this is my completely uninformed opinion as someone who doesn't know jack shit about making an os, purely based on vibes and zero research, actual speculation from someone who was born after XP, but I think windows is in a dead end
Microsoft is sitting on decades of legacy code, too much to make sense of and they don't have anyone with a good enough understanding of the OS to know how to make big changes. Which is why every release since 7 feels like they added/modded stuff weirdly onto the previous version. For instance the aero theme is supposed to not be in the OS since windows 8 but up until very recently it was still part of the installer. And this keeps getting worse.
They don't know how it works, so they can't make actual virtual desktops, and it's why the implementation sucks so bad (take a screenshot of the current desktop before leaving to use as a preview next time when sliding, and quickly show/hide windows, because there really still is a single desktop). Also why when they wanted to redesign the start menu in 11 they had to give up on doing it properly and made it react native instead. And also just notice how in the 6 years between 10 and 11, the only actual changes were rounded corners and a few QOL details.
(more personally, I'm also seeing bugs I encounter several times a day when forced to use windows, that are still here a decade later)
And so as modern silicon valley turnaround does its thing, every piece of shittily added code also becomes part of the pile of legacy code, making the OS harder to work on yet again.
The other side of the dead end comes in 2 parts. First part is how god damn complicated windows is to begin with. I've played with the sysadmin side of it very briefly, and the amount of stuff going on that regular users don't even know exists is baffling. Playing with registry is the top of the iceberg. Second part is just how much legacy software relies on windows being the way it is, for basically everyone using windows in a way that's more advanced than just browsing the internet. Including businesses.
And so in one direction, working incrementally on windows is getting more and more difficult, less and less sustainable. Microsoft can make windows 12 out of modifying 11 like they did from 10 to 11, but it will take a very long time and it won't be good. And in the other direction, they can't just start clean to get rid of the legacy, because this would break 90% of software, and being able to trust that your software works is why most people use windows. All businesses that rely on specific, unmaintained software, would have no reason to keep using windows if they're gonna have to find a new solution anyway. Everyone using software that is being maintained will have to wait a year for everything they need to start working again. At this point I wanna go "lol, they should just make the next windows a linux distro with wine preinstalled" and tbh it feels like it wouldn't be that bad of an idea
idk how to conclude this. again, idk what the fuck I'm talking about. that's just what it feels like for me every time I have to use windows for some stupid reason. get fedora today, it's better, I can at least promise you that much.
