Maybe the odd service might if it's badly written, but I wouldn't expect it to make a significant difference either.

and my printer wouldn't work/wasn't recognised... i expect there's a deliberate effort by some big commercial hw manufacturers/resellers to actively not support free stuff /conspiracy

I don't think you have any idea what the development and maintenance of an OS means, plus Windows is always the best scapegoat when problems can arise from many sources, including hardware, badly behaving plugin and badly configured / non maintained  systems.
 
Linux, the most contributed to OS, barely has adequate drivers offering after decades.

CedricM
I don't think you have any idea what the development and maintenance of an OS means, plus Windows is always the best scapegoat when problems can arise from many sources, including hardware, badly behaving plugin and badly configured / non maintained  systems.
 
Linux, the most contributed to OS, barely has adequate drivers offering after decades.

Who is your post directed at? A statement like "I don't think you have any idea ...."assumes a lot, A lot of very talented people here with a range of talents and day jobs. The idea of a feature request sub-forum, to me is a chance to blue sky - help to shape a vision for Sonar down the road. The OP didn't specify Linux. I suggested maybe one approach to this would be to include a stripped windows - dedicated for daw use. just food for thought, but in my opinion this is a good conversation to have, and hopefully Cake is considering all of these types of ideas , even if they are discarding them now - they might have value later (when circumstances/business needs change) or might lead to other ideas.
just my 2 cents.

Brando, you and I have the exact same view on the purpose of this forum. Couldn't have said it better myself.

There are devices out there that use their own OS, so why not a DAW?

ampfixer
How many problems would be eliminated if Sonar had a dedicated OS that was distributed with the product. You could have a dual boot option to launch Windows or Sonar. Sonar would have its own partition and an OS completely optimized for DAW operations.

They would basically have to write their own version of Windows. Not likely to happen. Then they'd have to get all the hardware manufacturers to support it. Equally unlikely to happen. The nearest thing to this that would be practical would be for them to use a version of Linux, but since Linux is the worst mainstream OS for audio that would be a bad choice. It would also take ages to rewrite Sonar to work on both platforms.

All "dedicated" boxes seem to be written on Linux nowadays. Check the "Steam Machine".
 
> but since Linux is the worst mainstream OS for audio that would be a bad choice.
 
That's a heck of a statement, "worst" meaning?
 
I totally disagree the audio engine is probably the best, drivers for it are pretty good nowadays. It has the worst support perhaps but DAW's for Linux are popping up all over the place for the reason I've just explained.
 
I don't see any point in creating an OS, an existing stripped down OS is what you need. Linux is perfect for the job the kernel can be recompiled to more or less suit anything.
 
You could strip down Windows but you still have the HAL to contend with, and Windows fundamentally flawed design for audio (which apparently might get fixed in Windows 10 one day).

Microsoft offers a product called Windows Embedded that allows OEM's to configure an OS that does just what the OP is asking for. It's used for cash registers, ATM machines and other special purpose  devices that don't require the complete user experience though it can also add those elements too. I wouldn't be surprised if your friendly neighborhood DAW builder were able to build you such a beast.