QuickyWhy is Windows still bloated
https://piefed.social/c/nostupidquestions/p/1902128/why-is-windows-still-bloated
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.
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.
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.
Ah right, yeah the bloat I’m asking about isn’t so much about all the shit applications they bundle in, but the stuff that remains to maintain compatibility with obscure or legacy hardware/applications.
The financial incentive would be long term user retention, combined with a simplified codebase and performance improvements.
What financial incentive is there in user retention and code improvements? Windows licences likely don’t contribute a large share of MSFTs income (would have to look it up, but am currently sitting in a train with just a smartphone) and even with all the shit since Win11, Windows is still the largest OS by far.
MSFT is earning a lot of money with AI & cloud. Any increase in revenue there likely dwarf possible gains in Windows improvements.
What financial incentive is there in user retention and code improvements?
Is that a serious question?
Simplified codebase = fewer internal resources required.
User retention = continued revenue streams from applications and services that run on that platform.
It is, not from a technical pov but from an investment pov. I very well understand the benefit as a person in IT, but what do you think is more important to investors? Spending (significant) resources on behind-the-scenes improvements that may keep some income flowing vs spending resources on the new AI hype tool to be sold to better paying enterprise customers?
I don’t endorse that mode of operation (team 🐧), but that seems to be what’s happening.