I/O completion ports was always my go to answer for this but perhaps recent async improvements have helped close that gap?

[see also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11865760 for a lively discussion on this topic]

Some features that Windows did better than Linux/Unix:

* IOCP is loads better than epoll

* SEH is a better model for synchronous processor instructions than Unix signals

* Windows allows some better/easier ways to introspect or modify other processes than Linux does. You can't change another processes memory map on Linux, whereas you can on Windows. And /proc is a pretty poor interface for getting process data, IMHO.

Not OP, but I do prefer how Windows handles high memory loads (by not becoming utterly unresponsive and forcing me to force reboot my system). It’s 2019. I don’t get how this kind of OS behavior is acceptable. Linux is the only environment where I have to micromanage my memory because I’m afraid I’ll hit that memory limit where everything stops working.