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- Hacker News
- 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.by ivanjermakov
- The problem is Microsoft, not windowsby vazark
- It sounds interesting, and surely there would be some awesome things that would come from it, but on the other hand, MS could use this to take control of linux APIs through their "embrace, extend, extinguish" strategy, so it would not be without risk.
Just look at what happened last week with linux distros needing to update their secure boot keys with a new MS signed certificate. https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/expiration-secure-boot-signin...
And look at what MS did with their old version of Office for Mac, where they decided not to simply renew a certificate that would keep the software functioning. https://www.windowscentral.com/microsoft/microsoft-office/yo...
We already have companies like Nvidia and Broadcom shipping binary blobs to support common hardware. Do we really want a corporation like MS getting in on that kind of thing? If MS wrote some really great desktop linux software, it would be hard for the broader linux community to resist being lured into using MS controlled APIs, and handing over part of their control to Linux's most notable rival.
by hoherd - > Migrate Windows to the Linux kernel and get Linux compartibility out of the box
If I had a quid for every time I saw this comment on HN or Reddit I would probably be as wealthy as Gates himself. It is always an instant downvote for me, because they make me lose faith that people on HN have actually understood what a kernel is and how it works, and what ABI compatibility is, and what user-mode stability is. It is dogmatic and pointless.
The NT kernel is pretty good. Windows is generally well-architected. The NT kernel is the best thing about Windows, and you lot want to swap it out with something decidedly inferior.
Windows' user-mode applications and libraries are also pretty good. By user-mode apps and libraries I mean Win32 itself, WinRT, D2D/DirectWrite, D3D, Winsock, Windows Sound, and the thousands of entrypoints and enums for cool Windows stuff like the registry, synchronisation primitives, file management, special user files, cloud files, accessibility and internationalisation, and more. I've mentioned some other nice platform APIs in a sibling comment.
It is pretty easy to write a full-fledged GUI application on and for Windows that handles heavy use of networking, sound, graphics acceleration, etc without ever having to use a single third-party library, and make it run on OSs that are nearly 18 years old (not the case on most competition OSs).
I also daresay that IE/Edge moving to Chromium was in some ways a bad idea, as Chromium has become the de facto default Web platform, and any non-Chromium browser (Safari, Firefox) is likewise de facto non-conforming.
- NT is a better kernel for consumer systems compared to Linux unlike first generation Edge which was a worse browser compared to Chrome.by okanat
- 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.
by RiverCrochet - > Over time, Windows Lite becomes the main, and only, version of Windows. Development and maintenance costs fall, and somehow Microsoft makes more money than they ever did on an OS.
Looking from the outside, it doesn't seem that Microsoft treats Windows as an isolated product anymore with a balance sheet of sales versus development costs. Rather, it's an advertising billboard for their other money-making products like Edge, Copilot, Microsoft 365, OneDrive, and at some point Candy Crush of all things(?). In fact this isn't isolated to just Windows or Microsoft either. SwiftKey pushes you to use OneDrive, Google (search engine) famously pushed Google products and there were antitrust discussions about that. Advertising was just some annoying thing that was necessary to power free web services but now it's infiltrated the very core of our day-to-day technology. Until we can get proper antitrust enforcement, we'll only see technological stagnation get worse as more products become boring billboard monopolies with little incentives to get better.
by a2128 - Microsoft is in a pickle.
Linux and open source have made "selling operating systems" nearly as preposterous as it was back in the mainframe era when they were getting started. So it's gotten very hard to generate revenue directly from Windows. Not even Apple is in the business of selling an OS—they sell hardware, and the OS comes as part of the package. Microsoft has kept good will amongst OEMs by keeping Windows license prices for hardware manufacturers low to nonexistent—were they to actually try making money through the OEM channel by charging a more reasonable price per license, the OEMs would find a way to jump ship to Linux (perhaps ChromeOS). This has already happened during the "netbook era" until Microsoft intervened with Windows 7 Starter Edition.
The pivot for Windows has thus been to find ways for Windows to generate revenue indirectly—by funneling users into other Microsoft products and services, particularly cloud and AI in 2026. But this approach is creating the exact user-hostility problems people are complaining about. Without the ability to generate revenue directly, nor the ability to generate revenue indirectly through cloud services, Windows becomes a cost center rather than a profit center.
So no, I don't see them going the Windows Lite route at all. If they cut out the fat, they cut off Windows's revenue stream and its reason for existing in the first place.
by bitwize - I don’t think things are quite so dire for Windows. People (including me) have been predicting the end of Windows due to losing mindshare with builders since the turn of the century, and it still hasn’t happened.
The harsh truth is that most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs. Businesses pick them for employee computers for the same reason.
And Windows Server more or less became a moot point when the cloud took over. They don’t want you hosting your own Exchange server anymore, they want you in Office 365. And they’ll just as happily sell you Linux compute instances on Azure because lower COGS means more profit.
by bunderbunder - > The harsh truth is that most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs.
Ever since the MacBook Neo, that's no longer the case. And frankly... Apple has now demonstrated that an old iPhone SoC is enough to drive macOS. I think that it should be feasible for them to run macOS on iDevices as a hypervisor-style guest, yielding you the full macOS experience when plugged into an USB-C dock.
by mschuster91 - Consumers and businesses pick Windows because it’s difficult to buy a PC that doesn’t have Windows installed. At least in part.
The other important factor is that the share of PCs in general is a fraction of Android and iOS devices.
by jimbokun - > most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs
And that's why the MacBook Neo exists now. Apple is coming for the lower-end market.
At that point the only thing keeping people on Windows is software lock-in. Which Valve is in the process of working towards dismantling for gaming at least.
by hbn - > The harsh truth is that most consumers pick Windows because PCs cost less than Macs. Businesses pick them for employee computers for the same reason.
As a Microsoft sysadmin with a stable of homelab machines of all types and brands (and favorites that are definitely not Microsoft), enterprise mostly buys Microsoft because of the built in endpoint and end user management stacks.
by nehal3m - 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.
- I think they just mean no .NET by default. Not to stop supporting it altogether, just that those who want it will need to download it.by jimbokun
- It should be installable, just via a package management system. You choose what you need. I think OP hasn't thought this through completely so he's missing this nuance in his post.
That said, knowing Microsoft they WOULD release something like this but cripple it by doing something stupid like disallowing the use of virtualization technology, even as an installed package.
by bmurphy1976 - It's also kind of pointless. Almost immediately, something will be installed that will require installing the .NET runtime, maybe multiple versions of it.
If the argument is to try to prohibit it, then it just won't work as a platform, because too much existing software won't work on it. There's a lot of garbage I'd love to not have (all the stupid hardware config apps all the manufacturers push on you) but just having that functionality not work can't be the answer.
- 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 - It's also interesting to see that after 30 years Windows NT is still a decent OS/kernel. Of course the rest of Windows is just pure garbage.by mdavid626
- 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 - > 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!
I know you're trying to make a counter point, but nobody wants copilot. Out of everyone I've talked to in the last year, across a broad spectrum of Windows users from sys admins who make me feel like a caveman down to my parents, nobody trusts AI and nobody wants AI in their OS or apps.
An AI free Windows would be an instant hit, but it would fly in the face of everything Microsoft stands for, so for that reason, it'll never happen
by taffydavid - 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 - > No telemetry, no spying, no ads, no AI, no .NET, nothing.
How will MS PMs meet their quarterly targets without Windows phoning home every moment someone is using it? \s
- I dunno that it's that easy to administer --- time was, one of the concerns about NeXTstep was that it was so easy to setup/administer and so reliable that there was so little work involved, IT departments had to be downsized --- say rather that administering Windows is in-line w/ current budget projections/expectations.by WillAdams
- 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.by rawgabbit
- 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 money comes from Azure & Office(365). If you're not spending millions on enterprise support/software assurance (or whatever they call it these days) contracts, you pretty much don't exist to them.
by thewebguyd - 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.
- Honestly, I think starting from win32 again would be a breath of fresh air. Also, note that I described it as an option, no one would be forced on Windows Lite. It was my own speculation that it would become popular.by pbohun
- And recent installs of 11 already have the old .net framework as an optional feature install.by TiredOfLife