Get out of here with that nonsense.  You may not be a fan of paid software, but the Windows Kernel is just as good as any FOSS kernel today in regards to stability.  The Server and embedded SKUs also come with a ton of the extraneous stuff removed that one would ever be worried about. The issue here is that someone decided that a machine that should only ever be connected to an air gapped network needed anti-virus software.<p>Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.