Technology

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

Lots of games, especially indy games, rely on .NET, like Stardew Valley, and Terraria.

and developers

Windows developers largely use Windows Server or Enterprise, neither of which have telemetry, spying, ads, or AI, depending on group policy.

I'm a little confused by the inclusion of .NET. Most Windows developers actively use that.

There's no money to get or data to sell from that though, so it's not gonna happen.

You have been able to make custom installs of Windows that remove all these things since at least Windows 98. Though without .NET, a ton of shit will stop working as it's a library of functions/runtime environments.

What you're describing is the LTSC IoT editions, which are what I run on my Windows boxes.

https://massgrave.dev/windows_ltsc_links

.Net

With many critical apps still running on Windows only, Windows needs to get worse!
To push those software companies over to embrace Linux finally. Then the users can follow.

Closest thing to that is using Windows Enterprise. Here is previous PSA of mine...

00000

PSA, for people sticking to Windows:

You can get a reasonable level of privacy by installing Windows Enterprise via RUFUS, which also has options for removing restrictions during installation. Massgravel is used to activate your copy of Windows, the Github also having .ISOs for you to use with RUFUS.

ShutUp10 is a piece of software that goes a step further, allowing you to toggle off many bad things, uninstall Microsoft's AI, and gives a description of what you are tweaking does. The premium version also automatically applies your settings at all times, reverting Microsoft's constant tweaking of your settings.

RUFUS

Massgravel

ShutUp10

Removing .NET wouldn't be a good idea tho.

And Microsoft doesn't care much for gamers on desktops, they'll mostly cater to the Xbox players that runs a basically slimmed down and locked version of Windows.

There's something sad about that text. Feels like someone so addicted to a failing corporate product, that can't even imagine life without it, and will beg for a better version and continuity of the monopoly, instead finding an alternative and moving on with life

shear

"sheer", here.

Isnt that basically enterprise?

It was my understanding enterprise edition stripped out all that bullshit.

Tbf their main userbase comes from it being preinstalled.

Imagine if highschools spent one day in tech classes teaching how to install a new OS instead of microsoft word for the 640th time.

Microsoft will continue on inertia for years. but it's basically a walking corpse full of parasites at this point.

The last time they intentionally built Windows lite was XP. This was well before SSDs, so it will not sparingly use your SSD if you're getting any ideas of trying it.

I don't think I would trust it.

in sum, linux with backwards compatability (a lazy excuse for not cleaning stuff up) and DOS commands. oh, and closed source.

they really don't though, especially developers. doing dev work on NixOS for example is like night and day compared to everything else. I can't imagine now not getting work done without NixOS. flakes and stuff just make every build so incredibly easy and because of which no matter where I put the thing I know it's going to work.

Even gaming, outside of a few games, works flawlessly. Hell even pirating now works fairly well. Emulation too. I can pick which cores I want via my gaming nix module and it's all good to go. it's great.

It's called TempleOS.

Windows and the fascist company behind it needs to die.

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...