Never been a Windows user or programmer, but like you I've heard they do quite a lot of clever stuff under the hood. Probably a lot of VMS heritage, another system I've never had a chance to use but heard good things about. But every version I've tried since Windows 3.1 has had an abysmal user experience, so I've never once considered switching.
And that leaves no current viable alternatives to the Unix-like systems. Sad, really.
And that leaves no current viable alternatives to the Unix-like systems. Sad, really.