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HAVE I HELPED?
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The UNIX vs WINDOWS WAR - a PERSPECTIVE
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For a long time in the past, those persons of computing skill always used UNIX [I am not going to talk about IBM or DEC platforms]. Bell Labs invented UNIX, and gave it away free to the universities, who then took it and educated a whole generation of computer nerds, and essentially created all that we see before us. Initially there were UNIX timesharing systems, and users sat at their little dial in terminals [not PCs, mind you - TERMINALS], and did their coding and UNIX practice over 1200 baud lines [later going to 28000 baud and up]. Eventually the price of memory and processors started coming down, which allowed "desktop" computers, such as CPM and DOS and Apple machines. These computers ran "terminal emulation" software, which then connected over the same dialup lines to the mainframe systems, which ran UNIX [for our purpose of discussion]. So the coders could do their thing from a computer which they could develop applications on as well. Gradually UNIX got ported to these desktop computers. These were pretty expensive computers, and they typically were used by scientists, engineers, and programmers only. You probably wouldn't find these machines at home. These "workstations" were really developed to a fine art by SUN microsystems, and they ran a different variant of UNIX, called BSD UNIX. All scientists, engineers, and programmers probably had a SUN workstation on their desk at work in the late 80's and early 90's [there were also other variants, like Apollo and DEC and IBM machines]. Then along came powerful "PCs" which had near-equivalency in power and performance to the "workstation," though the software capabilities trailed abysmally..... PCs typically run Windows software, and have historically been much lower cost, and much lower performance machines, and much poorer software reliability. The PCs all used Intel processors. Intel made many more processors than SUN (or HP or DEC), and the prices of these processors and their PCs fell over the years. This was good. This was OK. Because it gave the people who couldn't afford to work at places that had "workstations" some head start in computing skills. The newest computer nerds learned/learn on PCs before they had a chance to go to a university or IBM or Bell Labs and use a true "workstation."
In the early 90's Linux Torvalds took advantage of the plummeting PC prices and their architectures and he invented a brand new, very UNIX - like OS called "Linux," which runs on PC architectures (largely). And perhaps his biggest innovation is that he gave it away, i.e. he put it in the public domain. The "Open source software" movement gained momentum with this gift, and it is still growing. Linux is making a very big splash in the grand scheme of things, and may succeed in killing off SUN and other variants of UNIX some day. Windows is probably too big to kill off - or it is too late. Or it will itself morph into some variant of UNIX, like the MAC has with OS X.
Somewhere in the past 10 years the world has gotten very complicated. A "PC" is mostly an architecture, and a pretty standard one at that, and it runs all kinds of different Operating Systems, including UNIX variants today. Your 12 year old son routinely puts PCs together with the latest stuff, especially the latest video card so he can play his games. This is good. There is some hope for the future here.
The old-timers who know and grew up with and invented UNIX and "workstations" feel rather defensive about this whole thing. After all, they were the people who created this whole Internet thing, with their Workstations and UNIX servers and C and C++ code. Only they remember what a "command line" was, or a "text editor" or a "compiler/linker/loader." Or God forbid paper tape or punch cards, or even a slide rule.
The old-timers who created the Internet and its technologies are in general anti-Microsoft. But most of them, belatedly, use Windows PCs as much as UNIX "workstations" - they can't help it, their wives or kids probably use it, so they have to maintain it! And many of their favorite applications run on Windows. Microsoft figured out how to take over the software/OS world some years ago. Gotta give them credit for that. Apple could have taken over the world about 10 years ago, but they insisted, arrogantly so, that their apple PCs were worth twice as much as a scrudsy Windows/DOS PC, so most people spent half the money and bought the DOS/Windows box. Shame on you, Apple. Microsoft keeps trying to redefine technologies and terms that don't need to be redefined. They only discovered the Internet about 5 years ago...
The stability of the UNIX OS, almost any one of them, compared to almost any Windows OS is amazing. But UNIX has been around a LOT longer than Windows software.
Here is another very nice summary of the Bell Labs pioneers in UNIX and C.