although firewall appliances sometimes come with slower cpu they can still beat PC based systems in speed thanks to accelerator chips for things like encryption. the newer CPU's are starting to be fast enough for this not to be the case, but for example larger network topologies routed IPSEC VPNs used to choke CPUs easy...
I must also argue that windows can have firewall software that makes it as much harware appliance as a linux distro. you just told that you are going to install GUI in yours.
and lastly, I have ciscos currently too. not because I like it, but it's one of those names that on this continent seem to be synonymous for stuff. firewall equals cisco in lot of ppls minds, just like server equals IBM. and I am a bit bitter about this because I know that stuff could be done way better without this "curse"
otherwise, yea, our difference in opinion is rather non-existent or at least really minute.
and arend, full OS can mean lot of thinks. firewalls based on some sort of linux kernel have their own full OS in them. and lot of times, you can open the appliance and push your own in there. windows server core is a full OS but comes with way less overhead than normal winserver install. again, I think we don't disagree that much in how we think about this. I just disagree with how you write it
