Continuing the trend of trying to make Windows 11 suck less, Microsoft today announced Project Zenith, a new “ready-to-code distraction free Windows experience” for powerful developer hardware with 64GB of RAM and gobs of memory bandwidth. Project Zenith will first be available on AMD’s Ryzen AI Halo mini-desktop at first, with more devices to follow. Clearly, the focus is on local AI development — a timely move as cloud AI token costs start to rise.

Microsoft’s Windows Platform CVP Logan Ayer says Project Zenith will let developers “run 30B+ parameter models locally and unmetered.” The goal, really, is to cut the crud out of Windows to create a more Linux-like experience. Ayer says Project Zenith will have tools for multiple languages and runtimes pre-installed, and Windows itself will be more developer-friendly from the get go, with settings like full file extensions and hidden files enabled by default. 

 “Project Zenith is not about prescribing a single workflow,” Ayer wrote in a blog post today. “You can continue to configure, extend, and personalize your environment around the tools, languages, and frameworks you prefer. It is about beginning from a better baseline, shaped by the settings and tools developers reach for first, so a new device works with you to accelerate your workflows.”

While it’s nice to see Microsoft making Windows 11 more streamlined, continuing the efforts it announced earlier this year by removing forced Copilot AI integration, it’s strange to see Project Zenith restricted to incredibly expensive developer hardware. I’m sure many indie developers would love to have a cleaner version of Windows, but demanding 64GB of RAM in the age of the RAMaggedon seems inexcusable. (Especially because Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and its overall AI push is a big reason memory prices have skyrocketed.)