The politics is too powerful it will never truly happen.
There WILL be something slightly lighter with the ability to move the taskbar.
Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
81–90 of 203 posts
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#82The blog post sums up why users of Windows might want this. However, this is not what Microsoft wants or needs. Microsoft is doing just fine by providing businesses what they need: a platform that can be tightly controlled and is easy to administer for large user counts.
Yes 100%. All these discussions around Windows always miss the fact that consumers are not Microsoft's core customer, and haven't been for a long time (outside of GameDiv/Xbox). The fact that consumers use Windows is a nice side effect for keeping mind share and to get people familiar and preferring windows when they enter the workplace. That's it. It's an accidental userbase that exists to be exploited. Microsoft's…
One thing you're missing out is their corporate strategy to treat their other products as some form of adspace.
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#83how are you supposed to approach this as "for developers" when you're removing one of the main things preinstalled on Windows that developers take advantage of? this post comes off as "someone who doesn't develop for windows coming up with a better windows". this isn't even mentioning all the enterprise stuff and the fact that an extremely large chunk of apps would cease to work. not to mention all of the other layers like GDI+ or gpu accelerated options like Direct2D
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#84Exactly, we need Windows Lite! Just Win32, media encoders, graphics drivers, CoPilot, and enough to run movie maker and Office, the rest is useless anyway!
Or do you mean no Office support, just everything you need to run Steam?
Or maybe you mean no UI and just the admin interface so you don't need all that bloat when all you need is a server. Except for Powershell and the management interface, of course.
Actually, these days, we don't need applications, Copilot can do all that for us. Just Edge, Bing, and Copilot, the rest is bloat.
There's plenty of unnecessary crap in Windows but everyone who wants Windows Lite wants a different subset to be included in Windows Lite. Just imagine the tech support hell you'd be in when a client installs your software on a machine that doesn't have .NET or H.264 support or libraries for decoding JPEGs or a webview because their kid said they can make the PC less bloated. And you can bet that Windows' remote help support and all of the requirements for third party remote desktop are omitted from anyone's view of "minimal Windows"!
For what it's worth, various stripped-down Windows images exist online. They all use official Windows binaries with signed DLLs and everything so you could theoretically even verify that they're safe. Just don't expect your programs to work on them and be ready to reinstall when a system service inevitably corrupts.
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#85Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The harsh truth is that most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs. Businesses pick them for employee computers for the same reason. As a Microsoft sysadmin with a stable of homelab machines of all types and brands (and favorites that are definitely not Microsoft), enterprise mostly buys Microsoft because of the built in endpoint and end user management stacks.
Which is one reason it was great when I migrated to a Mac at work. Because there is less spyware and administrative software slowing down and making my computer buggy!
That just means your IT department isn't putting in the effort. Antivirus, remote management, MitM proxies, software permissions, macOS can do everything Windows can, it just takes three or four subscriptions and double the effort for the IT team.
macOS makes it kind of difficult to do these things, so when companies do deploy the same control they use on Windows, the problem actually becomes worse, because every management tool now needs to rely on hacks rather than officially supported APIs.
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#86I don’t think things are quite so dire for Windows. People (including me) have been predicting the end of Windows due to losing mindshare with builders since the turn of the century, and it still hasn’t happened. The harsh truth is that most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs. Businesses pick them for employee computers for the same reason. And Windows Server more or less became a moot point when…
> most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs And that's why the MacBook Neo exists now. Apple is coming for the lower-end market. At that point the only thing keeping people on Windows is software lock-in. Which Valve is in the process of working towards dismantling for gaming at least.
With the new Neo prices, they're more coming for the lower-end of the midrange market. The low-end market was half the price the Neo was before the price went up.
Google has gone after the low-end market through ChromeOS and has actually been very succesful at it. Sure, the $200 pieces of crap can't really do anything more than play a video and maybe type into a document at the same time, but that's better than what the Windows alternative offered for many years.
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do these versions get regular updates or are they expected to run on air-gapped machines so nobody really has to take care of them?
Yes but no feature updates, so for example LTSC 2021 is "stuck" on 21H2 from 2021. But it gets the regular security and bugfix updates, last one was June 9th See here (Enterprise and IoT Enterprise LTSB/LTSC editions): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/rel...
No feature updates sounds like a feature these days. It's why I use a crappy old Debian install too.
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do these versions get regular updates or are they expected to run on air-gapped machines so nobody really has to take care of them?
Yes but no feature updates, so for example LTSC 2021 is "stuck" on 21H2 from 2021. But it gets the regular security and bugfix updates, last one was June 9th See here (Enterprise and IoT Enterprise LTSB/LTSC editions): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/rel...
Genuine question , what does that mean, stuck on what from 2021? Compared to? Thanks :)
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes but no feature updates, so for example LTSC 2021 is "stuck" on 21H2 from 2021. But it gets the regular security and bugfix updates, last one was June 9th See here (Enterprise and IoT Enterprise LTSB/LTSC editions): https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/release-health/rel...
Genuine question , what does that mean, stuck on what from 2021? Compared to? Thanks :)
Will never get the final feature update (22H2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_10_version_history#Ver...
Technically it can break some apps if they are hard coded to only work with 22H2. Probably happens with some video games and anti cheat software ("always needs the latest update")
There is a Windows 11 LTSC version which works the same.
Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite
#90This article feels like ignorance. The best "Windows Lite" is a Linux distro with VSCode, .NET, PowerShell, etc. There is no hope for improving Windows at this point.