As TBOne said, it is puzzling that someone (the OP, frank wallis) who has been working for 9+ years in the IT industry, especially as a teacher of Windows OS, would not have at least enough personal curiosity about a different OS (Linux) to familiarlize themselves with the differences.

As a former student myself I can categorically state that students have enough curiosity that the questions about differences would have come up in class. Any instructor unable to at least hold an informed discussion on the answers to those questions is subpar at best. I suppose if they were working in a microsoft centric organization they might be able to brush off the question in class, but certainly would have been enticed to answer it for themselves.

I have been through training as an admin for AIX, Linux, and even some microsoft admin (informal), and am able to work as admin under all those environments. The differences astound me, but also lead me to study harder.

@frank wallis
Those who have initiative and curiosity and work with Linux based systems will have an in-depth knowledge of the OS and how to use it. There are many since much of the server world is based on Linux. The university I attended in the 90s used both linux and windows in its computer labs, and AIX on the servers. Any student studying for a CS degree had to know both worlds fairly well and the one of their choice in depth.

Unless you are wearing blinders so you only see what you choose the alternatives are there and you can do as you wish. Yes, I know that with windows you can only use their approved software that you pay out the a** for, but being totally ignorant of what linux is, doesn't cost, and where it is available is only because you chose to remain uninformed and do not wish to learn for yourself.

As stated before, there are 3 choices.
A. remain ignorant by choice and never even question what is your gospel about the OS you use.
B. be aware of the options but because they are on the periphery of your focus just have a passing glance and rely on what you have been told.
C. Be curious and learn for yourself about the options then make informed choices about what you do for yourself.

Your post seems to indicate you have been in category A and maybe just dipping your toe into category B with these questions. This forum can answer questions to a certain extent, but I suggest you remove your blinders, get on an internet search and really start learning instead of depending on the limited answers to uninformed and tentative questions.

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While Windows is a solid, professionally-designed system, it has often been described as being the foundation layer for Microsoft's vertically-integrated software stacks. Which are, by and large, very well-done stacks ... as long as you do everything "the IBM Microsoft way."

But there is and always has been a second, parallel software track that is actually older - Unix® – and today the system which was directly inspired by it – Linux®. In my opinion you really can't afford to be unaware of either of these. These technologies are what run nearly all phones. Macintoshes are Unix (Mach ...) systems. The "GNU toolkits" which are common on Linux are also universal, and also appear on Windows. So, no matter which system(s) you "prefer" – if any – you need to gain a functional working knowledge of all of these things. They are "here to stay." None will replace any other, nor does it make sense to try.

Windows evolved from DOS which evolved from CP/M which was inspired by the DEC PDP/VAX systems. Unix appeared as a brand-new brainchild invented by people who'd had a very bad experience with a now-forgotten system called "MULTICS." (Pun intended.) Linux appeared in a college dormitory during a cold winter in a cold, wintry place.

Yes. Much depends on things like what desktop GUI may have been chosen as the default (and other stuff like that). It should be possible to pare down on the memory use of almost any Linux distribution you choose, though. I can't compare Linux's memory utilization with respect to Windows' memory use. (I don't use Windows at home any more.) I use Windows at work, though, and my feelings (i.e., not hard data) are that it's less tolerant of running low on memory than Linux. Some tools used by Windows users are real memory hogs. Those that have ports to Linux -- like Visual Studio -- really demand that you have a bunch of RAM. Visual Studio on a 2GB system is no fun at all. Emacs is supposedly a memory hog but I'm able to edit large files using Emacs on a small memory system whereas when firing up VS to edit a rather modest-sized source file, I run into performance problems fairly quickly.

Yes. But, according to the licensing, if you want to distribute your modified version of Linux, you are expected to make those changes available. (There are probably a lot more legalisms involved than that but that's a 30,000 foot summary.)

C language? Yes. ("Based on" is, IMHO, a strange way to put it. It's written in C though, the last time I checked in the kernel source code tree, there is some assembler used as well. And, according to recent stories, Rust may be making its way into the kernel sometime in the future.) C#? No.

HTH...

To clarify: "C#®" ("C-sharp") is actually a compiler that is strictly associated with Microsoft's proprietary "dot-NET®" environment. Along with Visual Basic®, it generates "p-code" output that is designed only to operate under that system, which provides a "runtime interpreter" in a manner conceptually similar to that of Java®. You can write and compile programs in either language and, if you are feeling adventurous, you can successfully use both of them together. (Yes, it actually works. Rather well, in fact ...) "Dot-net runtime environments" have been ported to many places, allowing programs to (more or less ...) run there without recompiling.

I think that it's rather unfortunate that Microsoft chose that name, because it is a source of confusion.

Both the "C" and "C++" languages are implemented using compilers that produce actual, natively-executable machine instructions for a particular "target" CPU, requiring no runtime system to be present.

Although "C#" borrowed much of the syntax of C++, the two languages are not in fact "related."

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I am currently working with a slew of network support engineers-turned-software developers who have a variety of OS backgrounds. Some seem to be strong in using Linux, others are "capable" but it's clearly not their forte. Development and production systems that are used for network config/control are on Linux. Some developers are adept at working on the Linux servers via Linux VMs under Windows, some prefer access to the servers from directly from Windows.

Cheers...