For the last 15 years or so i've earned my money doing Linux stuff. Before then I was doing VB/.NET/SQL Server etc. January 2016 I worked at a secure facility that wanted an entire system doing malware analysis. The bare servers were running Linux, but some of the software used Windows so there were Windows VMs there. Usual KVM stuff. Bear in mind this is a closed system and the Windows VMs were ephemeral, i.e. had t…
>Windows is done Your use case is very niche compared to how MS makes most of its money on Windows licenses. Windows isn't going anywhere until it's no longer pre-loaded on every machine, enterprise customers stop buying it completely, and Linux is much more user friendly on the desktop. I don't disagree with anything else you said, admin'ing windows boxes is a terrible experience.
Linux is much more user friendly than Windows. This is completely arbitrary metric, I am very comfortable using GNOME, KDE, awesomeWM and i3 but whenever someone hands me some Win 7 or Win 10 I just can't figure out anything for a while. Stuff starts jumping around and there are literally ads built into OS which annoys me. Windows may be user friendly for 90% of the population BUT this is only because it is "pre-loaded on every machine" as you put it. That is the only reason people find Windows easier to use.