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Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

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Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#91

Post by amanaplanacanal »

thewebguyd wrote: post #54
rawgabbit wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe businesses "need" Microsoft. Microsoft is entrenched in corporations for a variety of reasons and none of them because Microsoft is technically any good.

It's a little bit of both. Microsoft's core product is minimizing operational risk, not the software itself. You can piece together your own stack using best of breed options, but you're going to pay double the price or more, and introduce a ton of friction and risk. Some businesses (everyone outside of the SV tech echo chamber) "need" Microsoft because its risk mitigation, which is the highest technical feature a bu…

I retired a few years ago, but Windows was on every desktop in the environment (close to 5000 installs). They did some software development in house, but the great majority of folks ran some sort of COTS software. Replacing all that would not have been cheap or easy.

They didn't run Windows because they liked Windows, they ran Windows because it was required by the software they needed to run.

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#92

Post by pipes »

haunter wrote: post #5

LTSC, surprised the post doesn't mention that. No forced feature updates, no unnecessary preinstalled apps. I'm using them for years without any problems. There was only one extreme edge case where an app didn't work because it was hard coded to only work on Windows 10 Pro and couldn't do anything with the LTSC version. Yes you can't get it legally as a regular end user but MSFT also doesn't care about piracy either.…

I'm using ltsc windows 11 and yes it is much better than one of my other pcs which has pro on it.

However I did use windows 10 ltsc for quite a few years until I hit a dll issue with an old game that turned out to be unresolvable as far as I could tell at the time. So much so I switched to pro (I have a work visual studio subscription so I have access to all versions of windows for free). I can't for the life of me remember what dll or what game it was. But I tend to play older games so probably not something many will hit the same problem.

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#93

Post by jimbokun »

jeroenhd wrote: post #85
jimbokun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 man…

> That just means your IT department isn't putting in the effort.

Lazy IT departments are a blessing!

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#94

Post by [deleted] »

pdntspa wrote: post #32
haunter wrote: post #5

LTSC, surprised the post doesn't mention that. No forced feature updates, no unnecessary preinstalled apps. I'm using them for years without any problems. There was only one extreme edge case where an app didn't work because it was hard coded to only work on Windows 10 Pro and couldn't do anything with the LTSC version. Yes you can't get it legally as a regular end user but MSFT also doesn't care about piracy either.…

Yeah but who gets that legally

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#95

Post by mattbee »

Builders and gamers can install regular Windows. They can run a de-crapifying script to strip it right back - cut the AI, OneDrive, adverts etc. It flies along very predictably without that.

So much is optional and easily removed. You don't even have to pay for it any more, never mind $49. For the power users that he's talking about, I don't see the issue.

(I agree the default state for Windows is completely rotten, and it shouldn't be!)

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#96

Post by RiverCrochet »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #22

Microsoft needs to repeat their Edge trick. Migrate Windows to the Linux kernel and get Linux compartibility out of the box. Immense research of running Windows programs on Linux was already done by Wine/Proton teams.

None of the stuff that makes Windows suck compared to Linux is because of the kernel.

Two things I can think off off the top of my head that do completely suck about Windows: the forced updates and forced antivirus (e.g. Defender). None of those depend on the kernel, and Windows userland running on top of Linux wouldn't inherently make those two things suck less.

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#98

Post by [deleted] »

thewebguyd wrote: post #26
Rotundo wrote: post #2

The 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…

[deleted]

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#99

Post by tombert »

I mean, sure. OR, we just treat the Win32/Win64 API as the standard ABI for cross-platform stuff (that can't easily be done in the web with WASM) and then use Wine/Proton. Then everything is FOSS and portable and free and doesn't have a bunch of tracking bullshit.

I feel like with gaming this is more or less becoming the reality. Disregarding online gaming [1], a lot of games are being written for "Windows" and being played on Linux. In reality, I think that a lot of newer games are kind of being written with Proton as the target, and the fact that they work on Windows is incidental.

[1] Which I know you can't fully "disregard" but I don't think it kills my point.

Re: Microsoft Needs Windows Lite

#100

Post by tombert »

okanat wrote: post #37
ivanjermakov wrote: post #22

Microsoft needs to repeat their Edge trick. Migrate Windows to the Linux kernel and get Linux compartibility out of the box. Immense research of running Windows programs on Linux was already done by Wine/Proton teams.

NT is a better kernel for consumer systems compared to Linux unlike first generation Edge which was a worse browser compared to Chrome.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I am curious as to why you think that? What makes NT a "better kernel for consumers". I have some opinions on that but I don't want to bias your answer.
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