Did you just say "MILLIONS of [...] hackers [...] in the Windows world"? Wow, that's pretty funny, because Windows isn't really designed for hackers, you know? I mean, sure, they can go out and buy Visual Studio and write some programs, but why not just get an OS that supports real hacking out of the box, and is free?

I mean, either the definition of "hacker" has expanded quite liberally, or we should start seeing a slew of awesome apps start rolling out any minute now...

"designed for hackers"??? Haha, what a load of... You could look at the many definitions of 'hacker', and none of them precludes hackers on Windows. But, if you believe that 'real hacking' is wasting hundreds of hours trying to make your graphics card work, then yes, by no means use the free one, and consider yourself 'a real hacker', when you manage to get the sound out of your soundcard.

I didn't mean hacking the OS, which I agree can be a time-sink if you don't know where to look for the answers online (Gentoo-wiki is a great source of answers). I meant that GNU/Linux has simple but powerful IDEs like vim built-in, and most distributions come with gcc as well for compiling the basic languages. There are higher-level programming languages included in the installation like Perl, Python, Java, and more. If you want to install new ones, it's simple, just type "emerge ruby sbcl ocaml ...".

I didn't intend my comment to mean that Windows doesn't have legitimate hackers, I was just saying that it doesn't support them nearly as well as others do, with its closed API and licensed software-building tools. I was also poking fun at the "MILLIONS of hackers" comment, because in my opinion, there aren't millions of hackers in the entire world. I don't believe that hacker simply means "programmer", but rather, something a bit more. I certainly wouldn't consider myself to be one yet, even though I am quite confident in my programming skills.

So I'm sorry, I didn't mean to say that there aren't Windows hackers, just that I seriously doubt that there are millions of them.

Hm, ok, I guess I was a bit harsh, so I apologize... however, availability of certain tools/languages on Linux really depends on the distribution and what options you install. Perl is probably installed everywhere, but others are not. Also, all the major languages are very well supported on Windows (I've been using Perl on Windows since '97 or so, and lots of people are using Python and Ruby lately). .NET framework is free and includes libraries, documentation, tools and compilers. There are a lots of editors (including vi and emacs). Also, there's free Visual Studio express, etc. Granted, they are not included with Windows installation, but I guess that's because of the difference in distribution and licensing models, rather than some fundamental inability of Windows platform to include them.

About the support for the hackers... hm... it probably depends on the definition of 'hacker', but there's MSDN, a HUGE resource for the developers on the Windows platforms, with references for all products, languages and tools, examples, knowledge base etc.

Speaking of installation, I guess it's a matter of preference. Personally, I prefer to download stuff that I need, burn the 'developer tools dvd', and install from there. apt, urpmi and similar tools are nice and I quite like their elegance and simplicity, but they are great when you have enough bandwidth and don't have to pay for the extra traffic, and not so nice if you have 3-4 machines to install or update.

And, finally, yes... hackers are few and far between, developers are a bit more common, and the rest are coders.