With Windows 10 support ending in a matter of days, that leaves the latest Microsoft OS as the only real option for gamers right now
Windows 10 support ends in 2025.
Linux is a very real option for the majority of games.
Given the idiocy in this article, I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t occur to them to delete Windows.old from an external software environment.
Ultimately, that’s something you want to keep around for a while because it’s what lets you roll back the upgrade if there turns out to out to be problems.
Either that, or they expect to be releasing something stupid in the near future and are allocating the space for it early. ~8 gigs does sound suspiciously close to the size of an AI model.