Microsoft wants to know why, exactly, Windows 11 is slow, so it’s adding a feature in the latest Insider Preview to collect data when a Windows 11 machine is experiencing slowness or sluggishness.
As part of our commitment to improving Windows performance, logs are now collected when your PC has experienced any slow or sluggish performance. Windows Insiders are encouraged to provide feedback when experiencing PC issues related to slow or sluggish performance, allowing Feedback Hub to automatically collect these logs, which will help us root cause issues faster. Use the Desktop > System Sluggishness category when filing feedback to allow Feedback Hub to automatically pick up these logs. These logs are stored locally (
↫ Amanda Langowski and Brandon LeBlanc%systemRoot%\Temp\DiagOutputDir\Whesvcfolder) and only sent to Microsoft via Feedback Hub when feedback is submitted.
In case you want to solve performance problems with Windows 11, just go here and follow the steps, and your computer will be spry as a Spring chicken in a few minutes.
I am very funny.
Instructions unclear, now my computer won’t run Photoshop or most of my games (and none of my Denuvo-enabled games).
When will Linux people understand the value of ecosystems? Steve Jobs literally told everyone 15 years ago that OSes are game of ecosystems, yet Linux people still casually recommend to people to “install Desktop Linux” without regard to software compatibility. Well, it doesn’t work that way.
— Aldous Huxley
> Instructions unclear, now my computer won’t run Photoshop or most of my games (and none of my Denuvo-enabled games).
I still see only advantages there.
Yes, I am also very funny.
Seriously, though: I am very happy to have the luxurious position of being truly able to choose my os. More than enough games run on linux to last me multiple lifetimes and I can tell any prospective employers where they can shove their requirements if they try to force any modern peddle-ware on me.
Sure, but that’s not general advice you can give to people. If, for example, you need support for CMYK or Pantone, you will buy Photoshop (and in the case of Pantone, you’ll buy the Pantone plug-in too). People sometimes need to run certain software to do their job. You remind me of a certain “Mr Pogson” person who had a semi-obscure blog about Linux (among other things), and like you, had the luxury of only running the OSes and software he wanted (he has a pensioner). When his wife wanted to run a piece of Windows software for her job, she advised her to retire. No joke, his blog isn’t online anymore, but there is a Web Archive of that post:
https://web.archive.org/web/20190714054612/https://mrpogson.com/2016/07/30/the-nightmare-returns-tlw-requires-toos/
Yeah, that advice won’t be appreciated by most people. If you need to run a Windows app that doesn’t work with Wine/Proton/etc, you will run Windows 11, even in a VM. So, installing Fedora won’t fix any Windows 11 slowness that you will have to tolerate to run that essential piece of software.
And for us younger people, there is the issue of gaming: In this age of online DRM and “live service”, PC gaming is the only way you can have some semblance of ownership over your game library, since when the online DRM breaks or the servers go down, you can always crack/mod your way through it. But here is the catch: Not all games run under Wine/Proton/etc. This of course means you need Windows.
Strange, all my Denuvo enabled games run just fine on Bazzite. Not sure what you did wrong there.
And with all the new graphic software out there – I’ll never understand why folks still use that bloated, slow, root-kit menace called Photoshop. I think we found the culprit for slow Windows 11 in this case anyway.
Apparently, it is now possible to Denuvo on Proton:
https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2025/05/denuvo-will-lock-you-out-of-games-on-linux-steamos-steam-deck-if-you-keep-changing-proton-versions/
Still, Proton is still hit-and-miss when it comes to compatibility, so I’ll stay on Windows.
> Microsoft wants to know why, exactly, Windows 11 is slow,
Maybe, if microsoft hadn’t gotten rid of their qa department, they could have known without using spyware.
Guess that was part of the idea all along or, at the very least, a happy happenstance from microsoft’s perspective.
Maybe it is just the sheer amount of spyin… err… telemetry they’ve added. The irony if that’s the case of trying to solve it with more telemetry.
Hahaha so on point.
The problem is likely not something they can fix in their labs, not without changing their idiotic security defaults.
At the end of the day, I suspect strongly, that the reason Windows 11 is slow, is all the root-kit based security bullshit, that so much software installs on your machine. Think about it – every single Denuvo instance, Battle Eye, Easy Anti-cheat, and all the corporate spyware root-kits from Adobe, and Google, and Epic, and whoever else. There is a LOT of this type of crap installed all over Windows, and it builds up over time. Microsoft has basically encouraged it, by refusing to modernize their insecure defaults, and ban these horrendous, mostly ineffective schemes.
Why Windows 11 is slow is not a mystery. What Microsoft is probably really up to is identifying specific sources, so they work behind the scenes to improve partner software. The catch here, is that it won’t work, because it can’t work. There’s just too much of that crap out there.
Also – keep an eye on this. This can happen in Linux land as well – the last thing we want is for these irresponsible companies to start to port their stuff to Linux natively – because then we’ll just have exactly the same problem on Linux.
FYI, Desktop Linux has the same problem: with sudo you can install rootkits/kernel drivers all you want. It’s not like Android (which doesn’t allow modification of the system).
A couple of posts above you correctly corrected me that Denuvo now works on Desktop Linux. Guess what Denuvo uses to do its DRM rituals? A kernel driver.
“In case you want to solve performance problems with Windows 11, just go here and follow the steps, and your computer will be spry as a Spring chicken in a few minutes.”
Thom, while absolutely true, practically no one is going to take you up on that offer. We’ve seen time and time again that most commoners are welded to Windows. No amount of abuse inflicted by MS will make them budge. They are absolutely satisfied with griping amongst each other and keep taking the abuse. Every one suffers the same and that gives them a sense of belonging. It also runs their distractions almost flawlessly. Microsoft made a brilliant move by cementing gaming to Windows through DirectX. Having games with rootkits dependent on the NT kernel was just more cementing for free. Microsoft could demand blood for login and they will put their finger on the needle and just grumble and gripe about how their fingers hurt and how Microsoft are A-holes for imposing that.
The smart ones run Linux. Businesses with massive deployments. Non-profits with better destinations for their money than licensing. People truly interested in technology and an aversion to being a wallet. The Windows using contingent will throw everything and the kitchen sink against this as a defense, but deep down they know who holds their chains and that they will never shake them.
Convenience is a hell of a drug and freedom is a nuisance to maintain. Microsoft knows this, so they never turn the heat up immediately. Salami tactics all the way. It needs to stay more convenient than vexing at any time.
I work for a startup with EIGHT employees and I am the sysadmin. There’s no way to convince them that we could save tons and still remain operational. They are C#.NET fanboys and for them there’s nothing in the world like Active Directory (Entra in Azure in our case) and Microsoft solutions.
No matter how many times things randomly don’t work and we have to wait for weeks for support because we don’t have a support contract that gives us a single point of contact.
Convenience is indeed a hell of a drug. All we do is presentations, excel and emails besides our main application. We could be very fine in Linux. Email not being delivered? Good luck. Windows Activation fails (after buying super expensive licenses)? Good luck.
On top of that, all of the few SaaS solutions we use charge WAY more for SSO, meaning that we can’t even leverage the security of having federated authentication and FIDO. And when trying to get security certifications, it’s much harder to go the open source way. Revolving doors all the way.
Shiunbird,
I’m not a microsoft fan, but I gotta say that I do like C# far more than C/C++. Granted “managed” languages aren’t in the same class, but even so I regularly find myself annoyed with the C/C++ languages for problems that have long been fixed by other languages.
I do contract work for some MS shops and software activation is surprisingly shoddy. The enterprise licensing for visual studio has failed them on multiple occasions, literally leaving developers unable to work myself included. Just today MS Teams was refusing to register. While it’s a nice product when it works, it’s unreliable enough that you really need an independent backup plan. I know it’s just the world we live in today but I am strongly inclined to give microsoft (and others) the middle finger on forced cloud subscription models. There’s just too much at stake to become so utterly dependent on microsoft to run the whole business given such a poor track record on uptime.
Yea, I’m not as opposed to classic software/IT that runs locally, it used to be the norm. But companies including MS are doing what they can to deprecate it. The direction they’ve plotted for the industry stinks and the future will suffer for it.
There’s a huge list of services that really should not be on by default. A bunch of gaming and Xbox stuff. Windows Image Acquisition, why? I don’t even have a touch screen and Touch Keyboard and Handwriting Recognition were on.
Also I hate that some developers create update services instead of, I dont know, checking for updates when you launch the application. Google has a bunch, Silverfast (for my photo scanner), ugh.
Others use Task Scheduler (Edge!) and my photo scanner driver gets an update check via task scheduler EVERY HOUR.
This is denying the very idea that Windows users don’t try Linux. They do, leave a one star review, and move on after the community tries downvotes/insulting it away. I’ve seen a very pro Linux advocate on Youtube describing how Linux taught the people he installed it for to never run updates because that’s when things severely break. He almost figures it out that it’s not ready for the general public, but then starts going on a rant about how they should start learning terminal commands. Microsoft knows they can get away with enshitification, because Linux is not a realistic 3rd option.
Breakage with updating? I am on an Arch derivative. I still need to see a major problem that can’t be solved by simply reading the friendly instructions and just be the idiot who follows that to the letter. These are also few and far between. In terms of years, not months or weeks.
Yeah, Windows user “tries” Linux. Expects it to be a 1 on 1 clone of Windows. Assaults the system by downloading random packages of the internet and unthinkingly compiles whatever is downloaded and borks the base system. Doesn’t spend 1 second thinking, this might work differently from Windows. Throws a hissy fit after a few days of being a moron, spews some bile on the internet and decides that Linux is forever more not fit for the desktop; with all that terminal and stuff. PEBKAC. Truth is that a mildly trained Chimpanzee could use Linux on the desktop.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, kicad has an excellent post about how wayland broke their apps. ubuntu recently published an update to fix updates breaking boot on raspberry pi. Basically, you are one of the lucky ones saying “it works for me.” while out in the real world, it breaks a whole lot more than Windows. And yes, these updates are all official, from repos, etc. If the Linux community can’t accept their product breaks itself 1000x more often than Windows and hitting update on a Linux desktop is basically a game of Russian roulette in what will break this time, it will never be a real alternative. You might as well just wait a hundred years for ReactOS if you want a good foss desktop.
Kicad works just fine under Xwayland, something the kicad people mysteriously failed to mention.
I wonder why.
Thom Holwerda,
It’s only specific features that are broken. Being able to save and restore window layouts for example. I’ve seen the same bugs in other programs. Unfortunately these are wayland bugs that won’t get fixed because they don’t believe applications should be allowed to do the things that aren’t working. My vote doesn’t matter, but it would be to have these preferences set by policy, rather than wayland devs hard coding their own preferences.
r_a_trip,
I do agree that downloading/customizing linux with instructions/packages downloaded from the internet is one of the main causes of problems. However I wouldn’t say that’s an unreasonable thing to want to do.
I installed 3rd laser show software on linux and it doesn’t work on 2/3 of my linux machines. Unfortunately incompatible dependencies is something that occurs fairly regularly on linux. While it’s technically possible to manually install dependencies out of distro, it’s a major nuisance.
More and more I just find myself wanting to get away from dependency issues by running applications that just have everything pre-bundled, despite the fact that it ends up being much more bloated. Software that should be 1-2MB ends up being 100MB, which sucks but at least it helps with dependency hell.
I’ve been a linux user since ’98 or ’99 and you’re being disingeuous. The last decade on the linux desktop has been AWFUL. The transition to Gnome 3/ KDE 4, followed by Gnome locking down GTK at the expense of alternative desktops, and now the perpetually incomplete transition to Wayland, the introduction of “universal” packaging formats like Flatpak and Snap — they break things left and right.
Right now, today, I’ve got to choose whether to run an X.org or Wayland session depending on what I mean to do. You want Vsync in Left4Dead2? Gotta use X. Avoid audio dropouts in Wolfenstein? Gotta be Wayland. Scrivener? X.org. Flicker-free video calls with my editor? Wayland. Want to use a bluetooth controller in Steam? Better install the DEB because Snap and Flatpak decided that device access is a security risk. And so on.
You’re right than any use can negotiate any one of those issues — all it takes is a couple hours of Googling, messing with configuration files or launch flags, and testing different display configurations and packaging formats. But not everyone thinks this is a worthwhile use of their time.
“It works for me, so it must mean that PEBKAC” is exactly the kind of attitude that drives people away.
I used Linux – exclusively – for years. I tried pretty much every distro I could, from the biggest ones like Ubuntu, Arch and Fedora to niche ones like Void and Funtoo, and the BSDs too for good measure. I spent a ridiculous amount of time tinkering and, yes, fixing stuff because stuff did indeed break. I had fun doing it, but most people don’t want to spend their time troubleshooting stuff that should work. Eventually, I wanted a decent DAW that worked reliably, and Linux just couldn’t deliver that. I switched to Windows 10 and never went back.
Just because Linux is a solution for you, it doesn’t mean that it’s for everybody.
Microsoft, please:
– allow the option to fully disable telemetry.
– allow the option to fully disable a feature the user doesn’t need (bonus: reduced attack surface)
– allow the option to create offline accounts without having to rely on shenanigans
– remove ads from the system
– stop reinventing the wheel and replacing working components with much heavier ones (cough, notepad, cough)
Bit of performance gain for each point
Yes, most of the OSNews readership can trim Windows out of its fat, but the average home or business user cannot.
Shiunbird,
+1 from me.
…but companies have learned that it’s more profitable to ignore what customer want and just do what’s best for them. Take away our privacy, and pump more ads. Why should microsoft give a damn? “Screw the customer 101” may as well be a requirement for all MBAs. They’ll land jobs in no time.
Unfortunately vendor locking is extremely effective, and it’s everywhere.
BTW I noticed today that microsoft overwrote firefox as my default browser on windows yet again this morning.
It really makes me wonder how much more marketshare FF would have if they weren’t subjected to these unfair market tactics.
@Alfman
All platforms, every OS I’ve come across, delivers some form of vendor lockin either via unique solutions or brute force.
You would also need a way to avoid installing anti-tamper and DRM root-kits, which Microsoft has not implemented yet (and probably never will.)
> stop reinventing the wheel and replacing working components with much heavier ones (cough, notepad, cough)
At least they’re not “reinventing the wheel” by rewriting it using Rust.
niebuszewo,
This sentiment doesn’t make sense. Why applaud just the cons with no pros? If they’re going to rewrite old software anyways, and put users through the inconvenience of “upgrading”, then it may as well be done in a memory safe language.
If we refuse to replace old software that lacks memory safety, then we’d be relegating the future to the same exploits and faults that go hand in hand with memory unsafe languages.
One thing I noticed, is that the mitigation for the “easy” driver compromise involves instructions that greatly impact performance in certain cases. In particular this is the Security -> Core Isolation -> Memory Integrity enable. Hit can be upwards of 30%. Won’t affect most physical installations on supported Windows 11 desktop CPUs…. but… if you have something different…
I don’t use some of the security options because some of them rely on Hyper-V and then VirtualBox gets sloooooooooooooooooooooooooooow. =(
You so funny…LOL 🙂
Slightly OT because I’m honestly wondering: Why Fedora?
Last time I used Linux, it was Ubuntu all the way for the cool kids, while I was using Gentoo PPC on a 12″ MacBook Pro, before I gave up spending time with configuring machines rather than just using them due to becoming a dad.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I’ve been on Fedora based Nobara (shaky) and Bazzite (really like this one) – both Fedora based, and I have to say – they both are a lot easier to work with than Ubuntu and its derivatives. The problem on the Debian derivatives, is that there are too many layers of package repositories, and they conflict. It’s easy to get instructions that will completely bork. your system, and usually you need to go mucking about in the underlying system. You could say it’s the same for Fedora (and Nobara), but I haven’t found it to be as big a problem to just add a copr, and move on with my day.
On Bazzite, it’s even easier, because it uses an immutable base. Yeah, there’s a bunch to learn about that. Many normal Linuxey tools aren’t available, so you have to learn the ostree or ujust alternatives. But still – it’s WAY harder to bork the core of the system, since it’s immutable. And they ship distro-box by default, which takes seconds to get a container up for Ubuntu, or Fedora, or whatever, in case you want to use their package manager in a native feeling way. This is the way, IMHO.
Yes, you are.
I use WinHance to remove everything and then I add VLC, IrfanView, 7zip, Chrome
and Firefox(uBlock). That’s about same as Windows 10 if not better.
As others have pointed out, you can’t expect better results than Linux
when you integrate telemetry tools and ads into everything.
If they want, they could pay for Linux slower drivers, or they
could pay major gaming companies to make games unplayable on
Linux.
If I had to qualify this question of performance, I’d have to ask why some systems degraded and others improved after the upgrade to Win 11.
That’s my experience, with dozens of effectively identically specified workstations to manage, some are killed by the upgrade and others fly. For example, I have two HP Workstations identical RAM, processor, embedded graphics, one is twelve months older by procurement. One flies the other dies, the problems must be at a very low level, BIOS, chipset, etc., etc… I’m sure if I delve deeply enough I’ll find a host of differences, but is it worht my time and effort?
So I bet vendor drivers have a much bigger impact on the end user experience than OEMs want to admit.
It’s a bit like X11 vs Wayland.
cpcf,
Swapping the hard drives could be a low effort way to ascertain whether it’s actually the hardware or just the OS install that’s responsible. If swapping disks switches which system is slow, then you can rule out all the hardware (except the disk itself, which you can test separately).
I think the importance of robust drivers is understood. And we can’t always assume windows update has the best drivers. One of my old laptops had horrible wifi issues until I went to the manufacturer and downloaded their drivers instead. The experience went from “I want to throw this thing against the wall” to just working as expected. Unfortunately windows 11 doesn’t always respect sideloaded drivers. I noticed this with prolific purposefully distributing malware via windows update. They deliberately disable hardware they officially deem unsupported despite the fact that the old drivers continue to work great if you keep reinstalling them over the new drivers. Microsoft forced updates are really problematic in this situation.
Because “identically specced” and even “identical model” doesn’t actually mean anything…
The components will be specified as “nvme ssd”, “1gbps ethernet controller”, “802.11ax wifi adapter” etc but the actual components will be sourced from whichever supplied had the right quantity at the right price at the time. You could have the same “model” of laptop which has 3 different wifi chipsets, different memory, different ssd etc. For something like the CPU the brand names are well known that they won’t swap them around, but other than that everything can get changed.
There are wild discrepancies in performance between different parts, and that’s before considering the drivers which can magnify the differences significantly. Also on windows, things like wpa3 support depend on the drivers so you may fine that even with the latest win11 you cant connect to wpa3 networks.
Wait, they can automatically gather marketing data without asking for permission but they can’t automatically gather data that will help their product work better?
Be careful what you wish for – if Windows would send out automatically telemetry every time something slows down, you would need 1Gbps upload minimum to survive online.
The irony of Microsoft’s approach to solving its asinine performance ‘problem’ by installing more telemetry/spyware, to spy on its telemetry/spyware, with even more telemetry, background processes, RAM use, i/o, registry r/w, logging, disk thrashing… I don’t think you need an Engineering degree to see the problem here…
This would be merely absurdly laughable with what SHOULD be more than enough in the way of documented code, existing performance counters and system telemetry to reveal the exact source of the ‘problem’ — but this is even more ridiculous and insidious than that: this is a Shark Circus of Sharks Jumping Sharks circling the drain, and they’re publically advertising that fact.
Even more disturbing than this Microsoft Jumps The Shark AGAIN story, is the conspicuous admission implied here: that Microsoft has such an enormous payload of trash running or that can run in the background that have no performance counters, the problem is opaque even to Microsoft, they have no idea what’s going on, and that Microsoft laid off all its competent Systems Engineers has real consequences.
More than anything this looks like the consequences Windows 11 developed and supported by woke marketing amatures and AI — the Windows 11 project is so conspicuously circling the drain with its 5 year open beta test on the public that if Microsoft doesn’t rehire some of its competent Engineers, this should be over very quickly.
What’s really new in Windows since NT 3.1, from the top of my head?
– IPv6
– DirectX/Vulkan/OpenGL support
– Built-in firewall
– Wireless support
– Bluetooth support
– Windows Defender and other security measures
– Hi-DPI, font smoothing, accelerated user interface
– Input device support improvements (touch screens, tablets, game devices, etc)
I seriously can count very few things since Windows 2000 that I really need and should be running in the background. Even some services like BITS I question the need of running always-on by default.
Heck, if I want to see the latest stock prices in my taskbar, I can install a program for it. I also don’t want to see news in my lock screen, and I go out of my way to disable all the animations, reflections, etc..
XBox sidebar should not be part of the OS, AI-powered notepad should not be part of the OS, nothing beyond a web-browser downloader should be part of the OS (you can keep curl/wget to be able to fetch upgrades/drivers)…
A very clean Windows 10 installation is actually a quite nice experience, although it’s not as clean as it could have been.
Indeed, when I boot my Windows 2000, it boots in 20 seconds on my VIA C7 @2GHz and start with only 40-50 MB used in RAM, my Windows XP SP3+ boots in 30 seconds and uses about 80-100 MB of memory. What I do with Windows 7/10/11 is 99% the same as 2000/XP : office + browsing + game + watching video + coding. I’m explained that the new kernels are more secure, sure they are (WannaCry, Meltdown, Spectre, …) but are the cluttered UI really necessary ? When the GUI is top notch (2000/XP) why can’t we keep them and just upgrade the kernel ? Why should we loose one to get the other ?
My grandfather is 91 and an excellent computer operator. His eyesight is declining and he complains a lot when updates change the UI. He liked Skype because there were almost no changes.
Sometimes I call him and he goes “where is the stupid mute button now”. Also the buttons with 3D effect are very missed, because they have contrast – rather than a very thin X that you can’t really see unless you look straight at it with worse eyesight.
Also the lots of empty space (Windows settings app cough cough) make it harder for him to find things. And the invisible scroll bars.
Shiunbird,
I concur, too many many UIs have gotten genuinely difficult to use because the control surfaces are too hard to hit. The industry used to take usability very seriously, but now it seems both windows and linux designers decided to commit all the same UI regressions as though everyone collectively agreed on kicking visibility and usability to the gutter in favor of visual sparsity. I wouldn’t have as much of a problem with if it didn’t come at the expense of usability.
@Kochise
I cannot blame Microsoft for changing the UI because that is a user problem. Yes, the teams of engineers and designers need to justify themselves and change things that do not need changing. But they are also inundated with a constant stream of complaints about what is wrong with it. So, they respond.
Take KDE Plasma 6. It may be what Windows would look like if they kept plugging away at Windows 7. Many people find KDE “outdated” and “ugly” and “cluttered”. So, we get GNOME–which many other people hate. Both of those are disliked by enough people that the old versions of both are still available. On Linux, we get to pick our poison and fight with each other. On Windows, everybody has to go down the same road where many will consider the new UI worse than the old..
> why can’t we keep them [the GUI] and just upgrade the kernel ?
Well, on Linux, you absolutely can. On Linux, you can run a kernel released last week and a GUI that looks identical to the one you were using in 1995. People do that.
> Why should we loose one to get the other ?
As a product strategy, the “infinite choice” model of Linux is terrible. Indeed, even fans frequently complain about the “fragmentation”. The whole idea of a “platform” is how it standardizes the system. Uniformity is a feature. Fragmentation is failure. That does not mean the system cannot evolve. It must evolve or it will be considered obsolete (even if it is not). But it has to stay uniform. Which means it has to move our cheese. And many of us will not like that.
A platform needs to be uniform. Windows already fails at that a bit with all the “legacy UI” floating around. But a Windows user can sit down at any Windows system and use it. An expert on one system is an expert on all of them. And in the area that must be most universal, application ABI, Windows excels where Linux fails. I can put a Windows user on any Windows system. I run a Windows app on any Windows system. It is a platform.
Red Hat is trying to make Linux a platform: GNOME, Systemd, Wayland, Pipewire, DBUS, glibc, GNU utils, gcc, QEMU/KVM, Podman, Flatpak, etc.
I both love and hate them for it.
Up to Windows 7, you could select “Windows Classic” as a theme and get the ultra readable Windows 9x/2000 theme, even if it “looked old”. At least it was working perfectly fine. You don’t even have this option anymore. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t take a load of MB on the disk, so why removing it ?
Kochise,
I agree with you. The loss of classic windows UI happened under windows 8. This was not a technical decision since the classic interface was still fully functional in the beta editions of windows 8, a registry settings would re-enabled it. Microsoft’s decision to kill classic was mostly about metro taking over. When it was clear users hated metro, they doubled down and removed classic instead of giving users what they wanted. Obviously metro was an abysmal failure and MS ended up rebuilding the desktop UI to work more like win7 did. However the replacements were not mature and had way fewer features, so many of us still felt it was regressive compared to classic. They never completed their goal of completely replacing classic with metro and windows is left with awkward appendages to support various bits and pieces of both, like control panel and context menus. We’re left with an OS that is a hodge podge of tooling and UIs.
These days I think microsoft’s main agenda is to replace legacy software to create hooks for tracking and ads. MS are paying engineers to make software worse 🙁
The thing is. Windows is not all that slow. I cannot be really. It used to run just fine on Pentium class hardware. We were already on Windows 7 when the earliest x86-64 systems started to appear.
The problem is that there is so much crap running on top of Windows. Microsoft wants all that stuff running so getting rid of it (which is how the rest of us make Windows faster) is not really an option. That said, I am sure a lot of what is running on Windows IS very slow and unoptimized. So I guess they can make some of that stuff lighter and faster. Sure. But I doubt they are going to run much less of the garbage on top. Probably the opposite.
Of course, Windows is slow when compared to Linux, especially file access. But that is not why we think Windows is slow.
If you take the cruft away, Windows is a brilliant OS.
Applying a domain-wide security model to hundreds of thousands of objects all the time? It’s impressive. The idea of the HAL, and how well it was implemented? Please.
Keep Dave Cutler working and get rid of the rest.
Strip out all the unnecessary garbage and hey it’ll be quick, duh. Stop supporting ancient things people don’t use anymore.