> Not only does Linux have its own drivers, they can unbrick the damaged devices.

Thanks for that. I haven't used my counterfeit FTDI cable in probably 2 years, but I was trying to figure out how I had not encountered any issues with it.

I only happened to find out it was counterfeit due to the fact that I purchased it via a link in a forum recommended by "some user", and later, when I had this stupid looking cable and no idea where to plug the ends into my Pi, I revisited the forum, scrolled down a few replies, and found out that all of the "FTDI" products from the manufacturer of my cable were fakes.

Once I read that, I had intended on replacing it, but decided to wire it up anyway to see if it would work. I run OpenSUSE Tumbleweed on my main computer, and I don't remember having to do anything unusual, or encountering any warnings/errors at the time trying to use it[0], I'm guessing that's why...

[0] I was trying to connect into a headless RPi and that was the most convenient way sometimes.

These days, Windows 10 finally supports the standard CDC ACM protocol for USB over serial as do most other operating systems, but as I recall even Microsoft seemed to struggle getting the drivers for that to work reliably and not trip over various gotchas on the Windows side of things. It just genuinely seems to be difficult to develop good drivers for these devices.

Also Windows isn’t the only system out there - I suspect that being able to be used in various embedded solutions is also important.