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Is windows 11 really bloated?

Steve Adams said:
I was so happy to see this.

www.windowscentral.com

Microsoft announces major Windows 11 updates designed to fix biggest flaws

After feeling the heat from macOS and Linux, Microsoft is getting its act together and making significant changes to Windows 11 to fix its biggest issues.
www.windowscentral.com www.windowscentral.com
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From TFA;

"By the end of this year, Microsoft says Windows 11 will be a much better, responsive OS that's more reliable and uses fewer system resources. It will feel faster and more consistent, with less annoyances from ads, AI, and updates. It will also be better at running on devices with limited memory."

That is a clear admission that Microsoft itself feels Windows 11 is bloated.
 
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Bubble99 said:
Is windows 11 really bloated?

I'm checking on HP laptop rebooted and shows 6 GB of RAM in use? Yes the laptop rebooted!! It showing 6 GB of RAM in use and no apps running.

The laptop has 16 GB of RAM.
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Every OS is getting bloated at this point. Microsoft has come a long way since the 90's, since most of their default apps can be removed.
 
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Siliconguy said:
From TFA;

"By the end of this year, Microsoft says Windows 11 will be a much better, responsive OS that's more reliable and uses fewer system resources. It will feel faster and more consistent, with less annoyances from ads, AI, and updates. It will also be better at running on devices with limited memory."

That is a clear admission that Microsoft itself feels Windows 11 is bloated.
Click to expand...
Sounds like they are moving on from Satya.
 
pshufd said:
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?
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I used the default "Phone Link" app on Windows 11 Pro. There are tabs for Calls and Messages. It links via BT to my iPhone. There is a one-time configuration needed on the iPhone BT settings when the phone connects so that it shares correctly. You can do this manually (click the info button on the iPhone BT settings for your PC) or download the MS app (I don't use this).

Info here:

www.microsoft.com

Use Phone Link to Sync Your Android or iPhone to Your Windows Computer | Microsoft

Sync your smartphone and Windows computer wirelessly using Microsoft Phone Link. Text, call, back up photos, and more no matter if you have an Android or an iPhone.
www.microsoft.com www.microsoft.com
 
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Windows is bloated, crappy and Microsoft is hellbent on shoving Copilot down everyone's throat.

Windows 7 was the peak then everything declined afterwards. We had Windows 8 and its Metro Tiles, Windows 10 (Nadella era, Cortana) and Windows 11 (Nadella era, Copilot).
 
pshufd said:
I wish they'd bring back a weather app instead of sending you to a webpage that's cluttered with ads.

I love macOS weather. It's the same on the iPad and iPhone and no ads at all.
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I am on the newest update. I get weather forcast pop up for me every morning, mid day and evening. I like it. But yeah, the weather "app" is freakin bad for ads. My ad blockers don't catch it either.
 
fzJNotIBOxgnbqejSeVCvJScL said:
Windows is bloated, crappy and Microsoft is hellbent on shoving Copilot down everyone's throat.

Windows 7 was the peak then everything declined afterwards. We had Windows 8 and its Metro Tiles, Windows 10 (Nadella era, Cortana) and Windows 11 (Nadella era, Copilot).
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That is being rolled back, I think they are stopping listening to mr cloud/Mr. Ai. They know that if they continue listening to him, they are going to be 1, bankrupt from Ai spending and 2. bankrupt because they have no users to use said services.

I see a big shift in the past couple of weeks of news coming from Redmond where they are most certainly shifting away from Nadella's rule and fixing a lot of things. I think he's messed up on a grand scale with Co-Pilot spending etc. I for see him not being CEO in the next 6 to 8 months. They will portray it as retirement, however it most likely will be he was fired. You don't tank your stock like he did in one day and get off scott free.
 
Is modern Windows being bloated really a question when almost everyone more technically able than the average grandma is recommending 3rd party cleanup/tweak scripts for it? I've been using the enterprise version with a local account for my VM and it's somewhat okay (also not much to remove in there), but Pro is a lot worse, and the amount of disk space either one takes even after tweaks is just obscene.

macOS has plenty of stuff you could call bloat too, but it's basically 2x smaller and that is with it being entirely universal for 2 architectures, none of the x86 code/drivers/etc is removed after installing on ARM and vice versa.
 
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I've always thought Windows was bloated. At least the process of getting everything set up these days feels that way. You format your disks, boot up the installer, then wait. And wait... and wait. It's got seemingly endless updates, the installer restarts several times, and when you think it's finally over, you have to answer 10 billion questions before you can even use it. On top of that, you have MORE updates after it's installed. Then there's hunting down drivers, debloating/tweaking scripts, etc. It's just a pain in the ass.
 
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boswald said:
I've always thought Windows was bloated. At least the process of getting everything set up these days feels that way. You format your disks, boot up the installer, then wait. And wait... and wait. It's got seemingly endless updates, the installer restarts several times, and when you think it's finally over, you have to answer 10 billion questions before you can even use it. On top of that, you have MORE updates after it's installed. Then there's hunting down drivers, debloating/tweaking scripts, etc. It's just a pain in the ass.
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I've just gotten used to the setup but I operate multiple computers on the desktop and laptop so I just run it next to the computer that I'm currently using. It's mostly a one-time thing.

It doesn't seem to take a huge amount of time with modern hardware, either. One of the reasons why operating systems keep getting bigger is that the hardware keeps getting faster so software developers can get away with it. Software engineering companies could do performance/bugfix releases but customers demand features to buy new versions so software engineering organizations reward for new features instead of quality and performance.

Where you feel it is low-end systems. But a lot of people that buy low-end systems have them riddled with malware too. Their system gets slower and slower so they go to the store, buy a new, cheap computer and throw out the old one.
 
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jakey rolling said:
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.
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Why does windows not load apps you use the most into RAM than just loading apps you not using into RAM?
 
AustinIllini said:
Windows as a platform is incredibly bloated. Case in point, install any linux distribution on the same hardware and immediately the performance doubles minimum.

I'm a huge believer in Fedora as a platform.


This is pretty crazy, especially because Windows doesn't use RAM the same way Macs do.
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The question I always ask myself with Linux is what to do about professional level software. I know what the open-source options are but none of them come close to what many require for serious work.
I would love it if this were not the case.
 
Imperial926 said:
The question I always ask myself with Linux is what to do about professional level software. I know what the open-source options are but none of them come close to what many require for serious work.
I would love it if this were not the case.
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Depends on the software, but for most people it doesn't really matter. OnlyOffice and LibreOffice are as good as Office 365 so that covers most people. DaVinci Resolve apparently is hit or miss (more towards hit now), so I guess it really depends.
 
Imperial926 said:
The question I always ask myself with Linux is what to do about professional level software. I know what the open-source options are but none of them come close to what many require for serious work.
I would love it if this were not the case.
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What software are you needing to use?
 
Bubble99 said:
Is windows 11 really bloated?

I'm checking on HP laptop rebooted and shows 6 GB of RAM in use? Yes the laptop rebooted!! It showing 6 GB of RAM in use and no apps running.

The laptop has 16 GB of RAM.
Click to expand...

I haven't personally used it but my die hard Windows friends who work as Windows sysadmins and network administrators all switched to Linux or Mac at home.

I'm assuming yes it's really bad.
 
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It is bloated but you can unbloat it. Disable SysMain in services.msc and you will gain like 50% performance increase.

Also you can download smth like OpenShell and replace start menu with old one as it is much lighter.

There was also a utility to tweak Explorer and so it also makes Windows much faster.
In your case just disable the bloat - SysMain and maybe Windows Search and indexing (if you don’t search often),
 
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maflynn said:
What software are you needing to use?
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Equivalents to Adobe Creative Suite or even Affinity/ Pixelmator Pro. Music notation software like Sibelius or Dorico.
I have actually ditched Adobe but the learning curve to adapt to new software will be a huge disruptor for most people.
 
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AustinIllini said:
Depends on the software, but for most people it doesn't really matter. OnlyOffice and LibreOffice are as good as Office 365 so that covers most people. DaVinci Resolve apparently is hit or miss (more towards hit now), so I guess it really depends.
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Resolve seems to be almost the only major product usable on Linux. There is nothing as comprehensive as Adobe Creative Suite or music notation programmes like Sibelius or Dorico.
I do hope things will change but although Linux itself has improved the simple lack of world-class software means it’s a non-starter.
 
chrono1081 said:
They said the same. I'm curious to try it solely because of seeing them all switch. I don't know what Microsoft is doing over there but it's not making people happy at all.
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They are reversing all the junk they did to windows to make people to start jumping ship. Windows is actually not that "bloated" it's more of being forced to do things you don't want to do. If you turn off all that nagging its fast and quick. I don't see "bloat" I see ads, and forced Ai opt ins. I turn off the ads, and turn off the forced ai nagging and it's fine.

ALOT of the Linux talk is from YouTubers wanting to get clicks, calling windows bloated etc. Sensationalism. I had an issue with my M365 account, and got upset because I have alot of data on my OneDrive. I was getting my server/NAS setup but the motherboard died on the system so I have to wait until I get a new system for that before I can migrate things off OneDrive.
 
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