Microsoft Needs Windows Lite • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#201

Post by CamperBob2 » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 9:23 PM UTC

aaronsung wrote: post #193

wjnc wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economically, you would probably be the only customer (stated willingness to pay can differ from market outcome ;) paying that amount. Your stated willingness to pay has little relation to the true value of our data and digital sovereignty to Microsoft. A funny estimate is possible though. MSFT 2750 G$ market cap and 550 M business users. That’s 5 k$ per user. Grossly misrepresenting everything (AI bubble, other cash…

Indeed there are much more customers than you could imagine in the non-profit/ government sectors paying for that. There are a lot of compliance regulations regarding to data governance that force them to use a clean and lite LTSC version of Windows.

Complete BS. No one is using LTSC outside of embedded applications.

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#202

Post by sharts » Sat, Jul 04, 2026, 8:24 AM UTC

Night_Thastus wrote: post #102

No they don't. Why should they bother? * Costs them money to make * Costs them money to maintain * Will only be used by a TINY subset of ultra-enthusiasts (no, neither HN or Reddit are majorities) * Every user on it is less telemetry and less advertisement The reality is that most users don't care, and will just use whatever seems to work fine. Finding out that 'oh yeah, feature/software X does not work on Windows Li…

Windows is like the government. No amount of complaining and online protest will change the empire.

Just stop feeding them money or stop complaining.

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#203

Post by liamwire » Sat, Jul 11, 2026, 8:47 AM UTC

CamperBob2 wrote: post #200

liamwire wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding the correction that LTSC is not restricted to hardware OEMs. I work for a multinational construction materials company and we image LTSC machines day in day out.

Not legally, you don't. Not unless this has changed drastically since Windows 10.

We were doing LTSC for Windows 10 years back as well, so I'm genuinely curious about any resources on this. We're very by-the-book and I'd be incredibly shocked to find we're actually in violation of any laws/ToS.