[bachmeier]

Maybe not all of his claims are 100% accurate, but I largely agree that saying you should just use [whatever] probably won't work, based on my experience teaching undergraduate and graduate students to program. Windows just makes life so much harder and there are too many Windows users to ignore it.

My solution was to run my own server and have students log in from a browser. It's an order of magnitude easier to do the work of running a server than to take on the burden of supporting student-run Windows installations. Someone that hasn't been in that position is usually thinking in terms of what works for them or maybe the average student. You have to support all of them. The last 20% of students, who may turn out to be stars once things are set up, are going to give up in frustration if they struggle with the setup. Thankfully, these days there are good options where other people run the server for you.