Ask HN: What makes Windows 11 perform much worse than Windows XP? • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by userbinator » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:08 AM UTC

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…

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 was in general much less powerful than the ones today.

I'll add a 5th point: Thanks to a low barrier to entry, the average developer now is much lower quality than the average 20 years ago.

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

#42

Post by RachelF » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:08 AM UTC

wepple wrote: post #21

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…

Plus backward compatibility. They add code but never take it away.

Windows 11 won't run most DOS or Windows 3.1 or Win16 Windows 95/98/ME programs.

XP does.

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

#43

Post by icedchai » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:08 AM UTC

jeffbee wrote: post #35

icedchai wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. It started up pretty quick. The hardware requirements for a "good" system were drastically different. A decent Windows 3.11 system had 16 megs of RAM... Windows XP needed at least 256 (maybe 512??). XP seemed like a pig when it first came out. Not as bad as Vista though...

16MB for a WfW 3.11 machine was a hell of a lot at the time 3.11 was launched. Most PCs in the installed base would have had 3-4MB. New systems in 1993 were coming with 4-8MB.

Yes, I agree! I did say "decent"... I remember getting a 486 in mid 1994 and it had 8 megs. My earlier 386SX box had 4, if I recall. 16 would've been higher end for sure.

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

#44

Post by fbdab103 » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:08 AM UTC

lolinder wrote: post #33

heavyset_go wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linux makes an explicit effort to not break userspace. I had a weird experience where I had to use a device stuck on a 2.6.x kernel, and I was able to run a modern distribution on top of it. Similarly, running old userlands on new kernels works just as well. The issue with backwards compatibility isn't with the kernel, but ensuring that whatever you want to run is compatible with the surrounding userland environment.…

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.

Just yesterday, I purchased a game from GOG where the Linux build cannot start, owing to who knows what expected platform profile. Maybe, technically, I could have fixed the problem. The Windows build worked without issue in Wine.

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

#45

Post by worewood » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:09 AM UTC

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.

Assuming you can go through the dependency hell, because you can't use old packages on a new distro - so in most cases you have to compile by source... I've tried to run XMMS and suffered a lot.

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

#46

Post by marshray » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:10 AM UTC

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…

"such as WiFi support, thread scheduling, and suspend modes that are worth a damn."

Thread scheduling has existed since NT 3.51.

Wifi is largely just another kind of network adapter.

XP supported the same suspend-to-RAM and hibernate-to-disk modes as todays systems.

"but I haven't forgotten how poorly my old XP two-thread laptop multitasked"

Despite what certain processor vendors tell you, the number of threads are determined by each running program. Whatever you mean by "poor multitasking", you were probably short on RAM.

The OS has made improvements that can help with battery life, but most of any perceived improvement has come from batteries that suck less.

"In the XP days, you were running Firefox 1.0, a 5MB program."

5 MB was never a realistic estimate of process RAM.

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

#47

Post by RachelF » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:10 AM UTC

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.

Yes, take MS Teams for example. Takes around 1000MB or RAM. Older chat apps used way less. IRC used less than 1MB, sure it didn't do voice or video, but it could do things Teams still cannot do.

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

#48

Post by fbdab103 » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:12 AM UTC

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…

Sleep has become significantly worse in Windows. Many complaints of how a supposedly sleeping laptop cooked itself to death in a backpack overnight.

I also think it would be worth considering changes in underlying hardware. A modern laptop no longer has a spinning HDD, probably a much bigger battery, and a CPU that is better at entering low power modes when possible.

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

#49

Post by userbinator » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:12 AM UTC

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, how the battery didn't last more than an hour, and so on.

That is a hardware issue. XP can use far more cores, and I bet if you had the drivers, it would run much better than 10 or 11 on a recent laptop and give even better battery life.

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

#50

Post by RachelF » Fri, May 24, 2024, 12:13 AM UTC

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.