There's pros and cons both ways, it's an implementation decision. Under Linux, I have occasionally had the challenge of figuring out what process is holding op

There's pros and cons both ways, it's an implementation decision. Under Linux, I have occasionally had the challenge of figuring out what process is holding open a large file that has been 'deleted'. This starts with recognizing that you're getting disparate values from different tools you might use to look at disk utilization. It's confusing as hell the first time you run into it without some established context as to why that might happen. On deletion of a file that is open by another process, Linux does not warn me about that. Windows will give me a clear error message that the file is open by another process. Linux chooses to let the problem sit because it might just take care of itself once the process ends, but that decision kinda sucks when your disk is full and you're scrambling to get some space back. Windows forces me to deal with the conflict right now. That adds work in some cases while avoiding the confusion and risk factors of multiple perspectives about a volume's utilization. It's not "Widnows (sic) doesn't get it". Windows made different choices. As another comment expressed, Windows has all it needs to do this at the FS layer, but chooses to use OS locks on top of that.