> Let me restate the problem: I set my system-wide window background to black and text color to white. An app developer sets a label to dark gray text and default/transparent background.
Yeah, that's a moronic developer. So what? Moronic developers have always existed, and still do. You can't blame toolkits or OSes for their existence.
> Classic Win32 apps need to implement their own dark mode with custom themes/controls (like Explorer does).
Only since Windows was enshittified from ~Windows 8. (Though the first signs came in late W7.) Before that, you set whatever systemwide theme you wanted -- Light, Dark, Hilarious Clowncar -- in the Control Panel, and all apps followed that.
Well, almost all... Some, then many, fuckwit companies refused to follow the user's system-wide settings, and of course now nobody does because there are none. (Ironically, among the first offenders, and certainly the most influential, was Microsoft itself.)
But old Windows was far better at these things than current, and AFAICT at least as good as, possibly better than, any current Linux DE.
