I use them as well, never had any issues.

They have a useful API I leverage to manage DNS entries with scripts and cron jobs which is probably fairly standard these days but seemed to be a little harder to find when I first moved to them.

You think linux doesn’t have a firewall? I’m fairly certain every distribution has one installed and enabled by default.

The real reason linux worked so well in this situation was the local admin rights that came from being a rogue, unmanaged device on the network. I’m sure they could have made windows work if all the group policies weren’t being enforced.