[slightlycuban]

> I don't get the general negativity around Windows.

For me, it's that the system is completely closed and opaque, and there routinely isn't much I can do about it.

Not saying the other guys are perfect--far from it--but at least I can take a crack at changing things. Windows is the most closed-source OS I run (more so than OSX). When it doesn't do The Right Thing, I can get very negative.

And to your point, I feel I've learned much more from OSes that expose the internals and let me mess with them, than those that don't.