> 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.
> 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.
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.