But Microsoft move the goalposts. In a previous role at a very security conscious company I designed and built a malware analysis platform built on Linux with

But Microsoft move the goalposts. In a previous role at a very security conscious company I designed and built a malware analysis platform built on Linux with KVM VMs. Some of these needed to be Windows because of certain software we ran, and we needed to be sure they were fully patched and free of any malware from a previous run. So snapshots were no good, we needed to built new VMs from the Windows equivalent of a kickstart ( autoattend.xml). This worked fine for a couple of months. Until Microsoft decided that their 'Professional' SKU shouldn't do this. So suddenly our auto builds stopped working as they were waiting for product keys that we already supplied.We could have gone to Enterprise, with the associated volume licensing agreement, but it was ridiculous and let a sour taste in our mouths. All this time the Linux VMs happily rebuilt in less than 2 minutes. I've literally talked today to a company who want me to move their large Windows deployment to Linux for the same reason. Nobody wants to be held hostage to a supplier.