Earlier quoted context omitted.
The same trend can be seen with linux distributions. A lot is surely down to composited window management. There's also things that we didn't run as services back in Windows 98 days - network capabilities, bluetooth, low power states, file hashing for quick search, assistants and other ways of rapidly finding and launching programs, auto updates, telemetry, automatic mounting of connected devices. EDIT: and in the ca…
> A lot is surely down to composited window management ....how? That's handled on the GPU, and by GPU standards it's a nothing task.
That's an interesting point, but there was certainly an increase in CPU usage with the switch from gnome 2 to unity and gnome 3, even though they were GPU accelerated. I guess CPU is still needed.