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> This is always a repeated cycle in operating systems, they bloat up, then eventually have a cycle of removing the fat. Windows been thru this cycle many times.

I worked at Microsoft during Windows 7 & 8. There was a strict edict that minimum hardware requirements would not be increased and we were expected to improve performance on the same hardware.

Have you actually seen windows get worse over the last ~9 years since vista or is this an impression that's just too hard to shake?

It's probably an impression pushed by people who didn't regularly use those versions of Windows.

W7 performed great and W8.1 (I skipped 8) only improved upon that speed and power efficiency. W8.1 with Classic Shell and before Metro spread throughout the system was my favorite OS-stays-out-of-the-way Windows.

I generally agree that Windows has done a good job of getting faster on the same hardware (particularly boot time) over the last 10 years, but the hardware requirements have changed.

Disabling desktop composition (the Desktop Window Manager/Aero) was a supported option on Windows 7, but is not an option for W8 and above. Windows 8 also requires NX and SSE2 support, which leaves out 2003/2004-era P4 and Athlon XPs.

Even if Windows 10 still supported non-SSE2 CPUs, few software packages would. Most software is compiled to use SSE for floats now.

Interestingly, disabling compositing doesn't mean increasing system requirements, because Windows 8 can do it in software. A GPU will improve your experience, however.

Microsoft did recently increase system requirements quite a bit, I believe with the Anniversary Update.

And well, he specifically said that operating systems go through bloat and debloat phases over and over. XP to Vista was quite a step towards bloat. 7, 8, 8.1 partially debloated that again. 10 with its telemetry and increased online focus seems to chew on that, again.

But even then, it's not like Windows is a miraculous feat of efficiency. There's functionally equivalent Linux systems with down to a quarter of the resource usage.

> Have you actually seen windows get worse over the last ~9 years since vista or is this an impression that's just too hard to shake?

If Microsoft put any effort into some tooling people could use (without taking a week off work to study to learn how they work, what claims in the documentation are true vs lies, etc) discover wtf is slowing down their system and why, they might get a bit more respect from the technical community.

OT: And you did a good job of it too. I have a WP7 device that I use for the work emails and while it is strictly a Lync/Calendar/Exchange email device, it is still snappy and responsive even after all of these years.

I'm running win10 on an old laptop with 3Gb of RAM.

It's win10 enterprise LTSB but still damn impressive.

How did you get a LTSB license? I tried getting a license off ebay but unlike Pro licenses I have bought in the past the whole thing failed to work.

No, in fairness, since Vista they have made a very conscious effort and seem to of stuck with it.

>For me the first NExus 7 tablet was a prime example of what happens, released - ran fine, Android update and became darn near unusable, and then dropped.

The Nexus 7 2012 had degrading NAND performance because Asus skimped on the chip quality. No Android update could've prevented this.

And my 2013 version is still going strong - so it doesn't look like a software bloat problem to me.

My 2013 Nexus 7 only got replaced because of the battery expiring. I still liked it more than its replacement, the Nvidia shield (too heavy), and I'd like either of them way more than any android tablet still on the market.

So's mine, and I dread the day it dies. I just want a 7" tablet running stock Android, that's all, and so far as I can tell it simply doesn't exist.

Which is crazy, because it would sell like hotcakes.

Hopefully some day some Chinese company will notice this huge pile of money left on the floor.

I was thinking the same thing. I had another ASUS tablet from the same era that had similar issues.

People would literally install the OS on the SD Card and run inverted storage to avoid the issue.

I have a Nexus 9 (16gb Wifi) and situation didn't improve at all (nexus 7/9 probably my worst product purchases)

It isn't Android that's slowing down your old phone, it's apps. Time-to-market trumps everything else, especially efficiency. So until an app category matures and incumbents face competition, efficiency is a nice-to-have. To be fair to your comment, often enough it's Google's own apps that bloat. But you can run a cut-down suite of apps in 512M.

As for LTS editions, you can't have those because the bsps for the chips in those cheap phones eol sooner than the "long term."

> the first NExus 7 tablet was a prime example of what happens

The Nexus 7 first gen also had nand that ate itself; writing over the OS just amplified this effect. I was able to upgrade it really well once I switch to a file system that worked well with the nand. F2fs.

For context; My nexus 7 now runs significantly better than my ipad mini of the same year.

How do you go about doing such a thing? My Nexus 9 could do with a new lease of life...

Example search and result "{device name} rom f2fs xda"

https://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=2678142

The Nexus 9 shipped with f2fs out of the box.

> But calling it Android Go Edition, may sound cool as a marketing buzz, but utterly distracts from what it is as well as confusing given GoLang

This is exactly what I thought. I was expecting to read something about how they rewrote the apps with Go, and how they improved compilation times or any other thing.

Some day soon someone will release an operating system that does very little and runs on very tiny conputers, but focuses on doing the right things. Doing things that are impossible due to the “layer cake” architecture and “pro” coding tools that are the norm in the software industry.

It will look like a toy, and Hacker News will dismiss it, until they realize that teenagers are using it to write AIs and send functions via SMS and do all kinds of things that require no real computer power, just that the system was designed for such things from the start and the developer prioritized them over “running arbitrary android applications” and “multiprocess architecture” and “allowing web sites to run stupid code” and other things that are inconceivable to omit.

This is why I wish there was a ROM that's purely focused on bringing the latest stock Android to as many devices as possible.

Right now it looks like the most popular cross device ROMs are projects like LineageOS and OmniROM, which are excellent ROMs with plenty of compelling features over stock Android, but the modifications they make to implement those extra features do incur a non-trivial cost in terms of resources needed to support newer versions of Android.

I'd be completely willing to give up all of the extra features they offer if it means I can get a cross device ROM that tracks major Android updates much more closely (ideally weeks in delay instead of months).

Maybe something like this already exists?

I just want a real 'stock' android, that is the OS, the hardware drivers, a settings app, a phone app, and a SMS app. It works out of the box and then it's TOTALLY my choice what extra apps I install onto it.

So many people call their custom ROMs 'stock' when they are anything but :(

If available flash just AOSP or lineages without GApps. Even nexus4 runs smooth. If you need browser add Firefox focus from fdroid.

Which device? For example copperheados or any AOSP or lineageos without gapps runs fast even in nexus 4. Do not install PlayServices. I am on my 1generation moto G.

https://postmarketos.org/ will try to achieve this. But it will have a GNU/Linux userland, not an Android one.

>Why can't they have LTE editions for phones.

Because planned obsolescence makes them money.