Microsoft is losing Builders fast. They’re switching to MacOS and Linux. The biggest pull keeping people on Windows, outside of shear inertia, is content creation and gaming. However, even these are falling to Linux.
Without Builders, you don’t have software, and without software, you don’t have users. This is why Microsoft needs Windows Lite.
the fact that you list .net shows you dont have the knowledge to make this claim
Install Linux, Problem Solved.
All the things that are easily disabled? -Sounds as foolish as having a distro for changing wallpaper, fonts and color scheme.
No .NET 😂 what’s still running after that?
Windows losing noticeable numbers of users is a huge net gain for society. Hopefully it continues, regardless of Microslop’s actions.
Microsoft is losing Builders fast.
Good.
This is why Microsoft needs Windows Lite.
No, Windows needs to lose more users. Hope they never change.
If there was a viable Windows Lite, wouldn’t everyone just use that?
Right? Like if this exists, what’s their draw for users to use the dogshit version?
Are you assuming that Windows users would do the smart thing? They’ve already failed.
I wouldn’t, but many of my friends that I finally convinced to switch to Linux would definitely consider it. They switched specifically because MS went too far and made things too awful, and gaming in Linux is now quite decent. They aren’t using Linux for the open source philosophy, or to tinker in ways that Windows blocked decades ago, or even the free price tag.
No, I’d use Linux
why would they? the telemetry, spying and bloatware is the whole idea for them. At least for regular users. We are the product and the data they harvest from us and ads they force on us is the point. And why would they care, majority of people just sticks with whatever was presented to them first. No matter how much bloat and spyware they add, majority will never care enough to do anything about it because it doenst directly affect them beyond slowing the computer down, which they think will be solved by buying a new one.
What’s wrong with .NET?
Nothing, bias from the .NET Framework days probably
That won’t work. How are you supposed to draw the line between what is/isn’t spyware? Inevitably, MS would say, “we don’t consider this to be telemetry/spyware/etc.” and users will disagree, and MS will tell them to shove it.
Besides, Google has all of the shit that’s mentioned and gamers/developers don’t care, so I doubt it would make any difference at all. The fact is, Windows is a garbage system to develop for. Linux is the best system to use for deployments, Windows will never come close, and that’s ultimately what’s going to decide where developers go. And gamers are too niche for MS to care. The dominoes will really start falling when business customers start switching to Linux en masse.
And this is inevitable. When it comes to business use, open systems always win in the end.
Hah! They don’t care about “builders” or users. They care about business. Specifically large enterprises the have too many people to care about a single employee’s individual productivity.
Microsoft caters mostly to them and is quite good at that.
But if you’re an end user, gamer, or individual consumer, just move to Linux already. They don’t care about you.
Yeah, the proprietary software grift is all about extorting companies with legal liability, hostage data, etc.
Closest thing to that is using Windows Enterprise. Here is previous PSA of mine…
00000
PSA, for people sticking to Windows:
You can get a reasonable level of privacy by installing Windows Enterprise via RUFUS, which also has options for removing restrictions during installation. Massgravel is used to activate your copy of Windows, the Github also having .ISOs for you to use with RUFUS.
ShutUp10 is a piece of software that goes a step further, allowing you to toggle off many bad things, uninstall Microsoft’s AI, and gives a description of what you are tweaking does. The premium version also automatically applies your settings at all times, reverting Microsoft’s constant tweaking of your settings.
The biggest pull keeping people on Windows, outside of shear inertia, is content creation and gaming
You’re forgetting the huge and much more lucrative market that is businesses. We literally can’t switch away from windows because every single piece of engineering software we use only exists for windows. We can’t program anything, configure anything, deploy anything or service anything if we’re not running windows. Oh, a VM solution you suggest? wrong!, because the drivers needed to interface with the hardware are wonky as hell as is but inside VMs it gets the job borked half the time making my job unnecessary frustrating.
Ouch!
The good news is you’ll get invited to Cobol/AS400/Mainframe conventions if eventually you’re the only ones left on Windows.
Those folks have similar challenges, but are great to party with after a day of conference talks.
@VetOfTheSeas — you mentioned content creation and gaming as the last anchors, and that’s where I’d push back slightly. Content creation tools (Davinci Resolve, Blender, Final Cut) run on Linux now. The stickiness isn’t the OS anymore, it’s the plugin ecosystem and GPU drivers. Windows still wins on CUDA driver maturity, but that’s narrowing. Gaming’s the real hold, but Proton’s been closing the gap for two years. If Windows Lite shipped without the telemetry tax, it might actually feel like a platform built for creators instead of a platform mining them for data. That’s the retention angle that could work.
He probably meant Adobe.
Freecad is nowhere near pro packages which is what is keeping me on windows
.NET is just a runtime, not problematic at all, and definitely doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with ads, spyware, and AI.
We should also get rid of the Windows C++ Redistributable packages as well!
It’s probably Microsofts best product
Probably it’s best stupidest name too, except maybe renaming the remote desktop app to “Windows App”.
But it’s so sloooowwww
no its not.
Compares to what? Electron apps or ffmpeg level of assembler?
Native?!
Native what? AoT compiled dotnet code? Bad C++ code?
I suppose bad C++ code if those are the only options?
Of course not. But saying an entire framework is bad is silly. That is my entire point. Thanks for agreeing with me.
Yep. Plenty of games depends on it too.
