My anecdotal experience is the opposite, after ~20 years of de-bloating and customizing Windows. The updates seem to just reset the de-bloating, rather than breaking things.
However, I say part of the problem is that windows updates are pushed out in a big blob instead the update being pushed in a more granular fashion. This ends up in with sometimes an update containing files or setting for something you removed.
There is no reason it has be like this, but that is how updates work on windows, and I don't think Microsoft is going to change that any time soon. I am imagine in theory it would be possible for a community to break down each update into smaller discrete chunks. However, the community would have to be a decent size and dedicated enough to keep up with the rate MS rolls out updates.
Also there some things like Edge and Cortana that current day windows is not very happy with if you nuke it from the system.
[1]: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/what-is-enablement-package-in...
I mainly run Linux these days, and older versions of macOS on the desktop.
But I was an early adopter of Windows (v2.01 in the late 1980s) and it was the backbone of my early career: the first ~25 years.
For me, the version that drove me away was Windows XP, and I find it amusing that now people look back on XP as a classic lightweight version, when its bloat is what drove me to Linux on the desktop, and spending as little as possible on cheap old Apple kit and judicious upgrades to run the then-new Mac OS X.
XP had themes. That's bloat. But they're easy to turn off; reset to the Classic theme, disable the theming service. Getting rid of other bloat, such as Movie Maker, the "files and settings transfer wizard" or whatever it was called, of IE and Outlook Express, of Media Player etc., was harder. In the end, I used NLite and built a custom install CD.
Win7's bloat is harder still.
Win8 was little _but_ bloat.
Win10 is... barely acceptable but it's getting easier to turn all the junk off now. I rarely use it but at least I can uninstall all the Metro/Modern/Store crap, and use Ninite to install a selection of conventional Win32 FOSS apps to replace the MS touchscreen-oriented junk.
Having read this post, I will be bolder, bin the Store and all the .NET stuff too. I don't want PowerShell, any version. I don't want .NET apps or a fancy terminal. I don't want VS Code or any of that. If I have to use this mess of an OS, I want it lean and cut down to basic simple apps, preferably FOSS, with as few runtimes as possible.
Win11 is, for me, mostly unusable. There's almost nothing left but bloat now. The taskbar is unusable, no longer able to be placed vertically, where it belongs on a widescreen. The Start menu is a sad crippled thing built by graphic designers who didn't know how to use the original one.
Explorer Patcher helps, but it can only do so much. Disabling Teams, widgets, all that junk, and every Modern app, leaves something that is just about functional, but uglier than ever, and less friendly and less convenient than ever before.
I'm not a gamer, so I don't care about games performance. I'm not a developer so I don't care about that, either.
So, yes, go for it, remove absolutely everything you can, disable hibernation, disable Fast Boot, remove all the Modern junk, cut that OS back hard, delete every temp file in every folder, turn off System Restore, turn off all the chrome, and then you can leave a smaller C drive and have a parallel install of a slightly leaner meaner OS that doesn't waste CPU and GPU cycles on shiny.
That means no GNOME, no Cinnamon, no KDE, no Budgie. No Snaps, no Flatpaks, and I'm increasingly leaning towards no systemd either. Xfce or LXDE and native packages of native apps.
It's a sad day that this seems to be the case, but Java apps look small and fast compared to modern abominations such as Electron.