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- Hacker News
- Without fixing the fundamental business incentives that drove Windows to be the heap of shit that it is today, something like this will never happenby summermusic
- > no .NET
Not quite sure about this. .NET is a superb platform, easy to write reasonably good code, huge standard library, well-maintained, many languages supporting a wide variety of paradigms (C#, VB, F#, PowerShell, C++). .NET is one of Microsoft's success stories.
- Two years ago, I spent time studying the Windows NT kernel internals and ended up writing a comparison against Unix here: https://blogsystem5.substack.com/p/windows-nt-vs-unix-design . What I came out of that exercise with is that NT is actually well-made and was very ambitious and advanced at the time it was designed (although free systems have caught up by now).
But what I also came out thinking was: none of that shows. The kernel is great, sure, but all of the crap that has been built on top doesn't let it shine, and that's what people interact with. Take Windows 11 with is dog-slow file manager and the overall feeling that everything is bloated and designed to annoy you. I wish there was a simpler edition... but it ain't gonna happen.
by jmmv - Exactly, 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.
by jeroenhd - 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.
by Rotundo - OP says Windows needs builders to make applications and that is what Windows Lite would enable (or expand) but then says Windows Lite shouldn't include .NET one of the primary frameworks to build applications on Windows.
- 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. They don't lose money on you (they rather keep you as a Windows user than switch to another platform).
Windows 10 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2021 is supported until 2032, Windows 11 IoT Enterprise LTSC 2024 is supported until 2034.
by haunter - 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 Lite" will inevitably mean that almost everyone stays on mainline.
I don't get why people bother making these wish fulfillment posts regarding Windows. It is what it is, either get used to it or use something else. MS hasn't been listening and they aren't going to start. Your wallet and mine don't make even the tiniest dent in their bottom line.