> Reserving RAM doesn’t mean there’s a performance problem.

It does in my own experience (so it may not be a problem for you, I agree, but it is a problem for me). Because when OS allocates ~50% percents of RAM for itself and isn't letting it go, then other software simply can't use it. Therefore, you're limited. Your potential performance is capped at certain level just because your OS decided to allocate half or more of your system RAM. Why? Well, just because it wants to.

> have nothing to do with RAM usage or performance

Well, to be honest, most of them don't. But would you please explain then, why it takes around 20 seconds just to boot up, while for the aforementioned Linux Mint (and I'll clarify that it's currently 22.3 for me, the latest version, it was 22.1 at the time as far as I remember) it's only around ~3-4 second to take me to the login screen and then another second (at most) to load everything after I have logged in? Could you also, please, explain how does it happen that even GNOME's Nautilus file explorer takes less RAM and far less CPU usage than Microsoft's Explorer (and I won't even mention Thunar, that's kinda unfair)? What about "Start" menu in Windows which spiked up CPUs just by opening/closing? There's a lot of performance issues, both with RAM and CPU usage.

I'm not saying that these problems are unique to Windows, no; but saying that Windows doesn't have any performance issues is not really true.

> I think it’s quite clear that RAM isn’t the problem with Windows, it’s a lot of other things and the surrounding ecosystem.

I agree with you here. That's true. A large part of the problem comes not from the actual operating system, but from the application software. I thought once that well, maybe if RAM shortages will last longer than for just one or two years, that will be bad, but also, maybe - just maybe - some software developers will start to think at least a bit more about optimization...