"I guess MS thinks it would be better for usability if people had to reinstall the OS and wait through hours of updates just to remove some shared libraries" I

"I guess MS thinks it would be better for usability if people had to reinstall the OS and wait through hours of updates just to remove some shared libraries" I would probably just use a snapshot in a VM in that case. After all, testing "package not installed" is different than "package installed, then removed" unfortunately (which is your point).