Which is why I like systems which are mostly from the vendor, with very few custom applications. IME, application vendors only test on a few common systems, no

Which is why I like systems which are mostly from the vendor, with very few custom applications. IME, application vendors only test on a few common systems, not across the board. Try running something which isn't common (say a 64bit Linux distribution three years ago), on even with newer hardware. My Linux experience has been with third party packages breaking, not anything shipped by the vendor.