The only thing that really bothers me about the death of Windows is the potential for loss of Visual Studio as a DE. I actually really like Visual Studio, to the extent that I think you'd have to be mad to develop Windows based applications with any other tool.
I like Linux but to my knowledge there isn't really a direct equivalent of a Visual Studio type of development environment on Linux? Correct me if I am wrong and I will happily go and check it out
Brian.
In the past you could choose one of the Borland products such as Delphi or C++ Builder, but you are absolutely correct... there is not much competition (from commercial products anyway) which is a shame. I believe both of those products were also available on Linux, however I seem to remember the Kylix IDE being a little unstable under Linux.
In Linux there are a lot of IDEs to choose from that you can use with the various GNU languages. Eclipse, Genie, CodeBlocks, etc...
xwpe is a clone of the old Borland "Turbo" IDE if you are nostalgic for that