Oh, but it absolutely is true. Microsoft really did decide to use React Native for parts of the Windows 11 Start menu. They're also using it in sections of the Settings app.

The technical reality is even more absurd than the meme suggests. Microsoft is currently maintaining eight different UI frameworks for Windows, including their own .NET MAUI and WinUI 3 that were specifically built for their OS. Yet somehow they thought, "You know what this native operating system needs? A JavaScript framework originally designed for mobile apps."

The CPU usage spikes aren't necessarily from React Native itself being particularly heavyweight, but rather from the fundamental architectural choice of running a web-based rendering engine for core system UI elements. Every time you click Start, you're essentially launching a mini web application just to display a menu.

What's particularly galling is that Microsoft has acknowledged WinUI's performance issues for years, to the point where they recommend their partners use the older WPF for performance-critical applications. So instead of fixing their native framework, they decided to add another layer of abstraction.

This is what happens when corporate development teams prioritize "developer experience" and trendy frameworks over system efficiency. Richard Stallman's expression in that image perfectly captures the appropriate level of technical horror at this decision.

The old world built operating systems. The new world builds web apps that pretend to be operating systems.

I have a Windows laptop for the first time in well over a decade for a project I am working on. Even though it is overpowered (i7, 64gb ram), and it is currently "idle", the cooling fans are working overtime because the damn OS is always busy doing some random shit when "idle". This is AFTER I ran a debloat script. It was near impossible to use before then.

EDIT: I found the cause of the fanning issue and different behavior between Win 11 and Linux (Pop!_OS). Even though the laptop comes with an Nvidia RTX 4000 series GPU, Windows 11 set the global default GPU to be the integrated graphics (Intel UHD). The same laptop under Pop!_OS automatically set the default GPU to Nvidia. As soon as I dug this up and switched the settings to Nvidia, the laptop stopped fanning full speed nonstop.

Don't they have like 9 graphics libraries and frameworks accross 4 languages already?

It's why I'm gonna change to Linux permanently come the end of Win10.

it needs to check your license and onedrive files for DRM compliance. every click

New CPU benchmark: 100 start menu clicks per second.

Oops I pit my mouse in the bottom left now its loading 50 web pages filled with ads under the guise of being a widget

And it's a terrible app, at that. No organization, just either some random application links, or one giant list with no categories or organization past alphabetical.

Is it really? Does microsoft have no faith in its own user32 UI API?

I had to test it. That is wild.

Switched to Linux at the beginning of the year. Still have a lobotomized local windows 11 boot for gaming/VR still though. Can't wait for the day I can finally get rid of it totally.

Remember when discord changed its android app to use react native?

They fixed most of it by now but god it was terrible back then

AFAIK, React is a Single-Page Web Application that refreshes everytime something changes. It's benefits are fast load times and lower overhead because it ONLY updates things that are changed on re-render, but the downsides are that it relies on other libraries for things like multiple pages, etc.

So for it to be a Windows System application, yes that's fucking attrocious. Did you ever hear how angry people were about the Warcraft 3 update that added a bunch of webapp nonsense and bricked a lot of people's old copies? Well, that's basically what Windows 11 did.

Oh man that explains so many pains in the ass at work

I'm foreseeing a spike in people asking me for help installing Linux.

We are living in Richard Stallmans worst nightmare rn

I can't reproduce the CPU spike, but Windows is overall slower. Strangely, the calendar on the taskbar takes a long time to load the first time that I open it.

I have heard that Classic Shell is once again functional under Windows 11, but it was critically broken and thoroughly unusable for too long for me, and I have since moved on to StartIsBack, which can do almost everything I found essential with Classic Shell.