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The problem is the bullet point features that Microsoft is adding to Windows (AI, ads, Xbox bar, etc.). The fastest line of code possible is the line of code that doesn't exist (look, this technically isn't true when considering data structures, but it's a good baseline).

Microsoft would have to exercise discipline with Windows features, which is never going to happen: the very people pushing the garbage are using Macs and don't have to suffer it.

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I'm not convinced those new features are adding any substantial overhead. From my understanding, most of the problems are at the low level - things like threading, kernel space operations, file writing, etc.

Very stripped-down versions of Windows perform pretty much identically from what I last saw.

I believe (speculating) that a big reason Windows underperforms in battery life is because of the "death by a thousand cuts" approach to network-connect background services.

Linux desktops have very little background services that make constant network calls. But on Windows, there's hundreds. Every team thinks they need a little bit of telemetry or they need to grab an icon or something stupid, so nobody thinks twice. Same thing goes for logging.

But when you add it all up, it ends up being expensive.

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