It seems I can't boot from USB on this machine. The drive is recognized in the BIOS, but even when I add it to the sequence, it always boots from the main SSD. If I disable all options except the USB, it says "No bootable device found". When I start GRUB on my main drive, the USB doesn't show up.
Debian does (because it's old) and OpenSUSE does as well. I think it's actually the desktop environment that does it, because KDE always mounts drives there.
Your theory is based on the assumption that only Windows/Microsoft software increases in bloat exponentially.
This is not true: look at the internet. For example Gmail used to have a basic HTML version, but Google killed it, and the normal version takes longer and longer to load even on new hardware. New Reddit also is a mess of over-Javascript-frameworked capitalistry, complete with those annoying grey lines that appear where text should be when the page is loading.
Even open-source software is not immune to this. KDE on an Intel Celeron/2GB RAM computer feels very slightly sluggish, like walking through an atmosphere that's too thick.
Wirth's Law states that as more features are added to a piece of software, it will become slower.
Can't find it in my BIOS. I tried modifying a "screen efficiency" setting, no change. All the other "power management" settings are related to the battery.
Wabby wabby wabba wabbo wabba wa ba bop?