Then you look at the Windows 10 list of crapware and it becomes a lot clearer.
Is there an actual causal relationship? And which crapware specifically? Asking because I only have access to a bunch of Windows 10 Pro machines which already don't seem to have most of crapware on there (i.e. often I see threads here where people complain about all kinds of ads and other things I never even knew existed) and the rest disabled (as far as I can tell) and still it's less snapy than this one Windows Server instance on comparable machine. (and sadly no single modern OS feels as snappy as even Windows XP SP2 for a similar level of functionality on not-so-recent hardware)
The difference is the list of running background services. Kernel and drivers are the same, libraries are the same, but server doesn't have (ex) the AllJoyn Router Service for Smart Things Control, the 4G LTE Push Notifications Service, the WAP Push Message Service, the Fax Service, Windows Image Acquisition, and so on. Candy Crush doesn't run on startup, these do.
Is there an actual causal relationship? And which crapware specifically? Asking because I only have access to a bunch of Windows 10 Pro machines which already don't seem to have most of crapware on there (i.e. often I see threads here where people complain about all kinds of ads and other things I never even knew existed) and the rest disabled (as far as I can tell) and still it's less snapy than this one Windows Server instance on comparable machine. (and sadly no single modern OS feels as snappy as even Windows XP SP2 for a similar level of functionality on not-so-recent hardware)