No need for such childish reaction, dismissing other's viewpoints achieves nothing for your side of arguments, at least nothing good and one of the reasons some skilled folks won't migrate, we have enough toxic communities elsewhere.

Also quite a few inaccuracies - what the heck is 'bit rot' on windows? I had 1 same Windows 10 install running on desktop for 8 years as primary personal PC and installed tons of software and games, both official and... some other types. 0 issues.

On laptop whole lifetime with original install is the default for everybody I know, for me 6-7 years (simply the length of ownership). We don't talk about Windows 95 or ME era here where frequent installs were basically mandatory and a well-practiced chore.

Historically I wouldn't refer to it as "bit rot", but generally "registry bloat" with a combination older, no longer used .DLL's hanging around, rather than being removed on software uninstallation or upgrade.

In the past a good "registry cleaner" would help - but those are no longer reliable with newer versions of Windows - there are many virtual entries that get cleaned-up by overly aggressive utilities.

> I had 1 same Windows 10 install running on desktop for 8 years as primary personal PC

I actually have a desktop still running that got a launch party host Windows 7 Steve Ballmer edition install that's just been upgraded as time has gone on. Very much a Ship of Theseus machine but technically only ever migrated the OS image around, never reinstalled. That's 17 years of a Windows install so far, and its perfectly fine. That one install has made it through multiple motherboards and OS upgrades. It'll end up dying and being replaced once I get too uncomfortable with 10 EoL, this board is still useful to me but it doesn't have a TPM so Windows is dead to this machine.