Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Is windows 11 really bloated?

jakey rolling said:
So, yes, Windows 11 is really bloated.

Having said that, in-use RAM after boot-up can be deceiving, and as others have said, can be due to caching. Just anecdotally, I have a desktop with 64GB of RAM and a laptop with 32. Both are running Windows 11 Pro and have more or less identical software installed (work computers). The 64GB Desktop shows around 12-15GB in use right after booting up, while the 32GB laptop shows between 6-9GB in use.

I also have a Windows 11 Pro VM that I run on my desktop and its memory is set to 8GB. When it first boots it shows only about 2.5GB in use. This isn't an LTSC version of Windows, either. Just bog-standard Win 11 Pro.
Click to expand...

Is it not wasteful loading apps you not going to use into RAM?
 
it wasnt me said:
As someone who found Fedora far too bloated over ten years ago, I find this assessment somewhat amusing in the context of whether Windows 11 is too bloated.

The Linux kernel itself is already pretty chunky (at least compared to the kernels of other contemporary systems like Haiku and OpenBSD), even when you take various optimisation mods into account (such as the CachyOS kernel, which I recently looked at with Gentoo — fortunately, it's not tied to the distribution); in my opinion, Fedora piles quite a bit more on top of that.
Click to expand...
Fedora is bloated or distro shipping this flavour of Fedora?

Imho Fedora is clean as elf lady ass
 
Bubble99 said:
Is it not wasteful loading apps you not going to use into RAM?
Click to expand...
Perhaps, but the "..you are not going to use.." part of your sentence is carrying a lot of overstated weight.

I can't speak for other users, but at least on my work machines, I spend probably 90% of my time working in the same set of applications, day-in and day-out. So pre-loading those apps is absolutely not going to be a waste. On my home machine, that might change a bit (there are a bigger variety of games and other apps I use), but even then there are still a few applications (like my web browser) that I use very frequently.

"Wasting RAM" isn't really much of a concern, because if you do happen to load something that's not pre-cached, and it starts to put memory pressure on your system, the cached data will just get flushed to free up that RAM. The bigger "waste" I can see is the performance hit that such caching might cause because it is obviously going to churn CPU and SSD cycles to do that caching.
 
NewOldStock said:
I never understood how an Animal Anatomy describes software?
Bloat term for computers needs to be banned.
Bloat describes nothing of computer terms.
Oh you mean software that sits on your hard drive from a manufacture that takes up space and does nothing?
APPLE Does that. Linux does that.Windows does that. Please bloat term is right up there with SLOP now.
English language not used correctly is BLOAT! There i fixed it. See what i did?
Does this dress make my butt look big?
Click to expand...
The English language is a very fluid thing and existing terms take on new meanings all the time. It might surprise you to learn that some of the everyday terms we use in the computing world (you know, like "desktop", and "memory", and "pointer", and "mouse") have existed for thousands of years. For the vast majority of those thousands of years, those terms had no computer-related meaning whatsoever.
 
The best concept we saw from Microsoft in the last decade never made it outside the labs. They showed how you could combine tabs from different apps into one window. That saves a lot of multitasking and screen space, but it reminded people of when IE4 was integrated into File Explorer and that got Microsoft into legal trouble with the “ahem” who are always desperate for free money.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jakey rolling and Steve Adams
I bought a Lenovo X490S recently as a lightweight portable machine for writing on (great keyboard). It came with Windows, but as I Know Things, I immediately installed Debian. Worked fine, but didn't play well with my Apple stuff. Yes, I used the Gnome Connect thing, and various other hacks to get access to iCloud calendar, but it was all clunky.

The OS was fine, and Gnome is basically MacOS GUI without the recent madness, but the functionality was just poor. For example, encrypting a partition was very painful. You can encrypt the entire disk if you do so at installation (too late to do it later if you forget), but that makes resume-from-hibernate problematic. And recovery. Not impossible, just tedious. The IME was terrible (a known issue with Gnome / Wayland) and so on. Gnome looks lovely, but the whole "go to a website to install an extension if you want to edit the layout at all" thing makes Apple's walled-garden seem a model of liberal openness.

It was just painful to use. I started using Unix in the 1980s so I am completely comfortable with the OS, but there is more to using a computer for actual work than watching the RAM usage.

So, I reinstalled Windows 11 Pro. I had to spend all morning de-bloating it. Getting rid of the telemetry, adverts, pop ups and intrusive widgets. There are scripts out there that can do this for you if you prefer. If you leave it "as is", all these background things consume memory and ignore your privacy too.

BUT

If you switch them all off and replace the MS default apps (Edge, Outlook, etc) with the open source ones you'd use on Linux, I found Windows 11 Pro consumed no more memory than Debian/Gnome. Really.

And it is SO much better integrated with the Apple universe. My iPhone messages and calls come through, just as they do on my Macs. iCloud works just like it does on my Macs. Even my Photos library (master being on my Mac) is visible in the default MS Photos app. The IME is perfect. Sleep/Hibernate/Resume all function boringly reliably with no boot option hacking required. The disk is encrypted and I don't get asked for a password at each boot.

Oh, and it has 8GB soldered RAM. It's enough for my Mail, Signal, Line, Firefox, Open Office and Affinity stuff to all run at once. If it ever swaps, I don't notice it.

Dare I say it... it just works.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jakey rolling, eltoslightfoot, pshufd and 2 others
twisted panties said:
o, I reinstalled Windows 11 Pro. I had to spend all morning de-bloating it. Getting rid of the telemetry, adverts, pop ups and intrusive widgets. There are scripts out there that can do this for you if you prefer. If you leave it "as is", all these background things consume memory and ignore your privacy too.

BUT

If you switch them all off and replace the MS default apps (Edge, Outlook, etc) with the open source ones you'd use on Linux, I found Windows 11 Pro consumed no more memory than Debian/Gnome. Really.
Click to expand...
Just playing pointing out, that in order for you to get to a svelte windows 11 installation, it took you hours of work, and while the results were very positive, no doubt. The issue is that windows out of the box is bloated. One issue you may run into is that after an update, your debloating operation will be undone as the update process will reinstall and/or re-enable stuff that was removed and disabled.

I noticed that windows 11 has increased integration with apple but not complete and problem free - at least in my personal experience. I have a Mac Studio, and the level of interoperability between my Mac, iPhone, and iPad is unmatched. The biggest game changer for me, is that I have iMessage on my mac. I'm also one of those odd people who don't hate Tahoe, in fact its largely fine.

As fo Linux, I think your distro choice was the reason why you couldn't encrypt the your drive post installation. Debian is a very stable distro, because the update cycle is so slow. Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (based off of Debian unstable branch) allows you to encrypt your drive post installation. CachyOS an Arch derivative, also allows you to do that, this is the distro I'm on and I'm using gnome, as my DE as well. I'm very happy with the stability, performance and so far lack of a need to get into the weeds of linux. Its turned into my primary system over my Mac Studio

I'm not pushing linux over windows, clearly you're happy with windows 11 and that's fine, but I just wanted to point out some of the failings of linux you mention are easily solved with the right distro.
 
I have tried at least a half dozen Linux distros and tried to interconnect my android stuff. It's not near as smooth as the windows/android world. The same goes for my iphone when I had it. Linux was clunky, but MS I had no issues with. I operate between my windows computers, my 10th gen iPad and my Pixel 8 pro/S25 ultra combo. Messages come through phone link, photos etc all sync with onedrive and it all just works.

As I posted above, I can't wait for windows to receive these new roll back features of Ai everywhere and thinning the overall system. Finally after years, Microsoft seems to finally get it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: ClaraStahlbaum
Steve Adams said:
Finally after years, Microsoft seems to finally get it.
Click to expand...
They get it, because people are leaving, they're seeing the successes of Linux and people leaving the windows world to Mac and Linux alike. A couple of points, I think this "thinning" as you call it isn't going to be an overnight rollout. I wouldn't be surprised to see this come out piece meal over the entire year, maybe even 2027

Also, this in no way invalidates the direction of Microsoft is pushing windows, i.e, Windows as a service, where you need to be fully connected to Microsoft's cloud offerings. Just look at ClipChamp, you cannot save your edited videos to the local drive, but instead save them to onedrive, thus forcing you to buy into MS's subscriptions. I don't like to be forced to use an online account, at leasts Microsoft's so for now, this is a hard no for me.

One of my other pain points, is the lack of quality with what MS is producing, nearly every update lately has required out of band hotfixes because the patch tuesday rollout broke something. It could be something to do with the fact that they laid off thousands of developers and engineers, and are instead relying on AI to produce the code.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eltoslightfoot and Steve Adams
Not for nothing, I just switched over to my M4 Max Studio this morning, I've been running on my Linux box exclusively for the past few weeks, and it feels a bit sluggish. The Mac isn't slow, but rather the liquid glass is not as snappy as gnome.
 
  • Wow
Reactions: eltoslightfoot
maflynn said:
Not for nothing, I just switched over to my M4 Max Studio this morning, I've been running on my Linux box exclusively for the past few weeks, and it feels a bit sluggish. The Mac isn't slow, but rather the liquid glass is not as snappy as gnome.
Click to expand...
That is the exact "feeling" I got from the macs I was using this past weekend. they are not "snappy". Even compared to my old iron I am on now. moving the pointer even after setting the speed felt....almost....like molasses instead of water if that makes sense.

I know that in programs they are fine, but just using them, there's something missing. LOVE the hardware of the 14 inch pro however. I wish dell or samsung would create a direct competitor to it with all the ports and touchscreen.
 
  • Like
Reactions: eltoslightfoot
twisted panties said:
And it is SO much better integrated with the Apple universe. My iPhone messages and calls come through, just as they do on my Macs. iCloud works just like it does on my Macs. Even my Photos library (master being on my Mac) is visible in the default MS Photos app. The IME is perfect. Sleep/Hibernate/Resume all function boringly reliably with no boot option hacking required. The disk is encrypted and I don't get asked for a password at each boot.
Click to expand...

I have a similar setup and am quite happy with it. But I don't have iMessage working outside of a macOS virtual machine. How did you get messages to work?
 
maflynn said:
Not for nothing, I just switched over to my M4 Max Studio this morning, I've been running on my Linux box exclusively for the past few weeks, and it feels a bit sluggish. The Mac isn't slow, but rather the liquid glass is not as snappy as gnome.
Click to expand...

That's shocking as the M4 CPU should completely smoke your x86 systems.

It's possible that it's deliberate. Firefox has a ton of settings on transitions and waits to make them feel smoother instead of snappier.
 
pshufd said:
That's shocking as the M4 CPU should completely smoke your x86 systems.
Click to expand...
Without questin, and in actual function it can be faster but the UI just doesn't have the same snappiness. Its not bad, and in a vacuum, I'd probably not even notice. If I stick with the Mac, I'll get used to how it flows, but jumping back and force between the two I feel a definite difference.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Steve Adams
I did a cpu GPU comparison between my two systems vs similar Macs of the same years. So my laptop shares wins and losses wirh the m1. My workstation is similar to the m1 pro studio but my graphics performance because of my video card is better than the m1 max GPU. I'm fine for awhile. Just want my laptop to be reliable.

I get 8 plus hrs out of the battery so I'm good with that as well. I'm happy to sit right now until the bubble bursts and prices drop to reality again.
 
Apple Silicon and Neo SSD speeds.
ssd.png
 
eltoslightfoot said:
This is quite...enlightening. Then again, in this price range, the Windows laptops probably all suck at ssd speeds as well.
Click to expand...

Both of these have PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs. I could not determine if these are 2x2 or 4x2 so the speeds would be between 3,500 and 7,500 MBps.

Most of the cheap Windows laptops I looked at were Gen 3 but I also couldn't tell if they are 2x2 or 4x2.



SS.jpg
SS 2.jpg
 
  • Love
Reactions: eltoslightfoot
JMalone said:
The best concept we saw from Microsoft in the last decade never made it outside the labs. They showed how you could combine tabs from different apps into one window. That saves a lot of multitasking and screen space, but it reminded people of when IE4 was integrated into File Explorer and that got Microsoft into legal trouble with the “ahem” who are always desperate for free money.
Click to expand...
There is actually a great utility that does this - Stardock Groupy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back