>then I do try it and it turns out it's a pain in the ass to make it work on Windows and I spend more time fiddling with it than I do working with it.

The first few times I did it on Windows it was a pain (almost a decade ago). You had to install some dependencies manually. But the last few times I did it it really was a straightforward install, with everything working out of the box (except any commands that rely on GNU tools like grep). I may have been using an unofficial port - sorry but I don't remember the link.

My Windows Emacs is almost identical to my Linux Emacs. You wouldn't know you're not in Linux. That, for me, is the joy of Emacs - it behaves the same on both OS's.