What really hate on this discussion is, that it turned to "Windows is evil, Linux is
best". That was not the point of the original question.
Now, I repeat the major issue nobody replied to:
It's the question of reusability of software. I know about people (including myself)
who wrote stuff running on Windows. And they did not write it on Linux just because either
they didn't need it or simply because they don't understand Linux programming that
much or even not at all. Now, does that mean we should throw away all the stuff which has
been done? It's unlikely to happen those users will port it on Linux. So the question
is, how to make usefull scripts available for all, if they're written on Windows. So,
please, think about this question - it's much more important than infantile tug-of-war
about is Windows that bad or not.
Price issue has been mentioned here few times:
River correctly pointed out, we can get the non-profit prices. But nobody even mentioned
the possibility we can get it for free (or $1). The purchase is being rejected without
even trying to get it on nice price. That is definitely bad approach. We can always give
up on trying to set the wints up, if we couldn't get good conditions, but why should
we reject it in advance before any try? Just because Linux masters think it's
worthless?
Like not every person speaks English/Russian/German/..., not every person
"speaks" Linux. Does that mean those people are second-rate? If Windows-speaking
people were willing to write useful stuff, is there any reason why we should tell them
"your work was worthless"? Please, try to get around your personal antipathy to
Windows and try to look at it from the usability and usefulness point of view. Thank you.
Danny B.