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The thing you have to keep in mind is that once you start cutting ties with legacy systems, breaking changes will keep happening. Today, it's key-up events. Tom

The thing you have to keep in mind is that once you start cutting ties with legacy systems, breaking changes will keep happening. Today, it's key-up events. Tomorrow, it'll be something else. And eventually, the new and shiny subsystem you introduced today will be considered legacy code by someone else, and it too will be tossed out and replaced. In the end, you'll be choosing between a platform that requires you update every piece of software you maintain every six months and a platform that doesn't. And while the former might seem better from a pure-ideals perspective, the latter is vastly preferable for actual usage. (That's why so many people use Windows, and it's why I now run Linux on my MacBook.)

ironmagma 8y ago
That's an interesting perspective, but it seems unlikely that that is the main or even an important advantage Linux has over Windows. After all, you can't really run old Linux binaries on a new Linux system without strong determination and a lot of time. There are many others, including its (essentially) fully open source nature definitely being up there.
- csande17 8y ago
  You're correct that this is not an advantage Linux has over Windows; both Windows and Linux strive to maintain strong backwards-compatibility guarantees. It's an advantage they both have over systems like macOS. And while Windows maintains near-perfect binary compatibility (I've run programs on Windows 10 that were last compiled a decade ago), Linux instead has excellent source compatibility. I've successfully compiled and used decade-old Linux utilities with no problems. This difference speaks to the different economic philosophies these platforms have. Microsoft expects you to buy software in a box at a store and use it forever. Linux expects you to use free software developed by volunteers. And Apple expects you to pay over and over again to avoid losing functionality.
  - cryptonector 8y ago
    The Linux kernel is famous for trying really hard to maintain ABI backwards-compatibility. In practice this means that statically-linked executables from a decade ago will run just fine on Linux today, at least as far as interactions with the kernel is concerned (interactions with other parts of the system, it depends). The same is not necessarily true of dynamically-linked applications because user-space libraries' maintainers are not as exacting about backwards-compatibility. Note that this is not an argument for static linking, at least not in its current form.

ironmagma 8y ago

That's an interesting perspective, but it seems unlikely that that is the main or even an important advantage Linux has over Windows. After all, you can't really run old Linux binaries on a new Linux system without strong determination and a lot of time. There are many others, including its (essentially) fully open source nature definitely being up there.

csande17 8y ago
You're correct that this is not an advantage Linux has over Windows; both Windows and Linux strive to maintain strong backwards-compatibility guarantees. It's an advantage they both have over systems like macOS. And while Windows maintains near-perfect binary compatibility (I've run programs on Windows 10 that were last compiled a decade ago), Linux instead has excellent source compatibility. I've successfully compiled and used decade-old Linux utilities with no problems. This difference speaks to the different economic philosophies these platforms have. Microsoft expects you to buy software in a box at a store and use it forever. Linux expects you to use free software developed by volunteers. And Apple expects you to pay over and over again to avoid losing functionality.
- cryptonector 8y ago
  The Linux kernel is famous for trying really hard to maintain ABI backwards-compatibility. In practice this means that statically-linked executables from a decade ago will run just fine on Linux today, at least as far as interactions with the kernel is concerned (interactions with other parts of the system, it depends). The same is not necessarily true of dynamically-linked applications because user-space libraries' maintainers are not as exacting about backwards-compatibility. Note that this is not an argument for static linking, at least not in its current form.