Indeed - how does Win 10 do on eliminating cruft, like old update files and such now, MS Windows used to be terrible at it but I've barely any experience of Win 10 beyond installs and some basic troubleshooting.
I regular user would use something like Muon software center which manages it all and pops up update prompts when necessary in a similar way to Google's Play store on Android.
> how does Win 10 do on eliminating cruft, like old update files
I cannot answer this, just speculating: Windows does not create multiple partitions by default, so as long as C:/ has free space left, it can pile on without a care in the world. And by the time that it actually fills up, the average consumer would go buy a new PC anyway (or pay someone to cleanup the mess).
Yes, this is largely how things have worked in the past. They had "disk cleanup" (as far back as XP at least) that removes some install files and such. Programs like CCleaner work to remove that kind of excess - but I was specifically asking what Win10 was doing as a comparison to the complaint that Linux distros don't [apparently] handle removal of [some] install cruft without intervention.
I regular user would use something like Muon software center which manages it all and pops up update prompts when necessary in a similar way to Google's Play store on Android.