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Yet Windows ran 16-bit, 32-bit and 64-bit code on the same core for years. Huh.

Really folks. It doesn't take new research or exotic OS design ideas, to do something that has been common practice for a decade. Let's quit pretending linux is driving any innovation. It's followed behind in OS design, often by years.

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Linux is, too. The thing being discussed here is supporting multiple pieces of _hardware_ in the same machine that have different instruction sets. I don't think Windows supports that either.

they do, using drivers, that is too novel idea for linux.

Linux has just as much native support for such things as Windows does, if not more.

I mean maybe you're right at this point but it's not like the reputation is undeserved

I mean, we're going on close to 30 years or so that Linux has had parity with Windows for the kind of driver we're talking about: loadable kernel driver for a weird accelerator core that takes firmware but doesn't really fit into a driver model otherwise.

On Linux this is a module that exposes a character device with one off ioctls.

On Windows this a kernel mode driver that exposes a Device object with one off DeviceIoControls.

I really don't think the reputation is deserved in this case, both kernels added equivalent support for this workflow back in the 90s.

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