It’s a different world now though. I could go into detail of the differences, but suffice to say you cannot compare them.
Having said that, Windows lately seems to just be slow on very modern systems for no reason I can ascertain.
I swapped back to Linux as primary os a few weeks ago and it’s just so snappy in terms of ui responsiveness. It’s not better in every way. But for sure I never sit waiting for windows to decide to show me the context menu for an item in explorer.
Anyway in short, the main reason for the difference with old and new computer systems is the necessary abstraction.
In a professional sense my experience is that they’re more often the result of under-staffing and rigid, fixed release schedules.