FritFrut

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.

"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.