@apapadimoulis said:
If they were built with proper, modern (i.e. 2000 and later) approaches for Windows, they should be installable in minutes using an installer.
Hmm, an installer often exists, but as soon as you need more than one program installed and talking to each other, the default configuration often fails or is insecure.
Ever tried to install some J2EE apps and an Oracle database on a Windows server? Yes, there are installers, but you'll spend a few hours - if you know what you are doing (if you don't you probably need a week) - to configure these beasts so that they work together and the database will not shut down once the redo logs (which are not backed up or deleted by default) reach 32GB.
Or, if you prefer Microsoft software, ever tried to set up a Windows domain using Windows 2012, and latest Exchange and Lync servers, so that afterwards your mobile devices (outside your NATted company network) can chat and watch shared screens from your external consultant's laptops (also outside the NATted network)? It is of course possible, but if you've never done it, you probably spend a few days to a week to set it up (Not talking about firewall rules or configuring external DNS yet, just installing 2 DCs, one Exchange server, one Lync server and one Lync Edge server, configuring them that they know each other, and creating accounts for a few people to test it).
If needed that more often, probably it would be easier to use System Center, but that is another huge learning cliff to get above that (If I can believe people who tell that it is the alternative to Puppet or Chef on the Windows world).
[When I compare that to setting up a SVN server, a LDAP server, an OpenFire chat server and a MediaWiki on a Debian Linux server (without containers or Puppet/Chef, but manually using the deb packages), I'd say the Windows way is harder. And installing MediaWiki did not break any of the other services; Installing the Edge Server for Lync first broke company internal Lync screen sharing too...]