The operating system doesn’t degrade, it is just the user installing more and more crap without cleaning. Which is regular usage for your average user.
A fresh install just gets rid of old crap that has nothing to do with the operating system.
In comparison, I regularly remove software I don’t need and make sure my startup is clean of things that don’t need to start every day and it keeps my Windows 11 fast as fuck. I have a laptop with an old Windows 11 install that is just as snappy as it was when I installed it.
I install whatever I want on my Linux desktop without thinking about it, and the file browser is still as fast as it was the day I installed it (really fast). I don’t have to do regular housekeeping to ensure basic functionality remains performant.
If the operating system is architected in such a way that simply installing things (you know, one of the main reasons to have a computer) degrades the performance of basic functionality, that’s a problem with the operating system.
The operating system doesn’t degrade, it is just the user installing more and more crap without cleaning. Which is regular usage for your average user.
A fresh install just gets rid of old crap that has nothing to do with the operating system.
In comparison, I regularly remove software I don’t need and make sure my startup is clean of things that don’t need to start every day and it keeps my Windows 11 fast as fuck. I have a laptop with an old Windows 11 install that is just as snappy as it was when I installed it.
I install whatever I want on my Linux desktop without thinking about it, and the file browser is still as fast as it was the day I installed it (really fast). I don’t have to do regular housekeeping to ensure basic functionality remains performant.
If the operating system is architected in such a way that simply installing things (you know, one of the main reasons to have a computer) degrades the performance of basic functionality, that’s a problem with the operating system.