I already have 8GB RAM PC optimization at home. It’s called Linux.
But having tested Windows Insider builds for months now, hands-on with the new decluttered Search and the faster File Explorer, I’m inclined to believe Microsoft can pull this off.
Microsoft has already rebuilt the File Explorer Properties dialog in WinUI, Microsoft’s native UI framework that’s significantly lighter than WebView2 since it doesn’t need to spin up a browser engine just to render a dialog box, and confirmed plans to bring more of the OS onto the framework.
What a nonsensical statement - they make it sound like the windows properties dialog was WebView2/Electron, but in fact it was Win32 api; WinUI is going to be much heavier. The bloat continues
No matter what they do, they’ll still be far greater in terms of memory consumption than the most bloated Linux desktop environment.
Linux desktops aren’t that light either
That’s a bold statement. KDE is often (and unfairly IMHO) accused of being memory hungry, but it runs just fine on my 10 year old Dell Latitude with 8GB of memory. And by fine, I mean I’m running Firefox, a coding editor (Zed) and build tools. Sure my builds could be a bit quicker, but most people aren’t doing that, they’re browsing the web.
My personal Nobara install idles at 2.5GB. Meanwhile my W11 laptop at work idles somewhere between 8-11GB. That’s a lot of data getting used up when the computer is doing literally nothing.
No matter how “bloated” you think Linux distros are, none of them are remotely close to W11. The worst I know of is Bazzite, which can sit around 4Gb at idle. Still low enough to do a lot of things on a system with only 8GB
It depends on how the windows installation was configured. My work machine is bloated as hell, 7gb idle, but my personal pc starts at 5.5. However when you do a VM and only give it 8gb of ram, you will see it hover around 3.5-3.9. Windows caches a lot of crap, but it can “make room” if you are asking for more ram. My Cachy on KDE launches at 2, which like I said isn’t that light either, although a lot less
They just updated the minimum requirements for minecraft from 4 to 8gb. You can’t even run windows with 4gb. 8 is not gonna do great either.
Right. I have not had a computer with less than 32gb ram in the last 15 years. And I had like 7 different computers . All Linux. Ubuntu then fedora
Can’t they just ask copilot to optimise win11 for less ram?
just ask it to not make any mistakes
Wait! Don’t forget to tell it not to make any mistakes! We don’t want another Nightmare-Eclipse moment.
I have absolutely no faith or reason to believe that this is something Microsoft can do.
2027 is more likely, with a plethora of fuck ups and destruction along the way. Whats most likely is they just don’t and instead do something that, in a way, “fakes it” by ripping resources from things or has the CPU fan spinning loudly.
Windows, in its current state, is a monster compiled of decades of shit and band-aids.
I have absolutely no faith or reason to believe that this is something Microsoft can do.
You should in fact have complete confidence that this is something Microsoft will 100% not deliver on: Microsoft has been around for half a century and has never put out genuinely good, stable and secure software. They simply don’t know how to do good software - which, after such a long time, is nothing short of amazing.
Except nt4
NT was made by a bunch of VMS engineers that Microsoft poached from DEC. That’s why it wasn’t as shit as Microsoft’s homegrown nonsense.
My work laptop with W11 already has the fans spinning very fast most of the time. When you turn it off you have this uneasy silence in the room.
After work, changing over to a Thinkpad with Fedora, it is silent, even getting it to play Rome 2.
I envy that you get a Linux-basrd laptop for work.
Opening up my W11 one is dread. Once it finally sorts itself out, it’s latest thing is just hanging 365 applications for 3 mins for no reason, then resuming. It also decided to stop copying to clipboard yesterday which was resolved by rebooting, which of course took 15 mins due to Windows updates…
It’s a decent 2025 laptop, but it’s like warming up an old car before driving it through wet cement.
Id love a linux based work laptop. Mine wouldn’t let me click on anything on the desktop unless I also did an absurdly long reboot.
Well, they do have a great track record of memory efficient and reliable OS like… 95… no, 98… ME? Vista? 8? So good.
This sounds more like Microsoft knew they included more bloat and are deciding to remove some of it because of the artificial chip shortage in lieu of all these data centers and AI.
They’re not doing it to help anyone but themselves. They likely bloated Windows to make it only work well enough on the hardware they chose to. Corrupt as always.
Nobody is going to remove anything, ‘end of 2026’ is a phrase analogous to parent saying ‘I will think about it (no)’.
I don’t doubt that. Why would they after all? They need to make sure Copilot runs at 100%.
The only possible way is to downgrade to Windows 7 before they screwed up the NT kernel and replaced all of their solid userspace applications with PWA bloat.
Does anyone remember that in Windows XP, users were asked if they wanted to send a report about a program error/crash to Microsoft? I don’t remember how it worked in Windows 7, but now everyone is forced to send those reports.
I’ll believe it when I see it, but maybe this is why my 4 year old laptop is near unusable on windows 11 :(
I would switch to Linux or Windows 10 LTSC if Windows is needed on the laptop.
Yea Linux is the plan. I moved my desktop to Linux a while ago and stopped using the laptop. It’s only used occasionally while traveling and I just haven’t done the move yet.
Just run a Windows debloater like this one: https://github.com/Raphire/Win11Debloat
Those help a little bit, but memory management in windows is just utter trash. My old surface could barely run a browser and fucking notepad at the same time because it kept trying to kill the browser.
Now it all runs great under Mint so life is good.
It’s not going to free up a huge amount of memory, but it certainly reduces cpu load and disk usage. And gets rids of advertisements, telemetry and unwanted services. It’s an easy win. Certainly a step you can take before deciding to swap your complete ecosystem.
Did we need confirmation?
