What Keeps You On (or Off) Windows in 2013?

Five years ago today, reader J.J. Ramsey asked what's keeping you off Windows (itself a followup to this question about the opposite situation). With five years of development time gone by for Windows as well as all the alternative OSes, where does Windows stand for you today? (Is it the year of Linux on the Desktop yet?)

"Is it the year of Linux on the Desktop yet?"

[lesincompetent]

If i hear that question again i'm gonna start swimming head first in concrete.

Re:Taxes in the cloud

[Soylent Beige]

Watch out. With the NSA and PRISM if you move your taxes to 'The Cloud' the government will have all of your data.

Re: Taxes in the cloud

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

What the hell? Govt already has all your tax data and can force you to reveal as much as it wants.

Re:MS Access

[glwtta]

have about 100k lines of VBA code in Access that would be downright painful to rewrite in .NET, and completely unwritable on any *Nix platform.

Bet you could do it in, like, 17 lines of Perl.

Re:Taxes in the cloud

[kms_one]

Get your goddamn government hands off my IRS tax filings!!

Re:Taxes in the cloud

[PopeRatzo]

Watch out. With the NSA and PRISM if you move your taxes to 'The Cloud' the government will have all of your data.

I know, right?

This year, the government even asked for my address and social security number when I filed my taxes! I showed them, though. I just filled in "9"s all across.

You know, that reminds me. I still haven't gotten my refund.

Re:windows vm for tax software & work related

[AceofSpades19]

WINE Is Not an Emulator, surely you must know that by now

Re:windows vm for tax software & work related

[Guy Harris]

Nope until 2008 IE 6 was the defecto standard.

If that was deliberate, it gets the "funny post of the day" award.

If it was accidental, it gets the "funny typo of the day" award.

Re: Taxes in the cloud

[93 Escort Wagon]

What the hell? Govt already has all your tax data and can force you to reveal as much as it wants.

Not mine - I encrypt my tax returns before sending them in.

Develop ability, manageability, stability

[anthony_greer]

Windows is a great platform for development - Nothing really compares to Visual Studio+TFS+MSDN for business dev

Windows is manageable - You can do it by hand with batch scripts run on work group PCs via remote PowerShel sessions for real small shops,and scale into use of AD as you grow, and further manage all aspects with tools like System Center and Intune. Nothing else offers this level of control,

Windows is pretty bullet proof...I know in a controlled datacenter environment Linux is rock solid, but my only use of linux is on my Roku and Nexus 7 - both have crashed 2 times in the last week - I have had 0 BSODs in Windows 7 or 8 since 2009, including use of pre release code on both versions. I know that is antidotal but hey, I know what I see and I haven't had a windows system crash that was not caused by hardware failure in many many years.

Re:because desktop linux is a toy and novelty

[noh8rz10]

I built a model to calculate the fuel consumption of locomotives on 24 routes crossing the nation. on each route, i had a record every tenth of a mile that calculated instantaneous speed, acceleration, and power. rolled it all up to aggregate fuel economy, horsepower, etc. metrics. more than 10^6 records. power user, bitch.