Also 1996 was 24 years ago. DirectX has had significant overhauls where I doubt any comparison from so long ago has any merit.
DirectX is very much alive. Apple has deprecated OpenGL support.
Vulkan was made to be a better OpenGL as well.
Also wasn't OpenGL considered too bloated for embedded devices and they created OpenGLES?
I find that such statement always lack a well-stated assumption/goal: i.e. superior "for what"?
It's easy for most of us to say a Ferrari is superior to RAV4... but if we don't explicitly scope-limit, there's going to be some disappointed IKEA shoppers :D
In terms of Unix, I use AIX full time at work for servers (let's not go there;), Linux on some servers and desktops. But I'm certainly not going to install Linux for my wife or mother in law - I'm a proponent and an enthusiast but not a masochist and I do not want to constantly fix and explain the differences.
Perhaps less controversially, for my gaming & photo-editing PC, Windows "just works". I don't worry about install, drivers, maintenance, distros, anything. It's been rock stable through Win7-Win10 updates from 2013 through now with no reinstalls or hassle.
Is that a personal anecdote - of course it is; but if we're going to make sweeping "it's superior" statements, I feel we must state the scope/goal. So very very very few things in life are superior for everything to everybody :-/
"John Carmack now thinks DirectX is better than OpenGL"
https://www.bit-tech.net/news/gaming/pc/carmack-directx-bett...
Even the OpenGL hero no longer buys into it.
> 'It is really just inertia that keeps us on OpenGL at this point,'
They likely don't believe this. Any sane technical person should believe that a Unix-based OS (or something better) that can run Windows programs would be superior. They just need to keep everyone in that awful crabpot because it gets them money.
Same with DirectX vs. OpenGL, historically: "In December of 1996, Carmack released a document that outlined his grievances with the Direct3D API. He outlined the differences between the APIs by comparing the code required by both APIs to draw a triangle to the screen; OpenGL required only four lines of code in his samples, while Direct3D required a plethora of commands and assignations.
Carmack's blunt way of explaining things was so damaging to Direct3D's reputation that Direct3D developer Alex St. John posted a follow up in February of 1997 defending his API and strangely enough for Microsoft admitting its flaws."[0]
0: https://openglbook.com/chapter-0-preface-what-is-opengl.html