[lvillani]

Foreword: I've been using various flavors of Linux for a good chunk of the last decade (since 2001) and totally ignored Windows until last year, so I am no Windows fanboy.

2. This may be true for the good old cmd.exe but.. have you tried PowerShell? I've been playing with PowerShell 2 on Windows 7 and found that it leaves little to be desired. It is self-documenting (a-la Emacs). It can be extended using .NET. You can pipe entire objects instead of unstructured text streams. Coming from a strong UNIX background I /am/ impressed and actually think it is way better than a POSIX-compatible shell. I even wrote a couple of scripts [1] to post-configure my Windows 7 installation in a similar way I do on Linux with Puppet [2].

7. This is true even for Windows, in my experience. Every time I do a Google search for troubleshooting I am directed to Microsoft's Knowledge Base or the (free) MSDN website.

11. AFAIK, you can uninstall the GUI component on Windows Server 2008 (you will be left with a heavily stripped down GUI, without the usual graphical shell)

12. It may be a pain but at least it is a consistent way to store configuration settings and it is widely adopted as such. Compare it with the plethora of different configuration file formats used on a typical Linux/Unix workstation (Mac OS X being the exception since they seem to consistently use XML-based property lists almost everywhere). Each system has its strengths and weaknesses but I wouldn't call the Windows Registry "a mess".

I don't comment on your other points either because I don't have enough first-hand experience with it (1, 4, 5, 9, 10) or because I partially agree with you (3, 6, 8).

Anyway, it seems that you're a coming from a strong UNIX mindset and that you try to forcefully shoehorn it to Windows (3rd and 4th points), along with (my guess) lack of experience in certain areas of Windows administration (2nd point).

As for me: I was really impressed by Windows 7. Some things I really miss are a decent Window Manager (but this is true of every commercial OS I've ever tried) and a good software management solution (either a decent, standardized, package manager, an AppDir mechanism like OS X or both).

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  [1]: https://github.com/lvillani/powershell-2
  [2]: http://puppetlabs.com/

[rbanffy]

> I've been using various flavors of Linux for a good chunk of the last decade (since 2001) and totally ignored Windows until last year, so I am no Windows fanboy.

You know there is a fallacy there, don't you? It's perfectly possible to ignore something for decades and still fall in love with it later. I've seen lots of Windows and Linux fanboys fall for OSX and become very annoying in the process.

I can believe you are no Windows fanboy without you presenting credentials.

[lvillani]

> [...] It's perfectly possible to ignore something for decades and still fall in love with it later.

> [...] I can believe you are no Windows fanboy without you presenting credentials.

You're right. Sometimes I believe it is better to point out where I am coming from (especially when replying to the "anti-something" kind of posts) to avoid to be seen as a fanboy. I always try to be as unbiased as possible. Maybe I'm just being overly considerate.

[kamaal]

it seems that you're a coming from a strong UNIX mindset and that you try to forcefully shoehorn it to Windows

I come from backend server based mindset and find it difficult to shoehorn the concepts there to a desktop operating system. For no justifiable reason. I still see no reason why I must use Windows on my backend.

I fail to see the need to endlessly shoehorn Windows for all my backend tasks(powershell included) when I can get everything of that in a Vanilla linux installation.

If you say Windows is good desktop operating system, you are correct in your own right. But literally there is no comparison between the UNIX and Windows on the server end.

On the similar lines, there are many things in Windows (like directory share on network, printer settings) which are far more easier to use than on Linux.

[estel]

To say that Windows is a perfectly competent and acceptable server OS that is the equal of Linux for the majority of usecases is a different proposition from saying that you must use Windows on [your] backend, or should shoehorn Windows for all [your] backend tasks