I remember the clusterfuck that codecs created on my Windows machine, when after installing big and broken packs of codecs I was still unable to play some movie

I remember the clusterfuck that codecs created on my Windows machine, when after installing big and broken packs of codecs I was still unable to play some movie. The first time that I experienced a movie playing experience that was smooth was on Linux, by means of MPlayer. Then later came VLC. Of course, software like VLC is nowadays multi-platform, thanks to the virtue of being open-source and having contributors that wanted to see it ported to Windows. However, for other tasks things aren't so smooth. There are many things that I need to do in my daily routine, that would be solved by simple utilities that are known and available in the Ubuntu/Debian repository and that work well. In Windows, even for things like compressing or uncompressing a format that's not ZIP, or for mounting an ISO file, or for burning DVDs, or playing music, or whatever, you end up installing proprietary software that's either broken, or mallware, or bloated crap, or all of the above. These are just examples from the last time I tried, YMMV, but this happens every time I try it. Last time on my Windows desktop at home, I tried playing around with the latest Visual Studio Express. The installation process simply choked and I ended up with a broken Windows. It's like every time I try using Windows I experience death through a thousand cuts. In general, most of the utilities I end up using on a Windows box are ports of software who's primary audience comes from Linux/BSD and why not use the real thing anyway? Also, I don't really need games because I'm playing the greatest MMORPG of all time ... being a software developer.