NOTE: My experiences with windows goes only as far as Windows 95/98.
Virtually all of windows is an admirable engineering achievement with some shonky parts. Not faulty, but shonky. I believe fast and loose thinking pervades Microsoft. Right from it's corporate strategies and tactics, right down to it's engineering practices (I see some fundamental faults that are patched up and worked around, instead of fixed). A fundamentally bad way to do things. The fault is perpetuated into the future and they are committed to fast and loose work-arounds, growing ones. And then, right at the superficial level - Windows Help - is where I see too much baby-talk and much mind-boggling non-information. Example: you see a configuration option that you need to make an entry. "Primary DNS" You say "Hmmm.... what's this about?" You invoke "Help". It says "Enter the primary DNS here."
I won't expose you to my ungentlemanly response. But this sort of crap is everywhere ...
Everywhere except, it must be appreciated, except for the more involved help. Although that is still taylored to the computer illiterate, but it is as helpful as can be expected. And that's quite a demanding task to meet, but over the years it has driven me "up the wall" more times than I could count.
When you become computer literate you may see this as being kept in the dark and fed on patronising bullshit.
... so, I can't think much of Windows.
But that's not all. Windows decides for you what little things should be done. Again this is catering to the computer illitterate, but it drives me "round the bend". My friend would disconnect from his ISP and for some reason known only to Bill Gates, a dialog box would pop up asking if he would like to connect to an ISP he had used in the past. He'd answer "No" ... and another invitation would pop up. Would he like to connect to another ISP he had used further in the past? ...... And do you think there would be any clear way to stop those bloody popups? Where do they come from? How can you do anything about them if you don't even know where they are comming from? So he asked me to come around to see if I could do anything (I'm computer litterate). And after some rummaging around and detective work I got rid of those wonderful Windows features.
You try saving a file in a format that its more likely to be readable by other people's computers. A sensible thing to do, but will Windows let you do it easily? Extra work that you seem to be stuck with all the time, and why? What could justify this? There must be something in it for Bill Gates.
The Microsoft trait that really turns me against them, with a passion, are the "features" that riddle Windows and seem to be engineered to suck you into more Microsoft buying. I see so many of them as so devious, and a contemptible, manipulative interference into whatever we want to do on the computer.
All this wonderful work done by Microsoft and again and again I end up feeling like I've been patronised and manipulated .
Linux is quite a contrast ... LIKE FREEDOM.
No longer do these "features" keep getting in your face and making it difficult to do sensible things, which may subtly deviate from Microsoft's interests.
Back to the suspected origins of Windows compared to Linux:
I would expect that the origins of MS-DOS gave rise to a plethora of profound inadequacies which, under the influence Microsofts engineering philosophy, have been maintained till the present. I remember when these new-fangled personal computers started to burst onto the public scene we were all looking around for operating systems for them. I understand that Microsoft bought a disk operating system which they then called MS-DOS, and that became the big thing at that time, till their Windows 95 took over.
MS-DOS would have been designed to make those PC's work for the bloke at home. It was wonderfully small and booted in "no time". There were only a few essential programs with it, and nothing else. It would take up only a small fraction of the space of a disk.
There was no such thing as networking and the endless engineering considerations that come with that world ... and no such thing as large computers. 64k of memory and two floppy disk drives was the top of the line PC. MS-DOS was just for the humble home user who wanted to make his PC do some things.
Today we want our computers to do big things. MS-DOS had to be continually changed. Ways of working around it's incapabilities had to be found. And "found" they were. I'm quite uncomfortable with the idea that MS-DOS might have "evolved" to meet todays demands. I feel that patches and "work-arounds" are Microsofts stock in trade.
Linux seems to have originated from the other end of the computer world. Linus Torvalds worked on large systems and then he decided to make an operating system for home users. And Linux would have had another liniage of legacies that came from the world of large systems engineering. Doing things right. At the conception stage of Linux development so inadequacies wouldn't appear later on. And if they did appear, they would be dealt with properly instead of some workaround which developers became committed to from then on.
So I tend to believe that Microsoft works with legacies of incapabilities while Linux works with legacies of capabilities ...
Why doesn't anyone use it then?
Because it's a product of the people - not a product of a corporation who wants make heaps of money. No-one marketed Linux. It was just there ... for free ... somewhere. You had to find it. Whereas Microsoft stuff is in your face. Everyone's faces.
PS: Many software companies have built their own distributions on Linux and that's the basis of their business. Half the price and twice as good as the competition.
Good? How can it be?
Well, people make all sorts of Microsoft compatible things. It's all in how it works. A friend of mine was pissed of when someone unplugged his Linux computer before the year was out. It had run continuously for that long ... ..... without having to be rebooted!
No more lost data, anoying abnormalities and crashes.