Windows Is the OS Most Users Actually Have
NTFS and WSL are facts. Contempt is not a compatibility layer.
[ essay ]
Windows is the operating system most people already paid for. That is not a personality flaw. It is the install base.
I daily-drive Fedora. NeuroShell ships on macOS. mystic-bytes is markdown in git. None of that makes NTFS optional for a reader who clones a repo on a lunch break in Auckland or anywhere else. Line endings, case-insensitive paths, and a drive letter are not “doing it wrong.” They are the filesystem Microsoft documented and a billion machines still boot into.
WSL exists because a Unix-shaped toolchain still has to meet that world. It is a translation, not a conversion. You get a Linux userland beside NTFS, with all the usual surprises about what chmod means on a Windows mount. Git still trips on CRLF. I use WSL as a compatibility story in docs, not as proof that Windows users were supposed to dual-boot Fedora with me.
If a script assumes /usr/bin and a case-sensitive disk, say so. Do not dress the assumption as taste. Most users have Windows. Ship as if that were true, because it is.
— JV · Dark Heart Labs.