Once upon a time I'd argue that the Unix system is better than certain other proprietary systems. Long before that I would've argued the exact opposite... Current iterations of those proprietary systems only serve to reinforce my belief; each new version offering little over the previous than cartoons to insult the user's intelligence and preinstalled spyware to "increase your productivity." They appeal to children in much the same way corny video-arcade games appealed to my generation. Douglas Adams explains the problem in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
...of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products: 'it is very easy to be
blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement
you get from getting them to work at all.' In other words - and this is
the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's
galaxywide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are
completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.
I spent my childhood (the 1980s) poking (literally) with BASIC and some machine code. I did some machine code programming and BASIC on the Commodore 64 (6510 CPU). I also did BASIC programming and simple robotics stuff on Apple II machines in 7 & 8 grades. I spent a reasonable portion of time with Macintosh systems in 7 & 8 grade and highschool. I didn't become familiar with DOS and Windows until College.
My first computer was the Commodore 64C running C64 Wedge and the Graphical Environment Operating System. I used many types of computers throughout school. Mostly Apple computers, of course. Highschool brought a stone-age regression where I was forced to deal with 8088s running some black and grey thing they called DOS. This was limited to typing ECHO OFF (I know what you're thinking; I don't know why either.) and whatever command was required to start the stupid game of the day. My experience with Windows was limited to Prodigy on my father's 486 and some faculty computers in highschool. Somehow, the highschool bought a few (really nice) PowerMacs; the PowerMacs were used by the school newspaper for which I was a photographer. College brought some remarkably informative courses on low level computer fundamentals, real DOS instruction, and some Windows fundamentals. I was told I needed to know DOS, so I went along with the suggestion. Truly, one does need to know something intimately to see how deficient it is.
Well, they say I need to know DOS and Windows. I bought a PC in April 1996. Well, actually I started buying pieces of a PC in Dec 1995. I had enough pieces to use the thing in April 1996. I might as well learn something if I'm going to spend all of this money. I became intimate with the workings, failings, and general structure of DOS and Windows. I had Windows 3.1 installed for a total of 8 days before I became totally disgusted. It was a near-indentical clone of the GEOS system I had on my Commodore 64 ten years previous. This simply had to go. I got a copy of the just-released Windows 95. This made much more sense and allowed me to utilize the computer to a much greater extent. I drifted from Windows 95 to Windows NT to Windows 98 to Windows 2000 all the while learning all that I could remember.
Illumination came in the form of my building a second computer after upgrading my Windows machine. I decided that I would force myself to learn about Unix. Linux was a logical choice. I never liked Unix as it was so different from the systems I had been directed into using. I had been exposed to Unix systems more and more through various sources over the previous few years. I had even spent a large portion of time using Unix from afar in the form of web hosts. The time had come when I wanted an alternative perspective to Windows.
I installed Red Hat Linux 5.0 on DarkStar, a simple 486 which I had built. It was confusing and made very little sense at first. After some time I realized that this was the same old 486 I had always known. It had simply grown up a lot. I am having fun with computers again. It became apparent to me that Unix was able to present vastly technical concepts with an overwhelming and ingenius simplicity found nowhere else.
Today, I am running Linux on all of my machines. I never thought I would say that. You see, I was the loyalist, entrenched Windows user for the longest time. Once the fear and propaganda were set aside, I could see the real choices. But, none of that made me switch to Linux in a single day on the spur of the moment. I hadbeen using Linux along side Windows for a couple of years. I snapped one day when Windows gave me its famous blue screen of death. On December 19, 1999, I simply reformatted the Windows partition with EXT2, mounted it in $HOME for some badly needed storage, and I have never once looked back.
It's like the bully who pushes you with the one finger again and again and again and again. One day, you're in a bad mood and show him how the real world works. I decided at that moment that I would stop using Windows at any cost; I was sick of fighting against my machines and reinstalling the system every few weeks. I just wanted to come home, sit down, use the computer to do whatever I need, and then be done with it until I needed it again. Every other day with Windows you try to print and find the printer drivers are hosed, try to scan a document and the scanner locks up after every image requiring a reboot, read a CD-ROM and the CD-ROM drive crashes the whole system for no obvious reason requiring a reboot, access any SCSI device and every SCSI device suddenly disappears from the system requiring you to power off and reboot, plug in a USB device and have to reboot 18 times to get it to work, and on and on and on. Linux with decent hardware from reputable vendors generally "just works" and if it doesn't "just work" you set it up precisely once and never, ever have to screw with it again.
Believe me in those first days it was tempting to use Windows; it's supposed to be tempting, you know, it's designed to seem so simple even though it's really not. Sure, Unix and Linux are very different from Windows. But, Unix and Linux weren't designed by commitees on some board room table. They grew up out of the needs and desires of the users. From the very beginning it was the users who designed the system. Linux and GNU are merely continuations of that process. Unix follows an agreed upon design philosophy that balances the needs of the users with the limitations of hardware (see: The Unix Philosophy). The needs of any given user are constantly balanced with the needs of every other user based on what hardware can provide them; of course, this does means it's sometimes less efficient. Old world systems like Windows, VMS, MVS, et al focus so much on efficiency or their version of correctness that the needs of the user and the constraints of both the hardware and user are often not considered in the overall system design (see: The Mainframe Mentality). Sure, there's icing on top that makes the user feel all warm and fuzzy. But, the system underneath all the icing and gum drops doesn't give a hoot about what's happening to the user.
You may say, But Windows isn't a mainframe system.
It is in spirit. Look at DOS; it's layout is reminiscent of the mainframes of that era. And, the original Windows NT system was meant to, not just compete with but, replace DEC's VMS mainframe OS on DEC's own mainframe hardware. NT's core development was led by many of the same people who designed VMS. Then NT was later ported to PowerPC mainframes and half-heartedly to the newer DEC Alpha mainframes. Only after all those attempts failed miserably did Microsoft refocus their efforts toward furthering Windows NT on cheap PC hardware. NT's public offerings sat largely unimproved from 1993 to 1999; even NT 4.0 was nothing more than a facelift for the aging 3.x series. Even today it's nothing but a shell of what it could have been. The focus has been on adding cartoons instead of improving on fundamental system flaws; such as the mind warping inconsistencies in their programming APIs and totally screwed POSIX "support". It's ever so slowly dying on the PC and every effort is being put into making it up as something it isn't.
Anyway, I don't mean to try to persuade you that Unix is better than Windows (OK, so I do). This is truly irrelevant. What is relevant is what will help you get your work done. And, if you truly need to do something constructive with your computers then I suggest that you make some attempt to learn the Unix way of doing things, the Unix Philosophy. At least then you can make an intelligent decision. It's so easy to say X is better than Y when you understand only about X.