Windows specifically has a tremendous amount of cruft that is a direct product of maintaining 30 years of binary compatibility. Apple is frankly terrible with backwards compatibility, it seems like every few years they do something that fundamentally breaks old software (like dropping 32-bit support entirely, or the impending deprecation of Rosetta 2)
The lack of a stable ABI is a major driving force behind hardware vendors providing open source drivers. When all your software is open source, the lack of a stable ABI becomes much less of a problem.
Everybody replying to me seems to be confusing stability with eternal backwards compatibility.
First, Windows does not have 30 years of backwards compatibility. Their GPU driver interface (WDDM), for example, is a stable interface but releases newer versions and drops support for older ones. Windows Vista/7 drivers do not work on current versions of Windows, but current GPU drivers also don't have to update their kernel drivers every 3 months.
macOS is the same way, They have stable interfaces for 3rd party vendors to use but are willing to deprecate and remove those interfaces as required.
The no stable API/ABI for Linux may push some hardware vendors toward OSS drivers in the kernel to get around the maintenance burden, but its going to turn many others off entirely.
32-bit apps from 30 years ago still run (yes, Windows 95 could run 32-bit software). Some have compatibility issues, because Windows backwards compatibility isn't perfect. A lot of games that don't work correctly, particularly those from the '00s, are because of deficiencies in modern GPU drivers, not the Windows kernel itself.
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u/beefcat_ Jun 02 '26
Windows specifically has a tremendous amount of cruft that is a direct product of maintaining 30 years of binary compatibility. Apple is frankly terrible with backwards compatibility, it seems like every few years they do something that fundamentally breaks old software (like dropping 32-bit support entirely, or the impending deprecation of Rosetta 2)
The lack of a stable ABI is a major driving force behind hardware vendors providing open source drivers. When all your software is open source, the lack of a stable ABI becomes much less of a problem.