Why is Windows still bloated

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Quicky@piefed.social⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

I’ve often heard that the reason Windows has suffered from bloat and so much has been built on top of ancient underlying technologies, partially to ensure compatibility with old software.

If something like Windows 11 requires specific hardware in order to install it, why does it need to accommodate compatibility for archaic devices/software?

Would it not be preferable for Microsoft to start from scratch with an OS that is considerably more efficient and cut-down for newer devices, similar to something like Apple’s MacOS transition from Intel to Apple Silicon, and just provide security updates for the legacy operating systems that would be in use on un-upgradable hardware?

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faltryka@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The goal of msft isn’t to be and efficient steward of your resources, or better enable the user, or to create a platform for game/app developers in hopes of creating a more attractive ecosystem for you.

It’s nothing like any of those things.

The goal of Microsoft is to maximize shareholder returns, and the best way to do that is to abuse their dominant market position while monetizing every aspect of their platform that most people will buy anyway.

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- Quicky@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I’m not sure how this fits in to the question to be honest.
  
  I don’t doubt the greed, but I don’t see how that pertains to legacy code bloat.
  
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  - faltryka@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The point is that they have no financial incentive to clean up or prevent bloat, so they don’t.
    
    Linux doesn’t either, but the Linux community operates on principles and passion instead of financial incentives, and so thusly is not similarly bloated.
    
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- MacNCheezus@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Apple is a publicly traded company as well, which means they have the same incentives, but they do the exact opposite, having frequently broken backwards compatibility in major ways in order to make massive structural changes, like moving to an entirely different processor architecture not once, not twice, but three times now, and often breaking backwards compatibility in major ways in order to reduce bloat.
  
  This is more likely a cultural issue than a technical one. Basically, both companies practice very different philosophies when it comes to engineering decisions. Of course, a major reason why Apple can do this while Microsoft can’t is the fact that Apple makes their own hardware, while Microsoft doesn’t.
  
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litchralee@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
When looking through the history of Windows, some of the major milestones included the very concept of a windowed user interface in 3.1, refining the concept into a complete desktop-oriented (as in, a physical table top, with files and folders and a recycling bin) experience in Windows 95, huge backend improvements in the kernel (eg networking) by merging in the NT kernel (last used intact in Windows 2000) and giving us Windows XP.

Note well that XP was the first juncture between a consumer-oriented OS (a la Win 95/98) and a business-oriented OS (a la NT Server or Windows 2000). The missing link here is Windows ME, which was the next consumer OS after 98 but it flopped so hard when it became apparent that this artificial consumer/business division wasn’t going to scale. Specifically, the Windows 9x kernel had too many DOS-isms whereas the NT kernel had no such issues. Hence, Microsoft undertook the massive effort to bring the two kernels together for XP.

In that sense, XP coupled a newer kernel with a polished UI. In essence, the company bet all its chips on XP. And fortunately for them, it paid off. But this came with a cost: XP has to carry the lineage of both the DOS/95/98/ME and NT/2000 into the 21st Century. This means the same OS has to support things like Active Directory (a feature only used by corporate customers) and Fax for Windows (used by anyone that wanted to use their dial-up modem for faxing, but also on fax servers, which are somehow still relevant today), while also supporting DirectX for the consumer gaming segment, plus multi-user support for “home computer” customers that still share a single machine for a household, despite a market trend towards personalized computing, and everything else under the sun.

And that’s before we get to some of the backwards-compatibility support they still have to upkeep, like 32-bit support on the x86 family of CPUs, and BIOS (in spite of UEFI being a decade old). Notably, Windows on ARM has never kept such backwards compatibility, with ARM32 being completely deprecated and only ARM64 being supported by Windows 10 and beyond (hence, Windows on Raspberry Pi).

And then, of course, the Microsoft own-goals and mistakes: somewhere around 8.1, they decided to meet the tablet/touchscreen market by having Windows be touch-oriented. But as was blitheringly obvious then and now, the desktop concept cannot possibly be similar when the controls (keyboard/mouse versus touchscreen) are swapped out. Thus, this compromised the desktop experience in pursuit of a relatively niche target market.

A better execution might have been to port Windows for ARM (which is what most/all phones and tablets use today) earlier than they did, use that as the basis of a tablet-experience OS (like how Windows Media Center was just an application atop Windows XP), and then later introduce compatibility with desktop apps (like how Apple can now do full-speed x86 emulation using special ARM extensions baked into their custom silicon). That said, the latter was only technically achievable in the 2020s, but seeing as Microsoft was the market leader well into the 2010s, they would have been in the same position as Apple is in today.

So to summarize my long-winded comment, Windows carries a lot of weight. It is the result of successfully merging two very-real market segments into one product (business users and consumer users), then MSFT dropped the ball by chasing the Next Big Thing and adding more diametrically-opposed objectives to an over-burdened OS, with nary a plan for how to eventually relieve it. Had they instead did a separate OS for tablet and mobile (rip Windows Phone), they could have merged that one into the XP-based kernel and got the refined best-of-both-worlds.

Instead, they now have the worst of both. The Windows 11 desktop experience sucks, with bad icons, near-invisible text boxes, confusion where there wasn’t any, and all while pushing consumers towards web browser-based apps. And to make it sting harder, because they’ve been feeding this mess to their corporate customers, those customers now demand that everything be kept the same (“better the enemy that you know”) which prevents Microsoft from making XP-level wholesale improvements.

They’re stuck, they know it, and they can’t really fix it unless great leadership shows up to take command of the ship. But similar to Amazon (which makes most of its revenue through AWS, not selling/shipping products), Microsoft makes the majority of its revenue in two segments: Azure cloud and Office 365. It’s hard to revamp Windows when it’s now playing third-fiddle.

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- Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  I couldn’t have written it better.
  
  The only disagreement I’d have is that Win2k was the major turning point when NT architecture hit mainstream. Suddenly we had NT core with a UI that users understood and dynamic events (PnP).
  
  Though for us in IT, NT4 was the major turning point - a solid OS that you could actually use in business.
  
  XP brought a lot more user functionality (plus better performance), and Windows 7 brought the current version of 64-bit architecture.
  
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username_1@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

to start from scratch

Miscrosoft is actively dismissing programmers. They might still have an ability to pile up some shit on the top of the codehill, but not to write new code.

to ensure compatibility with old software

This is important. This is the only reason why Windows still exists. If it would stop running old software there wouldn’t be any reason to stay on Windows. Because Linux/Wine in many cases can already do it.

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- Quicky@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  This is important. This is the only reason why Windows still exists. If it would stop running old software there wouldn’t be any reason to stay on Windows. Because Linux/Wine in many cases can already do it.
  
  I guess that’s exactly why I’m asking. Linux doesn’t have the same bloat. So why couldn’t Microsoft maintain compatibility with the old software via their old operating systems (and continued security updates), but streamline their new operating systems which clearly have specific hardware requirements. Wouldn’t that make them more competitive with respect to Linux?
  
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  - bufalo1973@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The worst part is MS knew how to do it. They could encapsulate all the legacy code and only load it when needed. But it seem they forgot how to do it again 🤷‍♂️
    
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Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The idea of a rewrite is a newbie mistake. It is almost always wrong. joelonsoftware.com/…/things-you-should-never-do-p…

MacOS wasn’t rewritten, it was ported. It’s now bigger than before.

Linux has grown from 170k lines of code back when I used it to handle dns for 10k customers to 40 million lines today. It has never been “completely rewritten” . Is Linux a failure?

Imo MS has a need to keep Windows convoluted so as to stay on step ahead of cloners like Wine.

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- riskable@programming.dev ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  MacOS wasn’t rewritten, it was ported. It’s now bigger than before.
  
  Whoah there! Mac OS was entirely rewritten from scratch (based upon some combination of FreeBSD and NextSTEP) when Steve Jobs rejoined Apple. Or are we pretending the eternal shame of Mac OS 7 never happened?
  
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  - Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The OP said the Intel to Apple Silicon transition. That was after OS X. Nor was the earlier Mac OS a rewrite but adding a different GUI to Next step and calling it Mac OS X.
    
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mrbigmouth502@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

why does it need to accommodate compatibility for archaic devices/software?

Because that’s one of Windows’ selling points. It has unusually good backwards compatibility for a mainstream operating system. Compare that to iOS, Android, MacOS, or Linux, where the infrastructure needed to run older binaries often doesn’t exist in the first place.

Linux is a weird case, because thanks to Wine, it actually runs a lot of old games better than Windows, but this doesn’t do anything to help compatibility with older Linux binaries.

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- communism@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Worth considering that there’s less of a need for backwards-compatibility with Linux binaries because most Linux software is open-source, so they can be recompiled or updated for modern Linux by the end user if the maintainer is gone. A lot of legacy Windows software is still in use and the source is unavailable, so Windows has to support it for the businesses that use the legacy software. In other words, it’s a cultural difference too. Linux seems pretty good at supporting things users actually use, like old hardware.
  
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MrGabr@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The backwards-compatibility stuff already in this thread is all true, but also they don’t know how to remove some things. Microsoft has wanted to entirely replace Control Panel with Settings since Windows 8 came out, but they gave up. And rewriting the whole operating system from scratch would take decades and still inevitably lose compatibility with some of the random old software mentioned here.

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- mrbigmouth502@piefed.zip ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  The whole dual control panels thing in recent versions of Windows has always annoyed me.
  
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fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Windows’ bloat isn’t because they have to maintain backwards compatibility. It’s because they keep adding more shit, and the shit they add isn’t exactly hyper optimized.

If something like Windows 11 requires specific hardware in order to install it, why does it need to accommodate compatibility for archaic devices/software?

Because my computer from 2024 doesn’t run software made in 2024 or newer. I use a mixture of the latest and greatest™️, and old stuff.

Apples transition to arm was not a rewrite, nor is the software any better. It’s the hardware that’s better and makes using Mac OS on an M1 MBP so much better than an Intel one.

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- Quicky@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  
  Windows’ bloat isn’t because they have to maintain backwards compatibility. It’s because they keep adding more shit, and the shit they add isn’t exactly hyper optimized.
  
  Well, it’s both of those. There is plenty of bloat due to a necessity to maintain backwards compatibility. I’m well aware of the extra shit they add, but that’s not what I’m asking about.
  
  Apple’s MacOS transition is driven by the hardware change. The next MacOS will not support Intel machines, so I would imagine those aspects of compatibility will be removed.
  
  The question was related to an equivalent aspect in Windows: since Windows 11 requires certain hardware, why doesn’t Microsoft treat Windows in a similar vein?
  
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  - fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    I mean in terms of disk space sure it takes up a good bit. From what I can tell winsxs takes about 10 gigs of space. But the actual wow64 subsytem only takes a 1-2 hundred MBs of RAM which is nothing for giving you that much backwards compatibility.
    
    Rosetta 2 is going away in the next Mac OS, but that’s not going to have a massive impact on anything. The biggest impact will be the installer will be half the size since it doesn’t need twice the executables. You can download an Intel or Arm specific installer of Mac OS and it’s already half the size.
    
    why doesn’t Microsoft treat Windows in a similar vein?
    
    Because then nobody would use Windows. People use windows because it runs all of the programs they love. If it didn’t people wouldn’t put up with their bullshit.
    
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CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Enterprise customers depend on legacy stuff that you haven’t heard of. And there’s enough of these 800-pound gorillas in the room that pay for enough of Microsoft’s bills that they have to listen to, that they can’t cut it. A behaviour bug from 2002 is actually used by, say, JP Morgan’s trading department as a critical part of their flow.

Also, the legacy stuff is literally decades of work and knowledge so unscrambling it is not really feasible.

They can’t nuke it because of the customers that rely on it. Microsoft’s job (and that of all vendors) is to cost less than a migration to another option.

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- Quicky@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
  Yeah I understand those legacy systems, but I wouldn’t expect those to be upgrading to Windows 11 for example. I guess that’s why I was suggesting a separation of “then” and “now” operating systems.
  
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  - CompactFlax@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    The legacy systems need to upgrade because they need security patches. It’s not an incompatible system from 1992. Windows broke stuff going to Vista, when real-time controllers like you’d find running a power plant or CNC changed in ways I don’t remember, but fundamentally you could run a 35 year old application on windows 11 with tweaks over the years. These companies are running apps written in the 70s and 80s.
    
    Microsoft could and perhaps should bifurcate Windows into new and old, or draw a line along Server and Workstation, but I think the bulk of their windows income comes from these enterprises and the “new” windows wouldn’t sell that well - it’s effectively been free for consumers since 8. Windows was the absolute show runner for decades but since the Cloud, it’s shrank quite a lot so there isn’t the money there anymore.
    
    ARM is an interesting experiment they’ve been working on from a couple angles over the years but never really got the buy in.
    
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  - Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
    
    I wouldn’t expect those to be upgrading to 11
    
    Every desktop/laptop will upgrade to 11 - no business will accept the risk of maintaining an OS that’s out of support (with some exceptions). So you don’t have a choice.
    
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sad_detective_man@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
It’s not their business strategy to do that. They’re for profit, not for making something that works well. And lately the income they bring from contracts with all those bloatware developers is offsetting whatever they lose by selling an inferior product

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ImgurRefugee114@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago

built on top of ancient underlying technologies

*me running perl scripts on a teletype terminal emulator with a character display width limited by IBM punch cards

Huh? This is fast as fuck, boi

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flambonkscious@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
The compatibility is at the software layer, not so much hardware (but really all they’re doing is adding more new stuff, not dropping old).

Yes, your shitty access database that calls a Borland back-end still works, etc…

Provided the device drivers aren’t using direct memory access, they’ll typically work, too

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communism@lemmy.ml ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
They have a near-monopoly on the desktop market. The average consumer doesn’t care about bloat, and will keep using Windows stubbornly no matter what. Why bother writing good software if people will buy it anyway?

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orangeyouglad@lemmy.today ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
Toyota has become the number one auto manufacturer by making middle of the road low risk cars that are dead reliable. Any other auto maker could follow this, but the executives don’t want to follow this simple approach. they push for flashy cars. they push for cheap parts. they prioritize volume over quality.

Similarly Microsoft absolutely could streamline their operating system. What’s stopping them? The decision makers don’t care about this. They want flash AI features ham fistedly shoe horned into the ever shittier pile of tech debt. Anyone could say I want to be a manager who prioritizes quality and resource management but if the people at the top don’t care resources will not be allocated and the product will not go in that direction.

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danh2os@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago
First step after clean install is uninstalling everything Microslop and replace with open source alternatives. Disable Anti-virus and firewall if you are so inclined. You’ll gain at least 10% performance from my estimation.

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