When comparing Windows vs Kodibuntu, the Slant community recommends Kodibuntu for most people. In the question“What are the best operating systems for a Home Theatre PC?” Kodibuntu is ranked 1st while Windows is ranked 10th. The most important reason people chose Kodibuntu is:
Both Kodi and Ubuntu are free and open source.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Best driver support of any OS
No other OS comes close to supporting as much hardware as Windows 10 does. Because it's the most popular OS, the bulk of hardware manufacturers support Windows first, and all other operating systems second.
Pro Widely used
Windows is the most-used desktop OS in the world.
Pro Windows comes first
Windows is the most used platform in the world. If you build something and need a third-party software it will most likely run on Windows. Not because it's good, but because everyone uses it.
Pro Free access to great development IDE in Visual Studio Community
Pro Ubuntu bash shell
Windows has a binary compatible Ubuntu shell to run non-Windows apps natively.
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-au/commandline/wsl/about
Pro Stable
Pro The most solid choice for .NET development
Pro Free with most new computers
At least the non-Apple variety at any rate.
Pro Touch screen support
You still can't get touch support on a Mac. Windows has had touch for 5+ years now.
Pro Best support for Visual Basic
Pro Open source
Both Kodi and Ubuntu are free and open source.
Pro Updates can be run remotely
Using a Linux distro (not only Ubuntu) with Kodi allows you to run system and software updates remotely through SSH. Not only that, it's also very easy to update the system because only a couple of commands are needed.
Cons
Con Uses more resources than most alternatives
Con Most software is closed source, including the operating system itself
Con Weak default terminal
The standard terminal lacks basic features that Linux and OSX has. Alternatives to the default terminal for Window can be found here.
Con Lacks package management
It is not easy to install/keep current development packages that developers need and use.
Con Limited in its flexibility
Window managers, startup systems, and system components cannot be changed.
Con There are some privacy issues
By definition, it's spyware. Pre-compromised OS.
Con Scanning for viruses makes builds slow
Compiling a project means reading and writing a lot of files. Even fast anti-virus software slows down the build time (which is almost always too long).
Con Update policy / scheduling is a nightmare
Pop-up to update your system that will restart it if you don't interact quick enough and will have to be in reboot mode, which can freeze your activity until the update is done.
Con Unstable and slow
Windows crashes often and is much slower than alternatives, especially at file IO, which is important for developers.
Con Maintenance is time-consuming
Previous versions needed to be formatted ever 6 months to maintain performance.
Con Embarrassing to give talks
On conferences or in user groups the audience laugh at speakers presenting their talk on a Windows machine.
Con Sub-par graphic drivers support
Support for graphic drivers is not the best. For example, if you want to do any gaming on Kodibuntu you need an Nvidia card and install the proprietary drivers. Though for Kodi alone the Open Source drivers are good enough.