You, sir, win the internets.

OK, good point regarding the legal aspects. As long as third-party apps for viewing PDFs/manipulating images/whatever can easily replace the MS alternative and integrate nicely with the OS I don't really have an issue with it.

Generally: I never said that windows completely sucks in all these regards (it surely improved a lot with 7 and they do quite some things in a good way!), just that they should concentrate on improving their core instead of building fluffy stuff.

Performance: of course Windows has advantages, but nevertheless Linux wins regarding boot time and I/O performance. I didn't want to say that Windows performance is bad overall, but that they should rather focus on areas where it isn't instead of building PDF viewers or image manipulation software.
Documentation: true, but overall I'm a lot more satisfied with man/apropos than with Windows documentation.
File Systems: Yes, what I really meant is that ext3/ext4 is practically a lot better regarding fragmentation than NTFS. In practice defragmentation may not be needed at all. On another note, look here for a performance comparison. We can see that NTFS loses by a pretty big margin.
UAC/SUDO: Basically UAC simply grants you full rights for one particular action right now, whereas sudo can grant you a wide range of rights for X amount of time for Y numbers of actions. You can argue about them, but they are not the same.
Hardware: By default sure, but you can customize linux to run on *very* low hardware in comparison to windows. And I'm not forced to use a bloated window manager.
Registry: Here's a pretty good summary of what's wrong with the windows registry.

nice trolling...

performance:
1. Windows 7 is benchmarked. Who cares whether it is more than a year old? Please back up your non-existing performance improvements. 2. You didn't even bother scrolling down. Ubuntu wins also in boot time I/O performance.

man: Yes, but Linux devs care for documentation in compratison to MS devs, who don't. Only thing that matters is that it's better in practice.

ext3: OK, let's be more clear. It's a lot less effected by fragmentation than NTFS.

sudo/runas: Just LOL. You have no clue what you are talking about... RUNAS != SUDO The RUNAS command is equivalent to Unix SU, not SUDO. The reason SUDO is superior to SU is that it allows privilege escalation based on the userâ(TM)s own identity, and most importantly does not require use of a shared password. Using RUNAS to access a privileged account requires distribution of a password to an admin-capable account, a security weakness that SUDO does not have. I believe that SUDO has not previously been ported to Windows because Windows does not have SETUID capability.

Vista vs GNOME/KDE: Who talked about GNOME/KDE? No one forces you to use a bloated window manager in Linux.

As you're just trolling and have no clue what you're talking about I'll stop the conversation with this post.

nice trolling...

performance:
1. Windows 7 is benchmarked. Who cares whether it is more than a year old? Please back up your non-existing performance improvements.
2. You didn't even bother scrolling down. Ubuntu wins also in boot time I/O performance.

man:
Yes, but Linux devs care for documentation in compratison to MS devs, who don't. Only thing that matters is that it's better in practice.

ext3: OK, let's be more clear. It's a lot less effected by fragmentation than NTFS.

sudo/CLI: Just LOL. You have no clue what you are talking about... RUNAS != SUDO The RUNAS command is equivalent to Unix SU, not SUDO. The reason SUDO is superior to SU is that it allows privilege escalation based on the userâ(TM)s own identity, and most importantly does not require use of a shared password. Using RUNAS to access a privileged account requires distribution of a password to an admin-capable account, a security weakness that SUDO does not have. I believe that SUDO has not previously been ported to Windows because Windows does not have SETUID capability.

Vista vs GNOME/KDE: Who talked about GNOME/KDE? No one forces you to use a bloated window manager in Linux.

As you're just trolling and have no clue what you're talking about I'll stop the conversation with this post.

You're right that PowerShell is a real shell and it may be subjective that I prefer bash because of its simplicity and in my opinion better usability, e.g. tabbing/copy-pasting.

Some other non-subjective example points:
performance
documentation - man wins big time regarding technical details
file system - ext3 is not subject to fragmentation
enhance security/permission features - no sudo-equivalent in Windows
lower hardware requirements
get rid of the sick registry
better modularization - Windows has a pretty monolithic setup compared to Linux

Now I really got the urge to post some examples anyway, although I didn't want to... Please see my post below for references/examples.

You're right that PowerShell is a real shell and it may be subjective that I prefer bash because of its simplicity and in my opinion better usability, e.g. tabbing/copy-pasting.

Some other non-subjective example points:
performance
documentation - man wins big time regarding technical details
file system - ext3 is not subject to fragmentation
enhance security/permission features - no sudo-equivalent in Windows
lower hardware requirements
get rid of the sick registry
better modularization - Windows has a pretty monolithic setup compared to Linux

Why should I reproduce commonly available information? I'm not paid to teach you basic OS knowledge and I couldn't care less about your opinion on Windows. Nobody forces you to believe me - everyone is entitled to his own, potentially ignorant, opinion. Doesn't really effect my salary. :)
If your really think that Windows surpasses a proper unix OS regarding any of the points I mentioned, please give an example.

No, I have work to do and do not have time to spend hours writing a concise summary what's wrong with Windows in detail. Information is freely available, taught at universities and/or indexed by Google.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that all of these points are completely bad in Windows, but compare it to other OS's and regarding most of the items Windows is simply lacking behind - either by a small or a large margin.
MS simply doesn't care, because average Joe doesn't and they rather build fluffy stuff. Good, if you like it, but it is really ignorant to state that Windows is state-of-the-art regarding all things I mentioned, which is why I pointed you to Google.

1. It's an abuse of their OS quasi-monopoly in my opinion and hurts the free competition.
2. They could very well run into legal trouble (cf. Internet Explorer/Windows bundle).
3. I'd guess that they will again couple these apps quite tightly with their OS. Let's wait how good a third-party app will integrate...

lmgtfy.com

Gotta love the MS fanbois... Where am I trolling here? Do you really expect that MS will provide better software than Adobe for manipulating images or reading PDFs?! And why should the apps be coupled with the OS?

in 5 minutes the following comes to mind: performance, efficient usage of system resources, stability, file system, decouple GUI from core, decouple apps from core, simple remote access, get rid of the sick registry, customization, documentation, adhere to common open standards, lower hardware requirements, better modularization, remove unneeded services/bloatware, provide a powerful shell, enhance security/permission features, ...

I'm sure I can find a lot of other stuff that's wrong with windows when thinking about it...

They should rather concentrate on improving the core OS in my opinion. Why would I want to manipulate images or read PDFs with crap software from MS...