Linux distributions put together the products of a a huge and very loosely organised community, and I never heard it was anywhere as horrible as these (old) horror stories of Windows development. Is it perhaps the case that the (enforced) loose coupling of open source development prevents the aggregation of build complexity and intermingled dependencies?

> Is it perhaps the case that the (enforced) loose coupling of open source development prevents the aggregation of build complexity and intermingled dependencies?

I think that's a huge help. I think that it's also helpful that the system is intended to be compiled by a bunch of other people and the code is released with that in mind.