Most computers weren't that bad, but there was a time when Windows 95/98 and the mainstream hardware it ran on weren't a good match. That's what you remember.
Even then, once the thing did boot up, applications were rather responsive.
> ...you can easily setup a command line interface or Linux system and move blazing fast.
No, you can't. The majority of people uses software that is imposed upon them. The majority of work can not efficiently be expressed in CLIs.
It's the responsibility of software developers to write responsive software and in many cases, they have failed. Of course, with the inefficient web platform, their job is made difficult from the start.
I feel bad for the metaphorical user. They were robbed of their tools.
We get to keep our shell utilities and CLIs, but they were robbed of tiny single-purpose GUI tools.
We get to keep our shell pipelines and perl scripts, but they're getting locked out of their Excel spreadsheets and VBA scripts.
Hell, with how things are going even automation tools like AutoHotKey are going to perish.
"People don't know how to code" or "users aren't tech-savvy enough for data processing and programming" are bullshit statements. They just happen to not code the way Silicon Valley does. And now these users are getting corralled into caged web apps and experiences that give them no flexibility at all and just treat them like children, all the way from the feature set to the presentation.
> Most computers weren't that bad, but there was a time when Windows 95/98 and the mainstream hardware it ran on weren't a good match. That's what you remember.
That's been the issue with every Windows OS. The cheap consumer hardware available at the time of the release was not enough to provide a snappy OS experience.
Unfortunately, hardware frequencies have sort of stalled, so now we're back to square 1 again, where W10 doesn't run snappy on median consumer hardware, but the hardware isn't getting faster at the same rate it was during the first decade of 2000's.
I have a Windows 7 machine for some legacy games and software, and it feels much faster on a 6-year old CPU (Haswell) than W10 does on a 1 year old CPU.
In my experience Windows 10 runs well enough on even the shittiest of hardware as long as it has an SSD. I can't tell you how many people (both personally and professionally) have asked me to troubleshoot slow Windows installs, and almost invariably they are running Windows on an HDD. Many times they got it because "well it was the bigger storage size, so that must mean it's better, right?" - In the premium segment that might be true, but in the value segment where most people shop they're still trying to offload inventory of HDDs, I guess.
Mac OS isn't much better, I had a 2011 MacBook Pro w/ the best CPU for that model which was borderline unusable until I put an SSD in it. That was HFS which was designed w/ spinning rust in mind, I couldn't even imagine running APFS on top of spindles for an OS volume. CoW & the features it brings is awesome on flash w/ lots of IOPS, but painful on anything else.
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That all being said though, Windows 10 is just crap. I'm not convinced there's any amount of hardware you can throw at it that will make it feel as snappy as Windows 7 did, because it's evident to me that the developers just don't care anymore. I initially installed Windows 10 on an i7-6700K w/ one of the fastest consumer NVMe drives and one of the best GPUs available at the time. The start menu lagged perceptibly on a pristine installation. That was before all the "feature updates" shoveled Microsoft's ever increasing amounts of managed code, adverts, and online crap into the start menu.
If the developers gave a shit about UI latency the Start menu wouldn't require internet connectivity[1] and the task bar wouldn't make hundreds of thousands of IO calls.[2] Even if you can come to accept the speed the start menu, the functionality just isn't there. It routinely feigns ignorance of plain text files sitting in the root of my "Documents" library; even if I type the exact file name. I would gladly welcome the Windows 7 file index service back into my life.
I agree with you the first half of your comment - the move from spinning rust to an SSD is absolutely huge; you have Windows starting in a few seconds, which is a far cry from an HDD.
But the 2nd half of your comment, I disagree with. To me, Windows 10 has the perception of being faster than Windows 7 was with the same hardware - most of my machines have been on Windows 10 for ages, but I actually finally upgraded one of my work laptops just today, and this still holds true for me.
With great support for multiple monitors, great high-DPI support, a better command line, Hyper-V, WSL and more, I actually love Windows 10 - it's a fantastic OS.
Even then, once the thing did boot up, applications were rather responsive.
> ...you can easily setup a command line interface or Linux system and move blazing fast.
No, you can't. The majority of people uses software that is imposed upon them. The majority of work can not efficiently be expressed in CLIs.
It's the responsibility of software developers to write responsive software and in many cases, they have failed. Of course, with the inefficient web platform, their job is made difficult from the start.