this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2026
117 points (95.3% liked)

Technology

85708 readers
5738 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related news or articles.
  3. Be excellent to each other!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
  10. Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.

Approved Bots


founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] Peffse@lemmy.world 6 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

That... doesn't make sense. The Windows NT line changed the way hardware and drivers interacted with a new Hardware Abstraction Layer, so a WinME driver wouldn't load in Win11.

Additionally, Win7 changed it so that drivers require certification and signature, which I could guess the certification would come in grandfathered, but the signature certainly wouldn't be there for a WinME driver.

Why even complain about a 300kb driver sitting in System/SysWOW64, as it isn't going to reside in RAM until the actual device is plugged in... so it's actually a good thing to keep. I'm glad they don't act as the arbiter of what is too old and force people to purchase new hardware when the old stuff still works.

[โ€“] Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

What I'm saying is, it shouldn't take up space by default.

If YOU want to install it, great. You can spend 30 seconds installing the driver. Why force 99.99% of users to take on bloat, when they'll never use it. Same thing with additional languages. If you speak other languages, great. You install them on your device. No reason I should have French installed on my device.

Now add the same idea with every bit of software. The OS itself should be bare minimum. Then you can add to your own installation.