Stability maybe, but compatibility?!?!?! I'm pulling my hair out quite often because of this....
To be fair, the vast majority of people aren't running software which is 10 plus years old. If you absolutely must run ancient software then running an ancient os is perfectly sensible. But you can't expect the developers to cripple the OS for everyone else by maintaining compatibility with every little program that hardly anyone is running. With XP, Microsoft did the right thing for the vast majority of people. It was never going to please everyone, but I think it came as close as it could ever have done.