[fsloth]

Is your argument that Microsoft is evil because not all people who use computers are actually interested in how they work?

It's not apparent to me why business people or lawyers should be also computer science aficionados. Should I be a telecoms engineer to use a phone or a combustion specialist to drive a car?

[Grishnakh]

I think the idea is MS employees are hamstrung by having to use an inferior OS because it's the one their employer makes. It's like being a Honda employee who needs to tow a heavy load for some company project, and while a big Ford diesel F-350 would be perfect for the job, you're not allowed to use that and have to use a Honda Ridgeline instead, but the load is beyond the Ridgeline's towing capacity so you either have to use two Ridgelines (which is probably illegal and technically difficult), or just overload one Ridgeline (which is both illegal and very dangerous). Or, you're an employee of Freightliner, and you need to go buy something from a local business, but you have to use a company vehicle. But the company vehicles are all Freightliner semi-tractors, and they don't have any regular cars in their fleet because they don't make cars. So you're expected to drive a semi-tractor to some local business to pick up something, and the local business doesn't even have a parking lot large enough for you to get the truck in.

Best tool for the job, and all that. Now arguably, Windows is indeed the best tool for business type people working at MS, due to the application software, the network environment they're in, etc.. However, for researchers doing heavy computing, I would say it's definitely not, it's quite inferior. There's a reason most of the supercomputers, render farms, etc. now run Linux, and it's not just license cost.