Comment by Beltalowda

I think the problem is that there isn't really a thing like "Linux the OS"; there's Debian, Ubuntu, Gentoo, Red Hat, and more than I can remember, and they all do things different: sometimes subtly so, sometimes not so subtly. This is quite different from the Windows position where you have one Windows (multiple editions, but still one Windows) and that's it.

This is why a lot of games now just say "tested on Ubuntu XX LTS" and call it a day. I believe Steam just ships with half an Ubuntu system for their Linux games and uses that, even if you're running on Arch Linux or whatnot.

This has long been both a strong and weak point of the Linux ecosystem. On one hand, you can say "I don't want no stinkin' systemd, GNU libc, and Xorg!" and go with runit, musl, and Wayland if you want and most things still work (well, mostly anyway), but on the other hand you run in to all sort of cases where it works and then doesn't, or works on one Linux distro and not the other, etc.

I don't think there's clean solution to any of these issues. Compatibility is the one of the hard problems in computers because there is no solution that will satisfy everyone and there are multiple reasonable positions, all with their own trade-offs.