Well then, can't one also say Windows hasn't changed much since XP, which was one of the last major times CMD.exe changed?

cmd.exe is only some mostly deprecated tool that was only used by power-users to do some specific tasks.

The Windows analogue of some UNIX shell is rather explorer.exe, and this is exactly what my Windows 8 example refers to.

> cmd.exe is only some mostly deprecated tool that was only used by power-users to do some specific tasks.

And bash isn't "some mostly deprecated tool that was only used by power-users"? Think people are mostly using bash for their interface on their steam decks and Android phones and what not? Do most people boot Ubuntu straight into text mode or immediately launch a DE? Grandma using lynx to browse Facebook?

Explorer is a desktop environment. Which, yes, the desktop environment landscape in Linux these days looks pretty different from what was around 20 or so years ago.

You're constantly moving the goal posts and comparing apples and oranges here. Originally saying GNU/Linux user interfaces, then shifted to only text shells, and then comparing those text shells to entire desktop environments while ignoring the forest of constantly changing desktop environments of Linux.

And even then, most of those bat scrips I wrote since XP that only use system tools and commands will largely all still run and do the same thing today. I can't say the same for the same time frame on most major Linux distros that have changed out large parts of their internal tooling.