’s to be expected, and indeed some early fixes have already been implemented, including one for a bug that caused the install to fail.