I look into a lot of things. Windows is great As for malware, I don't run into that stuff myself. Others in the house have had issues with adware and crap but I have this cute linux system on my network that stops all of that stuff, so now I'm worry free. And oh, My servers run a linux-type system.
I don't know what all this "baseless" crap is about. It seems you are missing a lot of information for these posts, for example; "everyone else completely ignoring Linux"..... Linux is a huge customizable system and myself, I really like it. Some amazing things are done using Linux systems and they are not ignored by industry whatsoever.
I made this ownCloud server that would only work with SMB if it was using a linux system (smbclient), so I set one up using Xubuntu for the hell of it. I can admit though, I can be often too lazy when working with linux systems such as Ubuntu.
For me though, Windows all the way for many server/client configurations. Especially clients. As for the baseless stuff goes though, I speak from experience.