At the time, I couldn't imagine how anyone thought that putting this sort of thing onto their flagship server OS was a good idea.
I realized about then that Windows was lost, MS didn't have the desire to promote it, and it became clear that their only real play was Azure and spyware.
Sure, but it is still free, and even if you wanted to avoid them, you could go with Alma or Rocky, or even Ubuntu Server, all of which are also free.
> Adding an extra box to that is easier than adding a single Linux box.
Sure, managing both Windows and Linux servers is more difficult than managing just one OS is. That doesn't make Windows easier to manage than Linux, though.