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> I wonder how such a messy base offers such stability ...

By not solving problems like hibernation.

When people are afraid or unable to make changes, you get few breaking changes at all.

Partially right. I have a DIY machine with Ubuntu. There has been display issues, sound issues, and hibernation issues as well. If you go to Ubuntu's bug report website (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu), there is a huge list of them. It is true for other distros and Windows (internally).

Yes, that's right. Linux is severely lacking in internal structure, and it takes a lot of effort to develop for this kernel. It is easily an order of magnitude harder relative to every other kernel I've touched.

I have been running primarily Linux for longer (over two decades) and I am to some extent fond of it. But it is what it is.