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.
But here’s the big problem: stripping all of the terrible shit out of Windows doesn’t make it better than Linux, it just makes it less bad than Windows is today.
For anyone running anticheat games Windows is the only option. Windows being utter shit might one day get them to give up these games just so they could ditch Windows. Which I’d welcome, but Microsoft probably doesn’t.
Some anticheat games, yeah.
The vast majority of games, including most multiplayer games (and many with anticheat) work just fine on Linux today thanks to Proton, and even MacOSX is starting to catch up with GameHub.
For the few games that don’t work right now, I can easily imagine someone filling the gap with a Windows dual boot partition (or even just a PS5).
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that Linux is closer to being what we need it to be today than Windows is. Windows has a lot of work to do, and even then it’ll never be quite as open or computer geek-friendly as Linux. I don’t see a good path forward for Windows, especially as casual users more deeper and deeper into mobile ecosystems.
Or the other way around. As soon as enough people switch, game devs will follow.