As the joke goes, Win32 is the Linux ABI. There are a lot of baffling decisions by Microsoft’s Windows division, but their extreme dedication towards backward

As the joke goes, Win32 is the Linux ABI. There are a lot of baffling decisions by Microsoft’s Windows division, but their extreme dedication towards backward compatibility is nothing short of Herculean. Sometimes I wish they’d split up Windows in an ultra-slow ‘Enterprise’ ring and a move-fast (think about the speed of macOS changes) ‘consumer’ ring, where they could drop much of the legacy cruft in trade for speedy/forced improvements. Think macOS going fully 64 bit, making the system image immutable, etc. Hell, imagine if they’d allowed the Xbox One, X and S to run Windows 11 in S mode. Instant cheap performant computer for the layperson! And with it running S mode, they’d make their money through the Microsoft Store.