Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Windows does it, too, I guess No, it generates thumbnails outside the main UI thread; sometimes it's a bit slow in so doing, but I've never seen it hang an Explorer window, regardless of file size or quantity. (Windows 7, but it would astonish me to learn that 10 displays a regression here.)
> No, it generates thumbnails outside the main UI thread; sometimes it's a bit slow in so doing, but I've never seen it hang an Explorer window, As an example of the contrary, I've seen misbehaving third party thumbnail-providers cause Windows explorer to crash entirely. Only way to "fix" it was to install the software which added the thumbnail-provider, or go into the folder via cmd.exe and rename the file you "knew…
If the third-party thumbnailer is implemented as a shared library (DLL) that Explorer is configured to load, then sure, a segfault or similar in the library will kill the whole process. Not sure how that's Microsoft's fault. Sure, there's an argument that loading a library is the wrong model, but there's a performance tradeoff, especially given Windows' relatively slow IPC capabilities. The real surprise here is that Linux manages to be comparably slow, but when you complicate a simple, fast IPC model with dbus and a million other middleware layers, I suppose it starts to make more sense.