Is this a desktop functionality oriented post or something? Because there are things I find daily that can't be done with Windows Server, but come out of the box on most Linux distributions. Mostly storage, monitoring, or networking related-- aka some of the most important things.
You mean like Storage Spaces, ReFS, Access Control Lists including rich Claims support, TPM-integrated volume encryption, cluster volume encryption, encrypting file system with user-friendly smart card integration?
Or do you mean things like the Windows Management Instrumentation that is object oriented, works locally and remotely, and has over ten thousand counters by default? Or the event log that has had circular binary logs and log forwarding available with no extra software for two decades?
Or do you mean how Windows Server has RDMA support so that even simple things like file transfers over SMB3 can run at wire speed on 40 Gbps Ethernet and replace fibre channel at a fraction of the cost? Or is it the native IPv6 support that actually works (unlike, say, MacOS)? Are you talking about the Windows DNS client, which unlike Linux can properly handle an unresponsive primary DNS server? Or the policy-driven IPsec support? The Always On VPN capability maybe?
Which of these important things were you referring to?
Mind you 4/5 of what's listed here is also functionally available on -nix, or straight up pales in comparison.
Specifically looking at Storage Spaces and ReFS: can't protect boot media with it (can't boot from USB either really, WTG depreciated), can't do error correction outside of basic configurations, also awesome to look at data loss and performance issues up into 2019 on "stable" releases with hardware on the HCL.
The WMI is a Windows-ism that has similar analogs with tooling on -nix. Don't get me wrong though, along with PowerShell the WMI/CIM stuff is extremely awesome.
Don't really care what MacOS does, not sure why it was mentioned, that's not what I'd consider in the "server" space.
Off the top of my head based on recent solutions I've had to implement: I'm talking stuff like per-process/user network stack segmentation (NetNS), proper native container primitives with an ecosystem to match (cgroups, runC, container, etc.), out of the box full syscall level auditing and logging (kernel auditing framework), fine grained and configurable application mandatory access control (AppArmor, SELinux), low level insight into storage properties should you ever need it (relevant FS tools), fully integrated storage and volume management options (ZFS; on FreeBSD at least), live kernel updates, and in general not making me want to gouge my eyes out any time I have to touch networking configuration.
I believe we probably occupy different spaces though, as I can see some things you mentioned that aren't entirely relevant to my use cases, as I'm sure the things I mentioned may not be relevant to yours.
Is this a desktop functionality oriented post or something? Because there are things I find daily that can't be done with Windows Server, but come out of the box on most Linux distributions. Mostly storage, monitoring, or networking related-- aka some of the most important things.