I'll pitch in since some of the things I recommend are not on this page yet:

- Generally Windows 10 is better than 7 other than the privacy and forced update issues. (Windows has a tick-tock of good and bad releases so forget about 8.x)

Management:

- As others said, the typical way to remotely manage Windows is not to SSH into the machine you want to manage. Instead, you do one of 2 things:

- - Use RDP/Remote Desktop Connection/Terminal Services to connect. RoyalTS from www.royalapplications.com makes it even better

- - For anything that used the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) you can just open it locally and connect to the target computer. The MMC is one of the things I miss on Linux. A single coherent graphical interface to control so many parts of the system and you can even use it remotely. YaST is the maybe the closest thing I know on Linux.

Apps:

- Use portable apps from PortableApps.com and maybe a few other sources. Most of the essential apps I use have portable versions. Portable apps is another thing I miss on Linux. They are apps that have everything contained in a single folder. The intent is to carry them on a flash drive but you can also keep them on the computer. The effect is that, if for whatever reason you can no longer boot/need to reinstall/need to move to a different computer/etc., you can just open the case of the PC, connect the HDD/SDD to a working windows PC (optionally copy the folder with all your portable apps) and just use those apps with all the settings you had before. There have been attempts to bring this to Linux but without success.

- Use chocolatey.org This is the Linux package management concept brought to Windows

- If you need the tools you are used to on Linux look into either Cygwin (both Win7 and Win10) or the Ubuntu subsystem for Windows (Win10 only, also there are ways to change it to Arch or OpenSuse)

- Win10 only: right now there are rather few non-Microsoft apps on the Store that are actually great. The Microsoft apps however are quite cool.

- Win10 only: don't bother with the Edge browser YET. It is not ready. Sure rendering is fast and battery efficient but we expect much more from a browser. Right now it is still very limited and there are very few extensions available.

- Some other apps I use: RamBox, F.lux, Visual Studio Code, Shazam, QTTabBar

- Use Alternativeto.net to find alternatives to the apps you use.

Security:

- No.1 rule: be very careful where you download stuff from and what you install.

- Some may say otherwise but I no longer see the need to have third party anti-virus software for On-Access scanning . Some third party AV products may even make your computer less secure. Win10 comes with AV by default, and on Win7 there is Microsoft Security Essentials available.

- Use the VirusTotal Uploader for On-Demand Scanning. You upload the file and it is scanned with most antivirus products (69 of them at the moment).

Development:

- The Microsoft tools are great and may may be free for your use case:

- - Visual Studio is top notch (Community edition is free)

- - SQL Server is also great (Developer edition is free for development, Express edition is more limited but free for any use)

- - Learn PowerShell

- - Use the Tortoises (Tortoise Hg/Tortoise Git/Tortoise SVN) for version control. They integrate great with Windows Explorer.

Other:

- - Enable showing the file extensions in Windows Explorer. This is a stupid default.