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Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

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Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#101

Post by heavyset_go »

Wowfunhappy wrote: post #38
lolinder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While you are technically correct, that turns it into a bit of an apples to oranges comparison with Windows because most of what we consider to be the Windows operating system would in the Linux world live in userspace. Which means that when we're comparing the user's experience of an average Linux distribution with Windows it's definitely fair to say that Linux doesn't prioritize backwards compatibility.

However, because the kernel doesn't break userspace, you can use stuff like chroot to run old apps without a performance loss. I do wish the tooling to make this seamless was better.

If you haven't already checked it out, systemd-nspawn is invaluable if you find yourself needing to use chroot.

Combine it with QEMU's usermode emulation + binfmt-misc and you can run chroots for other architectures, too.

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#102

Post by LaundroMat »

dagw wrote: post #90
LaundroMat wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To your 5th point: newer generations have not been confronted with the hardware limitations older generations had to cope with. Hence, optimization is not a skill new generations of developers are forced to learn.

newer generations have not been confronted with the hardware limitations older generations had to cope with. That has been true for every new generation of programmers since the invention of computers. My uncle started to program using Fortran IV in the 60s and he said that the 'real' programmers at the time looked down on the likes of him for using such an inefficient high level language and not learning how to prog…

Good point :)

It reminds me of "kids have no manners anymore" that has been recorded since antiquity.

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#103

Post by hulitu »

crummy wrote: post #63
userbinator wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2. The graphics are a lot more sophisticated. Animation and transparency and lots of good stuff. Strong disagree. Borderless icons floating in a sea of flatness is not "more sophisticated" by any means than the fully-customisable UI which was common in the XP era, and the huge amount of "skinning" that was also very popular. Transparent/translucent effects became common with Vista and that was run on the GPU, which w…

I assume Windows 11 handles high DPI monitors a lot better than Windows XP, which must add some complexity to graphics rendering.

> I assume Windows 11 handles high DPI monitors a lot better than Windows XP

YMMV. I think "a lot better" is an overstatement. You have some fractional scaling which, depending of the program, might do what you need. But the fact that you cannot change fonts and colors is a real issue. Not everybody loves gray on gray.

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#104

Post by hulitu »

ip26 wrote: post #30
freedomben wrote: post #7

There are actually a lot of factors here, although if I had to sum it up in one, it would be "the hardware can support it." But more seriously: 1. There are a lot of security mitigations in modern Windows that add sometimes substantial runtime overhead, but offer significant protection. Writing an exploit for modern Windows is hard compared to XP SP1 and below. 2. The graphics are a lot more sophisticated. Animation…

There are a ton more "features" in the OS Including things you like quite a bit, such as WiFi support, thread scheduling, and suspend modes that are worth a damn. XP could be snappy, but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked, how the battery didn't last more than an hour, and so on. Also worth remembering everyone always has a browser open today. In the XP days, you were running Firef…

> XP could be snappy, but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked,

I have a work laptop with Win 10 and Ryzen with 6 Cores. To say it multitasks is a lie.

But the good thing is that the damn thing runs 3 security suites. For compliance.

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#105

Post by hulitu »

RachelF wrote: post #50
freedomben wrote: post #7

There are actually a lot of factors here, although if I had to sum it up in one, it would be "the hardware can support it." But more seriously: 1. There are a lot of security mitigations in modern Windows that add sometimes substantial runtime overhead, but offer significant protection. Writing an exploit for modern Windows is hard compared to XP SP1 and below. 2. The graphics are a lot more sophisticated. Animation…

I'd add to 4, having seen a bit of the Kernel code. There's a lot of duplication of code, when new developers or teams come on board, they often just re-invent the wheel, rather than using existing Kernel funtions. I would guess that most of the 15 NT developers from 30 years ago have long since left.

> There's a lot of duplication of code, when new developers or teams come on board, they often just re-invent the wheel, rather than using existing Kernel funtions.

This is, unfortunately, a trend in SW development. See GNOME or Wayland for examples.

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#106

Post by hulitu »

ivanjermakov wrote: post #3

It's cheaper to make unoptimized software. Business is not interested in making it fast, as long as users don't complain. And that's how we end up with software that's just fast enough to keep users from seeking alternatives.

> as long as users don't complain.

Users do complain. The only response they get is to do a repair.

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#107

Post by hulitu »

ronsor wrote: post #2

There are a few reasons: 1. People expect more functionality, and that requires more processing power 2. Fancier eye candy 3. Spyware, or telemetry, or whatever else you want to call it 4. More background services are running by default

> 2. Fancier eye candy

I suppose you are reffering to WinXP. /s

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#108

Post by hulitu »

actionfromafar wrote: post #32
dabbz wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Added security layers as well. Source: Worked on developer APIs for Windows Universal Apps. Those sandboxes don't come for free.

Sometimes I wonder if it hadn't been better to spend 20 years hardening the existing APIs instead of all this sandboxing upon sandboxing.

No. We need to patent this round thing. /s

Re: Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP?

#109

Post by hulitu »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #37

This is a silly question. You can't compare an OS from 22 years ago to an OS from today. Even if there was a simple definition of "worse", in this context, which there isn't, they're from completely different worlds designed for different uses on different hardware.

> You can't compare an OS from 22 years ago to an OS from today.

Yes, because the today's OS looks much worse.

Apollo Domain OS was a distributed, multiuser, multitasking OS (actually 3: Aegis, BSD and SYS5R3) which run on 4 MB of RAM in 1988. Today windows is strugling with 16 GB.

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