this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2026
370 points (92.2% liked)

Technology

86769 readers
4921 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
 

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.

top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] Eternal192@anarchist.nexus 156 points 3 weeks ago

If you want Windows Lite then you might as well commit to Linux.

Plenty of YouTube videos on tons of different distros for anyone to find their starter distro that's similar to Windows.

[–] AdamBomb@lemmy.world 124 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

.NET is just a runtime, not problematic at all, and definitely doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with ads, spyware, and AI.

[–] Reality@feddit.org 50 points 3 weeks ago (11 children)

It's probably Microsofts best product

[–] harmbugler@piefed.social 21 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Probably Microsoft's best stupidest name too, except maybe renaming the remote desktop app to "Windows App".

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago

Yep. Plenty of games depends on it too.

[–] ragingHungryPanda@piefed.keyboardvagabond.com 11 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

We should also get rid of the Windows C++ Redistributable packages as well!

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] ryper@lemmy.ca 56 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

Microsoft is not going to remove .NET to attract software developers when they want developers to use .NET. Not having access to software that uses .NET probably wouldn't be a good trade off for how little removing it from Windows would do to make Windows lighter.

[–] fartsparkles@lemmy.world 58 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

.NET is arguably one of the better things to come out of Microsoft. The CLR only runs when a .NET application is running so it’s not bloat, and it’s pretty lightweight as far as a VM goes with JIT. It’s well documented, has public standards, is cross platform, and released under MIT.

I’m a Unix/Linux greybeard so I’ve no real skin in the game. But given how C# has become the defacto cross platform game development language of choice for both Godot and Unity engines, .NET deserves a little credit.

[–] marlowe221@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

C#/.NET is easily the best thing Microsoft makes.

I realize the bar is pretty low.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Buffalox@lemmy.world 19 points 3 weeks ago

There are also lots of games that use .NET.

[–] FireWire400@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

To quote Steve Ballmer; "DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS, DEVELOPERS [...] DEVELOPERS. YES!".

[–] mereo@piefed.ca 49 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

The author of the blog is living in dreamland. Microsoft will never release Windows Lite because, to management, Windows is a conduit for AI and subscriptions.

Linux is the answer.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Magnum@infosec.pub 45 points 3 weeks ago

No .NET 😂 what's still running after that?

[–] vane@lemmy.world 39 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] DupaCycki@lemmy.world 37 points 3 weeks ago

Windows losing noticeable numbers of users is a huge net gain for society. Hopefully it continues, regardless of Microslop's actions.

[–] lil_baka@ani.social 34 points 3 weeks ago

Microsoft is losing Builders fast.

Good.

This is why Microsoft needs Windows Lite.

No, Windows needs to lose more users. Hope they never change.

[–] terabyterex@lemmy.world 34 points 3 weeks ago

the fact that you list .net shows you dont have the knowledge to make this claim

[–] CalvusRex@lemmy.world 33 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

10 years ago I would have said maybe. Now? Practicly everything that you run on Windows will run, in some form or another, on Linux. Even the hard to crack gaming is now becoming a non issue. There really is no point in Windows any longer.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] MrScottyTay@sh.itjust.works 32 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] kogasa@programming.dev 19 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

Nothing, bias from the .NET Framework days probably

load more comments (10 replies)
[–] minorkeys@sh.itjust.works 27 points 3 weeks ago

You need to abandon windows. You know their goals. You know they can't be trusted. Stop giving them chances to get it right and fuck you.

[–] Jaysyn@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago

It's easier to just use Linux.

[–] 79WistfulVista@lemmy.world 25 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (8 children)

I'm a 30-year ex-Windows developer - started with C/C++ briefly, moved to Java for a few years, and then to C#/.NET for about 23 years. Good riddance to Microsoft Windows. The keyboard shortcuts may be forever ingrained into my reflexes, but I'd rather use Linux or MacOS.

No concerns about .NET however. It's a cross-platform development framework and works well. It's also quite fast now.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] FreeBooteR69@lemmy.ca 21 points 3 weeks ago

Good luck with that. Linux is what you are looking for and it's here already.

[–] greyscale@lemmy.grey.ooo 20 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

We have that. Its called Arch. And I've done .net development on it.

load more comments (7 replies)
[–] mrmaplebar@fedia.io 19 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

But here's the big problem: stripping all of the terrible shit out of Windows doesn't make it better than Linux, it just makes it less bad than Windows is today.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

windows lite

So you mean Linux? No telemetry? No ads? No AI? No .net? Also just works? Also free? Also free as in beer?

Yeah, people need Linux

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] echodot@feddit.uk 18 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

What is wrong with .NET, it's very useful when running applications which require it which of course is basically every application in a corporate environment.

But yeah all the other things are fine.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] nosuchanon@lemmy.world 18 points 3 weeks ago

Micro$lop wants to become what IBM was. They want corporate money and subscriptions. They hate users anyway.

[–] reksas@sopuli.xyz 15 points 3 weeks ago

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.

[–] lechekaflan@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago

Install Linux, Problem Solved.

[–] r0bi@infosec.pub 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The closest thing is LTSC, but Linux is easier to deal with imo

[–] michaelalf@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I'll go one further and say IOT *Enterprise LTSC

load more comments (1 replies)
[–] 0x0@infosec.pub 14 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)
[–] minfapper@piefed.social 13 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] IamLost@lemmy.world 13 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

I'm building a gaming PC that's gonna run Linux. To prep, I install my distro of choice (CachyOS) on an old laptop to check it out. It was fantastic. I'm confident saying, unless there's a very specific outlier reason, you don't need Windows anymore.

load more comments (5 replies)
[–] DacoTaco@lemmy.world 12 points 3 weeks ago

Do i have news for you, youll need .net.
Either for windows stuff, or for your games ( most likely launchers )

[–] mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 weeks ago (15 children)

fuck, they need that to retain business customers.

It's becoming ridiculous how much lost time there is at work because of Microsoft bullshit. Teams doesn't work, OneDrive doesn't sync, Outlook won't find anything for you, all of the office programs are becoming more difficult to use and slower...

I've got a team of about a dozen people and we probably lose an entire person's work day every single week just to Microsoft bullshit. not even regular issues, just straight up bullshit that shouldn't happen.

if I weren't so busy, I'd be looking into switching my team to Linux. but at some point it's going to get bad enough and I'm going to be low enough on work (lol okay not likely) that I'll be able to properly investigate a transition. Microsoft is the weak point of pretty much every process at our company.

except for excel. that's still doing okay. not great, but okay.

load more comments (15 replies)
[–] ExcessShiv@lemmy.dbzer0.com 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

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.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] Reygle@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

If a "lite" version removed their ability to spy on you they'd have to charge you $4,000/year for the privilege, just to make up the difference.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 9 points 3 weeks ago

That's just Windows without a lot of the bad stuff. Microsoft will never do it because they earn money from it.

[–] MSids@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (10 children)

If there was a viable Windows Lite, wouldn’t everyone just use that?

[–] Magnum@infosec.pub 9 points 3 weeks ago

No, I'd use Linux

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] ohlaph@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago

I logged out back in December and haven't used or needed Windows since. Fedora Linux is my pick for a Windows replacement.

load more comments
view more: next ›