Keep in mind that at the time Microsoft was being sued for being anti-competitive behaviour by Netscape and there were a lot of attention on the company for being a bad actor. Most of Microsofts's patents were defensive (they rarely used them offensively to my knowledge). There was a group of execs that were nervous about Linux but the lack of UI/UX/Usability strength put most of the focus on server capabilities. To this day many people want Linux to be a broader desktop OS but the only strong and focused effort on this are ironically ChromeOS and Android.
Interesting, from the outside it definitely appeared like there was a lot of effort into destabilizing footholds Linux and FOSS were making. There was the whole 'true cost of ownership' advertisement FUD, attempts to paint the desktop experience as poor (as you just did) when it was and continues to be a superior experience ever since KDE 3.5 (imo, of course), the sabre rattling about patents at the start of android, numerous institutions switching to and then back from FOSS equivalents of office repeating Microsoft PR verbatim as if it was facts... From the outside, it looked like a big deal.
Very interesting to hear it from the other side though, thanks.
My comments were objective, rather than subjective. Microsoft had a competitive OS lab and regularly tested off-the-street users on common tasks using Linux, OSX, Sun, BeOS, and others. In the XP days Mac would win on brand metrics and Microsoft would win on Usability. Linux won on power features but this was a detractor for more novice users.
