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.
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.
Good on ya it’s a shame tons of popular games require Windows for their anti-cheat software to work
A lot of, perhaps all of, those games are predatory money extractors that are deliberately designed to be as addictive as possible, just like a casino.
Sticking to Windows to play them is like saying you need a car, because there are no bus stops near the casino. True, but should you really be going there in the first place?
I was going to push back on your point here, but then I couldn’t think of a game that makes a good counterpoint.
Before they enshitified all the sports games, I would have pushed back a bit and comparer running Windows for a specific game to emulating an Atari for nostalgia.
But actually, the last good version of many of those sports games probably runs in Wine now anyway.
One pushback - there’s still community on some of those very shitty games. I understand people not wanting to leave their gamer group behind.
Of course, my gamer group all moved to SteamDeck.
The Finals, Battlefield 5 (amazingly it has no loot boxes), Helldivers 2, Arc Raiders, all have anti-cheat so need kernel level access, but they’re not predatory.
Thanks!