content: I agree with your points--but for the lay gamer, I still think Server 2012 is a better bet than 7/8.1/10:  The telemetry crap is opt-in (according to Microsoft). Admittedly, I haven't monitored all the TCP/IP traffic leaving the machine, so I don't know for sure what is calling home, if anything. I personally haven't run into any odd issues with the registry / network stack (yet).  I am with you on Linux though ... docker is amazing. And as soon as .NET Core is ready for prime-time, I'm jumping over to that. (I am also a .NET engineer).