Screen space consumption was on the rise since Windows 1.0 days, there was a story recently [1]. Horizontal tiling mode become unusable [2] vs [3].

I think it traces transition from power users to casual. It makes sense, but there was no alternative. Screen become cluttered so much that most applications run on full screen only. And web become spoiled too - sticky headers everywhere (uBlock fixes this), wide content (media queries kicks in much narrower windows, Stylus to the rescue).

Explorer (shell) decorations is much to blame. Do we actually need task bar, title bar, menu bar, tool bar, status bar, scroll bar? I do not think so - plenty of space and distraction free [4]. There are a lot of tiling managers on Linux, but Windows has its share too. Like dwm port [5] (never tried on Windows) though I prefer wmii and xmonad with wmii layout.

[1] Windows Explorer Through the Years https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23487698

[2] Windows 1.0 tiling https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Microsof...

[3] Windows 10 tiling https://i2.wp.com/www.nextofwindows.com/wp-content/uploads/2...

[4] No decorations http://sergeykish.com/side-by-side-no-decorations.png

[5] DWM on Windows https://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dwm-win32/