What people don&#x27;t get about Microsoft is however bad they were, they practically enabled a hugely diverse and mostly open hardware and software ecosystem and they had to standardize and open up in order to keep it going. Sure they had their monopolistic ways but fortunately they were reigned in for the better.<p>It&#x27;s disingenuous to claim  user experience requires a closed and non standard system. And besides that Microsoft and Linux distros have made steady progress towards improving the quality and experience while still keeping the PC ecosystem open.