The biggest pain in the ass is windows itself. That has nothing to do with the GPL.
Windows has its advantages and disadvantages. People forget that the world before Windows was worse than now - software was even less reliable and even more costly in most instances.
You have a very skewed view of history, software has been quite reliable since before Windows, if anything Windows started the idea that software _doesn't_ have to be reliable.
I'm no MS supporter, but let's be realistic on the good Windows has done for the world.
I fail to see what good it has done, Windows tries to control what the user can or cannot do, just that shows that it has done nothing good for the world, only made it worse.