Just choose the language/technology of your choice.
That's the top of the iceberg.
Realizing I could have as many OS's as I wanted was part of why Linux feels like the good parts of DOS - it reminded me that it's my computer to do whatever I want with. Don't get me wrong, nothing against Windows I'm just headed back to my roots and WIMP interfaces have outlived their attraction even if Metro is a great improvement.
I think OP biggest problem is the fact that he used only the "main" (as "more common") tools of his os, ignoring that you can easily run almost any tecnology stack over it without the need of change the os itself
That last one is especially frustrating because I'll spend three hours getting tool XYZ to compile on cygwin, and then just when the finish line is in sight I find "BTW /dev/null is unsupported in cygwin, and tool XYZ cannot run without it". I mean, /dev/null is supported, that's just an example- it's always something fundamental that you would never imagine doesn't work.
The fact that is a "second class citizen" does not mean that it is less usable than in linux/unix, obviously if we exclude the first workarounds to make it works