7 ms·

Why is Win11 so slow and unoptimized that it needs such crazy hardware.

by Solvency 3y ago

JohnFen 3y ago
I don't think it's unoptimized as much as it's extremely bloated.
- Narishma 3y ago
  What's the difference?
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    A meaningless term to deride a feature or service you don't like or use.
  - bunga-bunga 3y ago
    /s Bloat is intentional and fills Microsoft’s wallet. Optimization drains Microsoft’s wallet.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    "Bloat" includes the addition of intentional, but frivolous, features. An application can be well-optimized but still slow simply because it's doing too much. But I think the reason that most modern software performs badly is because of optimization: we're optimizing to reduce production costs over increasing performance. It's economic in nature. We minimize production costs by using frameworks and other labor-saving tools. The code produced using these tools tends to be poor, but hardware is cheap enough to make up for poorly performing software. It's an intentional decision.
- szatkus 3y ago
  Some of that bloat is useful. Windows indexes files in the background, which would choke a single-core machine with HDD for sure. Thanks to that I can quickly access my files... well, so long as Windows is able to find the correct thing...
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > Some of that bloat is useful Well, all of that type of bloat is presumably useful to someone or it wouldn't have been written. That doesn't change the fact that there's a cost for including it. > Windows indexes files in the background But here's an example of the tradeoffs. I hate this behavior. It incurs an overhead that provides no benefit that matters to me. So, your useful feature is my useless bloat. Everything's a tradeoff.
    - Jochim 3y ago
      > But here's an example of the tradeoffs. I hate this behavior. It incurs an overhead that provides no benefit that matters to me. So, your useful feature is my useless bloat. Turn it off then?
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        Yes? That doesn't affect my point about it being a kind of bloat.
      - arp242 3y ago
        Even when you turn the search indexer off, the indexer background service still seems to be doing ... stuff. I have a Windows 10 VM I use for some testing and such, and all these background things keep using up huge mount of resources, no matter what knobs I turn and regedit levers I pull I just can't get it to stop. For comparison, I also have a macOS VM which certainly isn't fast, but nothing like the Windows one. And the BSD and illumos VMs work basically fine (although in fairness they also don't start X11; but I do just ssh in to all of these machines and never use the GUI for anything).
      - efreak 3y ago
        But if you turn it off, you don't get the start menu indexed anymore. I don't need my files indexed, I just want my start menu shortcuts indexed. There's a few other small things that no longer work without indexing, though I forget what they are now. Everything is great, but there's actually other services that depend on search being enabled, as it tells you when you try to stop the service that is shutting down dependent service first.
- nullindividual 3y ago
  The term bloat (as it applies to software) is rooted in gamer-think that has no basis in reality and sends a strong signal of lack of understanding. It's reminiscent of the days of 'BlackViper' and disabling Windows Services -- again, another gamer lack of knowledge issue.
  - raggi 3y ago
    Empty notepad, just started. 82,416K working set in main memory. 25.7MB in dedicated GPU memory. 59 threads. 2 billion cycles spent since launch. Two threads in !OpenAdatper12 spending ~1.5M cycles per second. Two threads in !recalloc spending ~256K cycles per second. As shipped, this is no longer a single executable, it is a collection of 230 files, totaling 10.5MB, about half of which are bytewise duplicates, and another significant chunk have overlapping responsibilities, between the icon fonts and png icons. "Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program become perceptibly slower, use more memory, disk space or processing power, or have higher hardware requirements than the previous version, while making only dubious user-perceptible improvements or suffering from feature creep." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat I'm not aware of any substantial new features. It uses a new renderer, but this does not produce a significant observable difference from the previous one beyond using more memory. It supports dark mode.
    - MikusR 3y ago
      Also full unicode support on high resolution screen.
    - nullindividual 3y ago
      New renderer, dark mode, auto save, resume on open, HiDPI, tabs, and I'm sure a lot of things I'm forgetting. Don't forget what Notepad.exe truly is -- a testbed for new technologies. It's not "just a text editor" to Microsoft.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I'm no gamer, and "bloat" has been a term used in the industry from well before "gamers" (in the sense used today) existed. It's been a term of art for over 30 years. It also describes a very real thing. While there are a lot of things that everyone would agree counts as "bloat", there are also areas of disagreement in the form of "one person's bloat is another's essential feature".

Why is Win11 so slow and unoptimized that it needs such crazy hardware.

JohnFen 3y ago

I don't think it's unoptimized as much as it's extremely bloated.

Narishma 3y ago
What's the difference?
- nullindividual 3y ago
  A meaningless term to deride a feature or service you don't like or use.
- bunga-bunga 3y ago
  /s Bloat is intentional and fills Microsoft’s wallet. Optimization drains Microsoft’s wallet.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  "Bloat" includes the addition of intentional, but frivolous, features. An application can be well-optimized but still slow simply because it's doing too much. But I think the reason that most modern software performs badly is because of optimization: we're optimizing to reduce production costs over increasing performance. It's economic in nature. We minimize production costs by using frameworks and other labor-saving tools. The code produced using these tools tends to be poor, but hardware is cheap enough to make up for poorly performing software. It's an intentional decision.
szatkus 3y ago
Some of that bloat is useful. Windows indexes files in the background, which would choke a single-core machine with HDD for sure. Thanks to that I can quickly access my files... well, so long as Windows is able to find the correct thing...
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Some of that bloat is useful Well, all of that type of bloat is presumably useful to someone or it wouldn't have been written. That doesn't change the fact that there's a cost for including it. > Windows indexes files in the background But here's an example of the tradeoffs. I hate this behavior. It incurs an overhead that provides no benefit that matters to me. So, your useful feature is my useless bloat. Everything's a tradeoff.
  - Jochim 3y ago
    > But here's an example of the tradeoffs. I hate this behavior. It incurs an overhead that provides no benefit that matters to me. So, your useful feature is my useless bloat. Turn it off then?
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Yes? That doesn't affect my point about it being a kind of bloat.
    - arp242 3y ago
      Even when you turn the search indexer off, the indexer background service still seems to be doing ... stuff. I have a Windows 10 VM I use for some testing and such, and all these background things keep using up huge mount of resources, no matter what knobs I turn and regedit levers I pull I just can't get it to stop. For comparison, I also have a macOS VM which certainly isn't fast, but nothing like the Windows one. And the BSD and illumos VMs work basically fine (although in fairness they also don't start X11; but I do just ssh in to all of these machines and never use the GUI for anything).
    - efreak 3y ago
      But if you turn it off, you don't get the start menu indexed anymore. I don't need my files indexed, I just want my start menu shortcuts indexed. There's a few other small things that no longer work without indexing, though I forget what they are now. Everything is great, but there's actually other services that depend on search being enabled, as it tells you when you try to stop the service that is shutting down dependent service first.
nullindividual 3y ago
The term bloat (as it applies to software) is rooted in gamer-think that has no basis in reality and sends a strong signal of lack of understanding. It's reminiscent of the days of 'BlackViper' and disabling Windows Services -- again, another gamer lack of knowledge issue.
- raggi 3y ago
  Empty notepad, just started. 82,416K working set in main memory. 25.7MB in dedicated GPU memory. 59 threads. 2 billion cycles spent since launch. Two threads in !OpenAdatper12 spending ~1.5M cycles per second. Two threads in !recalloc spending ~256K cycles per second. As shipped, this is no longer a single executable, it is a collection of 230 files, totaling 10.5MB, about half of which are bytewise duplicates, and another significant chunk have overlapping responsibilities, between the icon fonts and png icons. "Software bloat is a process whereby successive versions of a computer program become perceptibly slower, use more memory, disk space or processing power, or have higher hardware requirements than the previous version, while making only dubious user-perceptible improvements or suffering from feature creep." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bloat I'm not aware of any substantial new features. It uses a new renderer, but this does not produce a significant observable difference from the previous one beyond using more memory. It supports dark mode.
  - MikusR 3y ago
    Also full unicode support on high resolution screen.
  - nullindividual 3y ago
    New renderer, dark mode, auto save, resume on open, HiDPI, tabs, and I'm sure a lot of things I'm forgetting. Don't forget what Notepad.exe truly is -- a testbed for new technologies. It's not "just a text editor" to Microsoft.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  I'm no gamer, and "bloat" has been a term used in the industry from well before "gamers" (in the sense used today) existed. It's been a term of art for over 30 years. It also describes a very real thing. While there are a lot of things that everyone would agree counts as "bloat", there are also areas of disagreement in the form of "one person's bloat is another's essential feature".