Why people use Windows instead of Un*x, part n {n >> 1}
When I use the Microsoft remote desktop software for windows 2000 to connect to the Microsoft network at work, the windows machines have been behaving interestingly (with such featurettes as lsass.exe crashing, thus causing the whole machine to reboot in 60 seconds. So I decided to just use the Unix version of pptp to connect into work instead.
At least that was the plan. On Windows, setting up a pptp connection is [settings]->[network & dialup connections]->[make new connection]->[[x]connect through a private network]->[ip address you're connecting to].
On Unix, you need to build mpd or pptpclient, which isn't that hard (even though pptpclient, because it's Free Software®™©, doesn't come with anything frivolous like a manpage.) But that's the easy part; the hard part is configuring the stupid software so that it actually works. mpd has its very own configuration files, which, in the grand tradition of Un*x use their very own configuration format, which is like, but not enough like, any of the other configuration formats, and which demand you set a mind-dazzling collection of stupid options to connect to the outside world. pptpclient, on the other hand, uses ppp, which is, um, special in a way that many people already know. In neither of these cases is there a obvious way to have the wrapper pop up a login/password request box to get the stupid auth secrets from the caller, but, instead, you need to wade through a maze of goddamn twisty manpages (and, if you're running freebsd, the pointlessly obtuse "handbook") to have it do anything more elaborate than spit 40 or so messages at syslog, then quietly die.
On Windows, you open the connection, get a login dialog to enter name and password, and you're set (until the viruses come swarming up the line and convert your Windows box into a pile of smoking rubble.) I presume that MacOS X is much the same way, because the MacFanatics wouldn't put up with something so quaint as typing when they could point and click instead.
Admittedly, it would be easier if I had a machine running one of the commercial Linuxes at home, because all of the Free Software®™© out there is written for Linux, and then grudgingly ported to all the other "legacy" Un*ces. But it's still amazingly klunky and horrible, so I'm stuck with using the Windows gateway-to-viral-fun! virtual networking code because my head would explode if I had to spend a day (re)learning how they did systems configuration in 1976.