That's what you get for using Windows. In Linux, the PPD drivers are tiny, and they never become "obsolete" like in Windows where you can't get an older printer to work in Win10 because there's no drivers.
I hear MacOSX is about the same as Linux, and since Apple owns CUPS (the printing subsystem in Linux) that would make sense.
This has nothing to do with Windows. The Windows drivers themselves are relatively small, it's the software suite they push that is bloated. The two download options for my latest Brother printer was a 2MB driver only download, or a 300MB software suite. I've also seen this for Dell and HP printers. I use mostly B/W laser printers, so YMMV.
It has everything to do with Windows, as you admit yourself here. On Linux, there is no included software suite, there's only PPD drivers. Those bloated software suites only exist on Windows because they commonly tie them to the printer drivers. As for offering a driver-only download, I don't think that's normal for consumer-grade inkjets.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the whole "bloated software suite", not just for printers but for everything else, is mainly a Windows problem because Windows has a culture of downloading bloated software suites from the manufacturer, instead of having a "distro" with all the device drivers included by default along with lots of open-source software to use those devices. The idea of downloading some big pie of software (or getting it from an included optical disc) from a hardware maker, just to use your piece of hardware, simply does not exist on Linux. And that's the way it should be: the Windows way is what's given us gigabyte+ software suites for simple tasks like using a printer.
Last three printers I had detected via the network install, and downloaded the drivers from windows update directly, just the driver, not the bloatware... seems to work fine in windows.
And on the "let's see how much further we can bloat a printer driver, since 1GB to get letters from your computer to paper is obviously not enough".