...just the basic OS with none of the bells and whistles...
With Windows there is no such thing. Seriously. MS considers Internet Explorer, Media Player, MSN Messenger, Outlook (now known as Microsoft Mail or something like that), and the Picture and Fax Viewer to be "part" of Windows. (And I'm sure this list is incomplete.)
Point being, you can't GET a bare-bones Windows without all the fluff, it just doesn't exist.
This mostly started in the Win98 days. Win98, you see, was just Win95 with Internet Explorer's DLLs integrated with the rest of the OS. That's it. That's why Win98's stability and security took a nosedive over Win95, because IE itself was insecure and unstable.
What I wouldn't give for a bare-bones Windows, seriously. If I want a media player I'll install one as a separate application. If I want a web browser I'll install one as a separate application. If this was the case, Windows would be smaller, lighter, and more secure. As it is, every security vulnerability in IE turns into a security vulnerability in the entire OS because of the dumb integration...
