This long time Linux user posted his first experience with Windows XP, and it's interesting in that I find it very honest, and not hostile. Here's my response to his post

Roberto, I'm a Windows user who dabbled in Linux over the years, trying various distros (Redhat, Fedora, Mandrake, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) and always ending back in Windows. Your statement, "On the other hand, I am starting to understand why people don't like Linux, if it feels as misterious as this for them." is spot on, and so it's very interesting for me to see the mirror perspective of you finding strange and unfamiliar things with Windows.

A few comments and tips:

Since this is working, I am guessing I am administrator on this box. Is everyone else, too? That's not too cool, but I suppose it's a linuxism I'm having.

From what I understand, in Linux you are either admin, or you're not. In Windows, there are more levels than that. I forget the exact names, but I believe in XP, they are "Restricted User", "Power User", and "Administrator". I believe the first account you create is a "Power User", which has access to install software and do general system maintenance, and all other accounts you create a "Restricted Users". I've never had to log into the Administrator account, but I know of its existence just from reading some articles online. I'm not sure about some of the details (such as the exact names), because all of this is from memory and I'm currently on a Vista machine, and the user account model has changed in Vista.

You can login with any of the users created on installation without a password. That's ok, I suppose, as long as I can later change it. TODO: look for it.

In your start menu, you should see an icon representing your user. Right click on it to see a pop up menu to start editing stuff involving your user, including your profile picture and your password.

Service restore is OK, it does something akin to restoring a backup, except you have no idea what it's restoring or why. But what the heck, it seems useful if your system borks like mine did.

This is probably just as mysterious to you as lnodes and orphan links (is that even the correct terminology?) is to me. =)

The first 9 either work on Linux or are web-based. So, let's try the tenth, to see if it beats akregator, which I prefer to the other 9.

Note that if you're trying to do an XP vs Linux comparison, I'm not sure it's fair solely use Windows-only software when running Windows, and let you use Windows-or-Linux software on Windows. IMHO, I think the fairest comparison would be "use the best apps on Windows, even if those apps are also available on Linux, when testing Windows and use the best apps on Linux, even if those apps are also available on Windows, when testing Linux.

It's a bit scary. I don't ever manually touch system folders on Linux, and there's a good reason for it, which I bet applies on windows, too: You WILL break stuff that way.

This is interesting, because (1) I don't even know what folders are "system folders" in Linux (is /bin a system folder? /opt ? /usr ? etc.) and (2) when I ask questions about how to fix a problem in Linux, I am often given mysterious sounding command line instructions which certainly *sound* like they are telling me to do stuff with system stuff. Whenever I see a "sudo", I get the feeling I'm about to touch something important, for example. Note one of the nice things about the Windows folder architecture is that with a name like "windows\system32", you can be pretty confident this is a system folder and has something to do with your Windows operating system, whereas, say, "/bin" conveys a sense of "binary" to me (aren't all my files binary?) and "/opt" conveys a sense of "optional stuff" (meaning I can delete it if I need to free up diskspace?).

Also, the 'This folder is magic, you should not look at it' warning for each folder is annoying.

Actually, I would have appreciated it if such a warning would appear in Linux distributions more frequently. I'd like Linux to more frequently assume I didn't know what I was doing, because frankly, I often don't know what I'm doing when working with Linux.

Why doesn't someone create a sofftware repository or windows, andd make it very simple for freeware/shareware/whateverware developers to use? Make it ad-supported with revenue sharing, you are bound to make some money.

There's really no demand for it. When you're a Linux user, you're used to the Linux way of doing stuff. When you're a Windows user, you're used to Windows way of doing stuff. In Windows, if you want a program to do something, you just type that something in Google, and you'll find some programs. You don't even worry about whether those programs are Windows program or Linux programs or anything like that. 95% of the programs you'll find out there are Windows program.

The 'Open With' dialog is broken.

Actually, that's a problem with the particular software you're using (Eric4?), and not the Open With dialog. A well written program would notify the OS of the file types that it associates with.

Start regedit and edit HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Session Manager/Environment, and reboot.

Actually, that's not the recommended way of doing it. If you want temporarily add something to the path, type in the command line "SET PATH=" followed by whatever it is you want the path to be. The path will disappear when you exit the terminal. If you want the path to permanently be changed, right click on "My Computer", choose properties, and (again, from memory, since I'm using a Vista machine right now), go to a tab that has a name something like "Advanced stuff", and click on the "Environment Variables" button. You'll see a list of all environment variables which you can freely edit. Every new instance of the command land terminal will use these new settings, no reboot required. I think this is pretty equivalent to Linux: if you just set the var in the terminal, it's temporary, and you have to edit some file (~/.bashrc, as you've said) to make it permanent.

I look forward to reading more about your experiences with Windows XP.