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On Linux, your language run-time can call into the kernel directly with itsown syscall assembly language stubs. The kernel interface is something public and stable, independently of the C library (of which there are several available, incidentally: glibc, uClibc, musl, ...).

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Right, I understand that. You can do the same on Windows too.

My point was that most languages' runtimes don't do that, not that they can't do that.

I think NT syscalls can change. https://j00ru.vexillium.org/syscalls/nt/64/

You're meant to go through ntdll.dll, but even that interface is documented as private/unstable.

You're meant to go through published interfaces, such as the ones in kernel32.dll. ntdll is an implementation detail and so are syscalls.

You're absolutely right, they can.

And they have.

But the reality is more like this: https://xkcd.com/1172/

Because then they would face additional portability hurdles that they can avoid by targeting POSIX. Even decent porting to Windows is possible (speaking of which) via POSIX.

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