Windows 10 + Windows Bloat

[watercooled]

Something I've been wondering since MS claimed 10 would be their 'last' OS, which I take to mean rolling updates, is what will happen with regards to OS bloating?

Every Windows OS so far has gained bloat over time with updates, service packs, etc and 'upgrading' to a new OS often meant shedding all of that bloat and ending up with a smaller, tidier OS. At least to start with.

For instance, XP on release ran reasonably well on a system with 128MB RAM and a 1.5GHz Northwood Celeron (I had one). But XP in its latest form is horribly bloated and slow on the very same system. The same applies in varying degrees to newer OS's too, Win7 has grown significantly over time; however the option for Windows Update cleanup in Disk Cleanup helps alleviate the disk space impact somewhat.

My point being you can install an OS clean on a system and it runs fairly smoothly, but let it churn through Win Update until completion and performance can take a huge hit.

Off topic a bit but it's not just Windows by any means - Android on my old Galaxy Ace seems fairly responsive after a factory reset. But let it update Play Services etc in the background and it slows down considerably.

Also I'm not sure if it's more to do with Windows or the notoriously RAM-hungry Chrome (I'm worried if Firefox going multi-process means it going the same way too ), but 8GB used to be more than enough for a ton of Chrome tabs, an XP VM in VirtualBox, Firefox, Thunderbird, Skype but recently I'm seeing a fair amount of memory warnings (I know why, I deliberately have paging disabled, it's just an observation). Heck, even 4GB used to be enough if I laid off on the VMs.

Anyway I digress - my question is, how will the 'last' Windows combat this seemingly inevitable OS bloat? Of course the 'last OS' thing could be a bit of a misnomer and they're going more like Android/iOS/OSX which do still have full versions, but have them 'free' rather than charging for the OS? It's just one of the many things about Win10 which still isn't clear. If it really is free upgrades, would that imply that system builders such as many of us wouldn't need to fork out for future releases any more?

The whole 'last OS' thing seems a bit final and raises a load of questions. And I really don't like the thought of waking up to find Win10 has auto-updated and pulled a stunt like the Win8 Start thing with no real way of deciding to skip it. I didn't like Win8 and I had the option to stick with 7, which I did. The unanswered questions along these lines, along with the complete lack of clarity on licensing, privacy issues etc are all making me postpone moving to Win10.

[kalniel]

All fair points. For what it's worth, I haven't personally experienced any performance drop with Windows 7, in fact performance has increased as upgrades like adding an SSD have improved things far more than any bloat might have slowed things down. It could be just masking I presume, but even having an SSD for the last 3? years or so I've not seen any decrease.

[peterb]

I think "last OS ever" is probably marketing fluff! But I agree that over time the operating systems do seem to get more sluggish, although whether that is reality or just perception, I'm not sure!

To pick up kalniel's point that he has seen an improvement by adding "things like SSD" does mask the issue to some extent.

The cynic in me wonders if the demands of operating systems drives processor design, or if advances in processor design enables more complex operating systems!

However, this isn't just Windiws issue, Linux systems seem more demanding, although the more open design of Linux does make building a compact and snappy system easier by removing unwanted and unneeded packages.

[shaithis]

Systems do not really slow down when installing updates, else all our games wouldn't be running so well over time!

There is a perception of bloat and some of that may come from space consumption, increased boot-up times and longer waits when access add/remove programs etc.....while these are completely legitimate, once loaded they do not (or should not!) cause any slow downs. Some of it will also be additional services starting, task tray apps loading etc.

I have always found the 'bloat' to be nothing more than marginally increased boot times, less C: drive space and slightly less free RAM.....and in a modern system (espeically one with an SSD) is not noticeable any more....we aren't running with 128MB RAM and a HDD that struggles to reach 25MB/s any more!

[watercooled]

I think it's Wirth's law which states that software gets slower at a similar rate to hardware getting faster. So despite having massively more powerful hardware than we had years ago, software often gets slower so not much seems to change. It's sadly true a lot of the time. Adobe Reader vs SumatraPDF is an example; a lot of software simply takes silly amounts of resources over what is necessary to do a job.

TBH I've not noticed much of a performance hit with 7 on my own systems, but they're SSD-based which does mask any disk churn slowness. However I have noticed much greater disk usage in relation to just the OS. I've also noticed much higher RAM consumption but I think that's more down to software getting more bloated rather than the OS itself. And more recent Windows OS's seem to have improved on that; I have a cheap Win8 (now Win10) tablet which seems to manage fine on 1GB with swapping.

I completely agree it's not exclusive to Windows - popular Linux distors (or more specifically the desktop environments) have gotten massively more resource-intensive than they once were. From what I've seen, a lot of Linux distros which were considered lightweight alternatives to Windows now seem more sluggish than Windows! However it's possible to choose what bits you want with Linux - my Debian file server is currently using about 59MB of memory sitting idle.

@shaithis: By 'slowing down', I mean the OS itself getting more sluggish to do things, using more memory/disk space, etc. Things like games or processor-intensive things like benchmarks are rarely impacted by the state of the operating system. Having a heavily-fragmented drive due to Win Update working its magic could impact load times for games though.

I have noticed systems definitely slowing down over time, aside from booting, just doing general desktop stuff like opening programs etc. It's not too noticeable on faster desktop systems but it is on things like netbooks, especially those with 1GB RAM. By that I mean a fresh OS plus allowing Win Update to finish feels more sluggish than the OS without any updates.

Maybe MS have come up with a more efficient way of installing updates without saving random (and AFAICT, mostly useless) redundant copies, installers and log files scattered all over the filesystem.

With regards to disk space, the Windows folder on this Win7 PC is >24GB. The Windows folder on a Win10 install is ~9GB but only ~6GB on-disk size (with compression), and the entire C filesystem with a few programs installed is still under 10GB total. Software just squandering resources, including disk space, does irk me. Windows sticking the boot partition on whichever HDD is pleases causing headaches for people when they later remove said drive is another thing, but off-topic.

[abaxas]

Windows 7 is no better than XP. Slowly but surely it eats itself alive taking up more disk space and memory.

Saying that, most linus distros are no better. If anything they are even more bloaty.