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.
.NET is arguably one of the better things to come out of Microsoft. The CLR only runs when a .NET application is running so it’s not bloat, and it’s pretty lightweight as far as a VM goes with JIT. It’s well documented, has public standards, is cross platform, and released under MIT.
I’m a Unix/Linux greybeard so I’ve no real skin in the game. But given how C# has become the defacto cross platform game development language of choice for both Godot and Unity engines, .NET deserves a little credit.
C#/.NET is easily the best thing Microsoft makes.
I realize the bar is pretty low.