Comment by JSR_FDED

I think for many the key driver behind wanting to slim down the OS isn’t RAM or CPU use. It’s wanting to control their experience of using the computer. If the OS didn’t feel bloated nobody would care if there were 1000 processes that occasionally woke up briefly.

So what makes the OS feel bloated? It’s stuff you don’t need or want pushing its way into the foreground so you can’t ignore it. Notifications and popups are a huge culprit. Best most anxiety reducing thing I did yesterday was turn off pointless notifications like Music showing the name of the new song it’s playing. And used Little Snitch to make sure I’m never getting an update downloaded or nagged about ever again.