That is goalpost-shifting. You started this by critiquing Linux' drivers and security patches, you don't get to carve out excuses for Windows.
> but most static-linked applications tended to work fine
Sure. Most static-linked applications tend to work fine on Linux and macOS with a modern Wine environment. It's a moot point.
NVIDIA abandoning legacy drivers had to happen eventually, but it isn't an excuse for Linux bricking the hardware. The vestigial deprecated areas of the kernel is covered in foundation courses to help explain what mess to avoid, as the rule to never break user space hid a lot of the uglier bodges. In terms of code volume, linux source has been mostly driver code for quite a few years.
Trying to mix commercial blob binaries in a FOSS project is rarely stable over the long term (hence why recent RTX and AMD open drivers is very important.) Yet how many android devices are in garbage or recycling heaps? Answer, _all_ of them eventually, and usually in less than 3 years on average.
Linux will also soon no longer include 32bit x86 support if upstream planning goes as planned. It also had to happen eventually.
It should be noted the CUDA enabled drivers on windows is quite a bit more complex than the windows kernel itself. Yes it is still an awful adware OS, but it will still let you run 10 year old titles mostly without an issue. YMMV =3
1. outdated legacy OS that has to rely on a limited subset of flatpack, snap, containerization, and CVEs...
2. modern OS with unfix-able driver issues, NVIDIA wanting people to buy a new GPU, and broken abandonware drivers
I'd say a bricked GPU is appropriate terminology, as your screen will be forced into 800x600 by the hardware recovery mode and be functionally useless. For Linux users the only solution is to buy a compatible GPU, and or throw away the laptop/tablet/phone devices that can't run legacy Windows drivers.
When the collapse cycle of spiral development happens: a lot of Applications are also lost in the process, as the original publishers may not be maintaining an application a decade later. dkms with mystery Blobs would fall into the same out-of-band classification.
It is funnier people are upset about slop articles nonsense assertions.
The question about whether something is qualitatively "good" is meaningless if its demonstrably broken. =3
Abandonware popularity is a relatively recent phenomenon, as hardware became cheap enough to be disposable... and SaaS/DRM hit the entertainment industry.
Most people are not going to port AAA title dependencies to ancient hardware, but the "Doom will run" on just about anything meme is usually still true. =3