A Quake 3 binary compiled in 1999 still runs on Linux today. How much backward compatibility do you need? > Windows will happily run GUI apps written 20 years

A Quake 3 binary compiled in 1999 still runs on Linux today. How much backward compatibility do you need? > Windows will happily run GUI apps written 20 years ago. Your best bet at running 16 bit Windows applications on a modern OS is running them via Wine. The same is true for some older 32 bit software. I wanted to relive some memories replaying my copy of GTA (the first one) on Windows 10 the other day, gave up after about half an hour after multiple step-by-step guides for getting it to run failed, and just installed it on my work laptop that's running a flavor of Linux with Wine. The latter required one extra step - installing some library by ticking a checkbox in winetricks. For all of Windows' touted backwards compatibility I wasn't exactly impressed. It seems to be little more than a meme at this point. What Windows does better (than other OS) is play modern games, which is why I keep it around on my desktop computer. I'm not sure it deserves credit for that though. I don't even know what you mean by switching "switches graphics engines". The X to Wayland migration? The former has been backwards compatible for more than three decades and the latter can host the former to remain backwards compatible. Wishy-washy terminology aside, are you absolutely confident your opinion is formed from an informed position? There's valid criticisms to be made of desktop Linux, but I don't think those are it.