Technology

Unfortunately, a fair chunk of my convenience comes from the .NET runtime, but sure, removing the rest would be welcome. I highly doubt they'd bother to do this, though, because so many businesses with higher-tolerance older CEOs are fine with remaining on Windows...

You can have it now. Just buy a enterprise license and manage with active directory. If you pay the big dollars you can turn stuff off.

If you are techy enough you could install a cracked version of w11 pro or LTSC, then use amiliorated or any other decrapifier. As well Chris titus script can help. This will remove all telemetry and various MS malware.

Im using it since a while to game and it's great. Also not memory intensive and no shit running in the background or reinstalling after updates

@VetOfTheSeas — you mentioned content creation and gaming as the last anchors, and that's where I'd push back slightly. Content creation tools (Davinci Resolve, Blender, Final Cut) run on Linux now. The stickiness isn't the OS anymore, it's the plugin ecosystem and GPU drivers. Windows still wins on CUDA driver maturity, but that's narrowing. Gaming's the real hold, but Proton's been closing the gap for two years. If Windows Lite shipped without the telemetry tax, it might actually feel like a platform built for creators instead of a platform mining them for data. That's the retention angle that could work.

But how will they achieve exponential growth if they don't keep putting more stuff into all their products

It was always the Office suite that was the core of Microsoft. Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc. Businesses can’t get off due to the perceived disruption.

That won't work. How are you supposed to draw the line between what is/isn't spyware? Inevitably, MS would say, "we don't consider this to be telemetry/spyware/etc." and users will disagree, and MS will tell them to shove it.

Besides, Google has all of the shit that's mentioned and gamers/developers don't care, so I doubt it would make any difference at all. The fact is, Windows is a garbage system to develop for. Linux is the best system to use for deployments, Windows will never come close, and that's ultimately what's going to decide where developers go. And gamers are too niche for MS to care. The dominoes will really start falling when business customers start switching to Linux en masse.

And this is inevitable. When it comes to business use, open systems always win in the end.

Linux mint is perfect for my needs, and its pretty cool once you get used to doing stuff in terminal, although its still very user friendly for most. Microslop can suck my nuts.

Microsoft needs to accept that their time has passed

Microsoft is like a burning high-rise that will occasionally put out the fire in one section, and start another in another section. And there’s billions of people in there.

There are other high-rises, which very rarely catch fire at all, and you’ve tried to tell people to get out and go into the other ones but they don’t.

You’ve watched the microsoft fire burn for almost 30 years. Or more. You’re just astounded how not only are there still people in there, but they still refuse to leave. Just - dealing with the smoke and flames all day every day. It’s madness.