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>> Video games almost exclusively run on Windows.

A decade ago this was true but today this is utter bullshit. There is a 20% of games that are exclusively Windows, sure.

You wanna play vidya sure have a dedicated Windows box for that, no one will judge you for the Windows part specifically.

>> I am a full time Linux user and still miss how convenient installing things like drivers

If you're buying hardware that doesn't already have drivers in the Linux kernel tree, or you don't have the skills to use DKMS, you should go back to using Windows only. Please uninstall all/any Linux you have.

>> It's not hard to configure Windows to be safe

Tell us we can't take anything you post here seriously without telling us we can't take anything you post here seriously.

>> and yet they are stuck on Windows because CAD software is stuck on Windows

I have supported CAD software in business environments that had Windows OS as a dependency. We still virtualized Windows and used PCI pass through. It really wasn't that hard to set up. All the Linux, some Unix (BSD) were managed with Salt States (way simpler than AD).

With hard ramsonwares from Eastern Europe most fortune 500 will consider changing into anything non-Windows based (at least for servers and office work such as documentation and management) because of their own sanity.

Hasn't been my experience. With managed systems on azure life is fairly easy from a sysop perspective. Getting ransomware is more of a strategic problem than an operating system problem at that scale. Personally, I prefer Linux servers. But my motivations aren't the same as other companies. For example, I really don't like the idea of license fees or vendor lock-in. In exchange, however, my Linux servers take more effort to secure properly with many more foot-guns available via configuration file.

>> my Linux servers take more effort to secure properly with many more foot-guns available via configuration file.

Yikes. The hands that typed this should not have admin/root access to servers.

"Yikes" really puts me off for some reason.

I don't. Except this isn't an uncommon opinion. There are literally tomes of knowledge (available via nostarch for example) describing firewall configuration and many other aspects of server administration. My linux desk reference is the size of an encyclopedia.The PfSense book is similarly massive (though that's more of a BSD thing).

In Windows Server's defense most common fixes are available either via console (azure) or through a series of often very simple clicks. Microsoft really nailed the user-friendly GUI-driven experience to setting up a server (mostly) safely and I think that shows in their adoption.

I am not a server admin because they aren't paid enough for all the crap they have to deal with.

A sane netfilter or pf config is like three to five lines which any noob can find with a web search, or "ufw status allow ssh ; ufw enable".

Netfilter and PF are capable of doing actual router stuff, you can just skip over that section if you want to.

The "GUI driven" argument is why businesses should just skip over hiring mediocre IT people who don't really "get" servers and just do SaaS. Kinda like how "just use GSuite" replaced all those MS Exchange ""experts"".

Apologizing for how much Windows sucks... go back to reading Wired and Popular Mechanics. This is Hacker News.