Is there really a reason for this entire thread other than potential flame-war bait? I make my living doing Windows Embedded Compact, Linux (mostly embedded), bare metal and Windows Desktop (sometimes). Each has its benefits and detriments. None are the “best” or “worst”. There are only tradeoffs. I can see where a stable API has tremendous advantages while I can also see where non-stagnant APIs have their advantages as well. It’s all in what you need.
Now, back to Windows Kernel technical discussions, please?
Greg
— xxxxx@hotmail.com wrote:
From: Marion Bond
To: “Windows System Software Devs Interest List”
Subject: [ntdev] Re: [ntdev] Win10 Release time, version and old driver support
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 22:19:34 +0000
As usual, the author forgets that the first consequence of not having stable interfaces is that users (remember them) will pick a version, validate that it works, and never upgrade. So all of those lovely benefits of the 'improved’ interfaces will be incorporated in the main line of source, but not on devices in the field. Microsoft’s policy of virtually assured compatibility has allowed users to be confident enough that their computer will still work after they click install when Windows Update asks to download GB of data for hundreds of patches.
Sent from Surface Pro
From: Jan Bottorff
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2014 5:12 PM
To: Windows System Software Devs Interest List
Windows has a REMARKABLE history of compatibility for drivers. There are many drivers running today that were written for Windows 2000, about 15 years ago. There are drivers that were written for Windows NT that are still working today.
This is in contrast to Linux, where there is no binary compatibility of drivers between OS builds. Linux doesn’t even have a stable driver API set, and there is no plan to have one.
It seems like the driver compatability strategy on Linux is: you get your source code into the mainline source tree, and anybody who changes the mainline tree is supposed to also fix your driver if their change broke it. Of course the person who changed the mainline tree may not have your device, so there is no real way for them to run QA tests on the changes to your driver.
The situation of Linux driver compatibility seems to be described at https://git.kernel.org/cgit/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git/tree/Documentation/stable_api_nonsense.txt
Jan
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