One constant, though: over the past 10 years, I've moved my life further and further into the Cygwin command line, so that I'm insulated from the frippery going on at the edges; with my setup, I'm approximately as at home on Linux, Solaris, Mac and Windows. I'm not optimistic based on what I've seen of Windows 8's direction.
Or a BSD.
Linux GUIs (Android only partially excepted), in my experience, are amateur in the worst way: dilettantish, faddish, inconsistent, incomplete, and replaced with something new and differently broken long before any stability emerges. I also really dislike the UI scaling: the font selection, border sizes, etc., KDE / Gnome defaults are all too widely spaced for my taste, and customizing it so that it would be acceptable seems to be a full-time job. As it is with Windows, I had to install Classic Shell to get a usable explorer tree view and start menu I could live with.
There isn't a single graphical app available exclusively for Linux that I'm jealous of. And for command-line / server stuff that's Linux-only, I'm perfectly happy with ssh running in mintty on Windows.
You don't like the KDE/Gnome defaults and don't want to spend time customizing. Fonts? Install from package manager. Themes? Install from package manager. Or download from gnome-look.org and install using gnome-tweak-tool. Yet you go out of your way to tweak Windows to your liking.
I don't have driver issues, but that's from researching purchases before buying.
And what about package managers? Cygwin has a package manager; combined with cygports, it has just about everything I need, resolves dependencies just fine. I also mirror both repositories locally, where the relatively smaller sizes (18G + 19G) pay off, and I don't have to be worried about internet connectivity to install an app.
Package managers on Linux (I run Ubuntu Netbook and Debian), Solaris (I run Nexenta NCP3) have given me plenty of headaches, mostly from packages disappearing from repositories, or repository servers going away. There's been times I've just wanted to e.g. update my text editor to the latest version, and started pulling on a thread that led to needing a new kernel - that never happens with Cygwin. Stuff starts failing to install because dependencies are no longer available. It's probably because I don't update enough, which is in turn because I don't want to break something that works (none of these machines are public facing); but I can go years between Cygwin updates without issues.
Look at the information density of Windows explorer details view - http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_2GNT8vlZj48/SK54tc5PEzI/AAAAAAAAAC... - I could never get Nautilus to display data with this density, listview items always had huge margins around every item in the details view, like in this picture: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NwFlqMh7ZG0/Ty3Qrbk2gqI/AAAAAAAAAd...
Driver issues: I don't have any, and I don't have to research anything! When I need a new machine, I just buy the latest hardware (for example, currently I have an Nvidia 680GTX), download the latest driver from the vendor, and it works. Linux? Just look at this fun here: http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTA4O...
That's what multiple workspaces are for. Tiling WMs are especially great when working with large and/or multiple monitors. You're not forced to always use tile mode, you can easily switch between layouts via hotkey: http://xmonad.org/tour.html
Also, a lot of smart people disagree with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3964530
> <Package management>
You don't want to update for fear of breaking something, yet you admit your problems stem from never updating.
Have you thought about Debian Stable/Ubuntu LTS releases?
Are you really complaining that Debian/Ubuntu package availability? Even if the main servers disappeared, you're ignoring the fact that there's plenty of mirrors. What happens if microsoft.com disappeared?
> <file browser density>
Hit Ctrl -: http://i.imgur.com/0xWSw.png
Explorer looks less dense, doesn't have tabs, split panes, copy queuing, real file modification tracking (Explorer requires F5 to see changes). It doesn't auto-adjust column widths, look at file size as an example. Not to mention the explorer.exe process doubles as the WM, so when it crashes all windows get reset.
Nautilus has a better hotkeys. Alt + Home to jump back to home directory, F9 to see symlinks to common directories, Ctrl + H to toggle hidden files, Ctrl + 1/2/3 to change views.
You could have not chosen a worse program to compare between the two OSes.
> <driver issues>
That's a result of market dominance, not anything intrinsically different between Windows and Linux. Congrats!
Have you tried installing a clean version Windows 7 on a laptop? Have you noticed how many proprietary drivers you have to download and install? I did this a few months ago with a new X220 and spent 4 hours finding, downloading, and installing drivers. If Lenovo.com disappeared, I'd be SOL.
Take any laptop and clean install Ubuntu and Windows without internet access. You will have a better working system with Ubuntu.
Due to lack of proprietary drivers, Linux actually has much better support for older hardware. Not to mention a large source of Windows BSODs are due to low quality, 3rd party drivers running in the kernel.
I can have multiple workspaces on Windows too, but it doesn't suit my work style. Don't care that smart people disagree with me; there isn't a person in the world with whom I agree on everything. I like to think the things I do differently make me better at some things than most people.
Updates: I don't want to break anything, that's correct. Updating for the sake of updating is an unnecessary risk; but you have it backwards. It's the experiences of broken updates that cause me not to update more often. If MS.com disappears, nothing breaks. I can still install all my stuff, without even going online. Even activation can be done on the phone.
Explorer density: that screenshot is actually from a post complaining about the lack of density in Vista's version of Explorer, you can read about it here: http://blog.barrkel.com/2008/08/venting-on-vista.html ; but I think you may be mistaken in what you think I use Explorer for. I use it almost exclusively for browsing filesystem contents, and for editing more complex Windows ACLs; I use the command-line for actual moving, copying, etc. Furthermore, Explorer file change tracking does actually work; part of my complaint in that blog post was how they changed file tracking in Vista such that it didn't wait for F5 to resort. I'm not a fan of auto-resizing of columns; it's a feature I'd turn off.
I have a way of working with Windows in conjunction with Cygwin that I've honed over 10+ years. I don't need F9 to see symlinks to common directories; common directories are symlinks in my Cygwin home directory, and in the rare occasions I want to browse them, I open them by typing "start ~/docs" or similar - but I usually don't browse them, because I mostly use Explorer for browsing unfamiliar files. My settings for Explorer is to never hide hidden files; my ls alias does. Things are set up and complement one another in just the way I like them.
Yes, market dominance; I can get the best of both worlds by using the dominant OS along with all the free tools provided by Cygwin. This is a good thing, selfishly speaking.
Offline Linux? I've tried that numerous times, particularly from 1996 through to 2002, when I gave up on Linux for a long spell and doubled down on Cygwin. The biggest pain? Needing to install an app, going into work where there was internet access, downloading a .deb or .rpm, then trying to install it - without luck, because it needs dependencies, recursively. It was a nightmare. With Windows, the apps I need are generally .zip, .exe or .msi, and include everything.
Every laptop I've ever bought, I've reinstalled the OS from scratch; I've never owned a Windows PC with an OS I didn't install myself. I wouldn't touch the drivers from Lenovo for hardware I could find anywhere else; OEM drivers are usually out of date, and often include "utilities" that you don't need, with a half-dozen icons in the notification area and another dozen services running in the background. It's the OEM setup that make me clean reinstall the OS.
First thing to do when reinstalling the OS on a system is to collect a manifest of all the hardware in it, and locate drivers before the install rather than after. I used to work as a computer hardware technician before I became a developer; I've built, upgraded and fixed hundreds of PCs, reinstalled MS OSes countless times.
Biggest source of Windows BSODs in my experience? Bad RAM :) (Probably followed by failing or corrupt HDD causing kernel paging errors. Reasonably rare to be a bad driver - in my experience; usually poor drivers are associated with cheap hardware.) Lack of drivers for older hardware has never been a problem; I generally never run hardware more than 18 months old.
<rant>
Linux support for new hardware is so crappy, it's unbelievable. I couldn't even launch ubuntu GUI setup because it preloads noveau, which causes kernel panics on my video card (nvidia gtx 560 ti). You have to spend hours in google to get anything to work, and it's embarrassing and humiliating at the same time.
Also, cough, fonts, cough.
</rant>