neowin[.]net/news/tiny11-2311-is-out-lightweight-smaller-and-serviceable-windows-11-version-23h2/
neowin[.]net/news/meet-tiny11-core-a-windows-11-mod-that-only-requires-3gb-of-disk-space/
archive[.]org/details/tiny-11-core-x-64-beta-1
archive[.]org/details/tiny11-2311
While I've included the links from Neowin, Tiny11 is talked about on quite a few Windows &/or tech-related sites. NTDEV enjoys making Windows smaller, figuring out how to get rid of some of the bloat, and then some. On a whim I decided to download the latest Tiny11 2311 & Tiny11 Core ISOs and use them for a couple of VMs while scrolling through the remaining Black Friday sales and whatever's available now for tomorrow's Cyber Monday. I can say now that they do work as advertised. The larger 2311 version comes in at ~9.5GB while the Core version is ~7GB. That's on a compacted VHD, meaning all the free space has been removed, making the VHD file as small as possible. The Core version is missing Windows update, though it works just fine on the larger version.
Anyway, something to maybe check out if you want/need the smallest Windows footprint possible.