[rakoo]

I think you're actually agreeing even more with the author. Windows has everything you need for most of the usages you would have, all of it is integrated and the out of the box experience is functional. Linux at the time was a big mess of different softwares with different guarantees of working, maintained by duct-tape bash scripts and custom configuration files. If you wanted something, you had to work to have it.

[acdha]

This was only true for end-user desktops. For technical work and servers, Windows had a few built-in things and a ton of things which could, with significant work, be installed — nothing like a simple apt-get install for years, which is why so many places switched rather than paying people to spend hours clicking through installers and then troubleshooting why it failed.

[aiisjustanif]

What did Windows server have for you out of the box vs a CentOS box?