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Why the size of operating systems (clean install) is increasing?


Ok, this is just a simple question, but I really like to have some answers from people that create distributions (linux) or if there are also people involved on OsX or Windows.

The size after installation seems to be increasing, Windows 10 requires 20GB of disk space (64bit). I suppose that the kernel is not the problem, so the problem is in the applications (i.e. user space). But I cannot see an increase in the number of applications packaged with the OS, at least not a big increase, so the problem is..how they wrote them, the runtime support, etc.

Could someone comment on this?


Solution

  • While I don't think this question is suitable for here, I'll point out that programmers tend to rely too heavily on increasing memory capacity and increasing processor speed.

    Another thing to consider is that newer versions of software usually need to keep backwards compatibility with older versions. This results in multiplied memory requirements and possibly processor requirements.

    Newer versions of software introduce new features (whether substantial ones or simply eye-candy ones does not matter in this context). The results are the same as with backwards compatibility.

    Many people may disagree here, but some other people will argue there is this thing called "Planned Obsolescence". This way working hardware gets obsolete simply because software requirements increase.