<i>the actual operating environment presented by the kernel and the image loader for user-space software on linux is very, very stable.</i><p>The guarantees that Windows makes about backwards-compatibility go <i>far</i> beyond just the image-loader and syscalls. For comparison, the glibc backwards-compatibility story is... messier. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kernel.org&#x2F;pub&#x2F;software&#x2F;libs&#x2F;glibc&#x2F;hjl&#x2F;compat&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.kernel.org&#x2F;pub&#x2F;software&#x2F;libs&#x2F;glibc&#x2F;hjl&#x2F;compat&#x2F;</a>