[dman]

I see them benefiting immensely. A big problem that Microsoft has is that once you start going down rabbit holes on Windows the number of people out there who have a clue is vanishingly small. So for systems programming on Windows there is very little coverage online. Opening Windows up will broaden the number of people who understand the platform on a deep level.

[throwawayish]

Earlier in my life I did a lot of Windows system-level programming, including some minor driver development, and now I'm practically exclusively on the #nix bunch, sometimes doing similar stuff.

I can't say that there is a disparity. If anything, the parts that are documented are usually better documented in the Windows world, and there are very good books about most components. (To be fair I never read a book on anything unix apart from Lion's). There is a large amount of stuff online for either, but I often have the feeling that correct examples are less frequently found for, esp., Linux.

[simias]

I've never done kernel work on Windows but on Linux at least you can dig into the source code to figure out how stuff works when the documentation is lacking. I suppose that's what the parent was talking about.

[yoz-y]

Not giving the source code forces you to write a better documentation though. In an ideal world, both would be available but personally I prefer a good documentation rather than source code diving.

[dogma1138]

Windows System Internals are probably the best documented in the world, MSDN alone is a treasure trove of information and there are countless books on the matter.

And unlike some other platforms what is written tends to match reality, and stay relevant for a long time (for better or for worse).