> Windows is actually excellent at maintain backwards compatibility.

Rather: Windows is actually excellent at maintain backwards compatibility for binary programs.

There exist lots of other backwards-compatibility topics like

- being backwards-compatible in the user interface (in a business setting, ensuring that the business-critical applications still run is a problem of the IT, but if the user interface changes, people will complain. I just say "Windows 8" or "Office ribbons" (when they were introduced)). I would for example claim that very specifically for the shell interface, the GNU/Linux crowd cares a lot more about user-interface backwards compatibility than what Microsoft does.

- being backwards-compatible in the hardware requirements (i.e. "will it still run on an old computer"). I just want to mention the drama around Windows 11 because it doesn't run on still actively used hardware so that Microsoft cannot force the update on all Windows 10 users, but on the other hand wants to terminate the support for Windows 10.

> I would for example claim that very specifically for the shell interface, the GNU/Linux crowd cares a lot more about user-interface backwards compatibility than what Microsoft does.

Maybe if you ignore things like systemd radically changing how services and init systems work. Massive changes with Network Manager and firewalld compared to iptables. Gnome today looks pretty much nothing like it did when I first started using Linux. Now we install software through snaps and what not, or move from yum to dnf or other package managers.

Using Linux today feels very different than it did 20 years ago. I bet most scrips I wrote for Ubuntu over 20 years ago would fail to execute today on a fresh modern install.

> Maybe if you ignore things like systemd radically changing how services and init systems work.

I am explicitly talking about the shell (Bash, ksh, zsh). Other parts of the GNU/Linux stack changed a lot.

Well then, can't one also say Windows hasn't changed much since XP, which was one of the last major times CMD.exe changed?

cmd.exe is only some mostly deprecated tool that was only used by power-users to do some specific tasks.

The Windows analogue of some UNIX shell is rather explorer.exe, and this is exactly what my Windows 8 example refers to.

> cmd.exe is only some mostly deprecated tool that was only used by power-users to do some specific tasks.

And bash isn't "some mostly deprecated tool that was only used by power-users"? Think people are mostly using bash for their interface on their steam decks and Android phones and what not? Do most people boot Ubuntu straight into text mode or immediately launch a DE? Grandma using lynx to browse Facebook?

Explorer is a desktop environment. Which, yes, the desktop environment landscape in Linux these days looks pretty different from what was around 20 or so years ago.

You're constantly moving the goal posts and comparing apples and oranges here. Originally saying GNU/Linux user interfaces, then shifted to only text shells, and then comparing those text shells to entire desktop environments while ignoring the forest of constantly changing desktop environments of Linux.

And even then, most of those bat scrips I wrote since XP that only use system tools and commands will largely all still run and do the same thing today. I can't say the same for the same time frame on most major Linux distros that have changed out large parts of their internal tooling.

Also, Windows containers are a thing (not that I’ve ever used them). Shouldn’t it be possible to containerize old games bundled with versions of win32 libraries that were stable when the game was released? Then the games could be run in perpetuity so long as the low-level interfaces needed by the container runtime is maintained.

Windows containers are definitely a thing, but I think the implementation is at the "how to draw an owl: draw two circles..." stage and needs a lot of "...now draw the rest of the owl" in terms of being usable to the general consumer audience where their eyes are likely to gloss over if you say "go and install docker desktop". Having a simple method to maintain old software as usable would be beneficial, but it's hard to see what organization would want to do work to make it happen.

Legacy compatibility is one of windows biggest strong points, neatly containing 'old windows' and providing the best experience for it would solve the puzzle of why users should stick with windows if MS did want to prune the core OS without giving users reasons to move away.