Ian Murdock expresses how package management changed everything, a point I've often tried to make to friends who don't quite "get" Linux. One of the key benefits Debian has brought to my life is the time and effort the developers spend getting package dependencies just right, so I don't have to. Working on a Windows machine feels like being dragged back into the past, when you had to walk 10 miles to school with no shoes, and jump through a series of idiosyncratic vendor-specific hoops to get anything serious installed. Not a pleasant development environment at all. Underlying the whole experience are the free and open licenses on the core software involved, which allow a coherent integrated system to be built without mind-numbing complexity. You can get away with having some proprietary software on the "leaves" of the dependency tree, but it is just stunning how much complexity they introduce if you try to build on them.