Choosing a platform depends personal phylogeny (ontology if you're an existentialist) of a person.
My tendency is toward a platform that push me in comfort while working.
I don't use windows for hacking with perl(I don't use for anything,by the way). After all, It doesn't have a
proper,handy built-in shell. I
I use a Fedora 3, 1.8Ghz, 512 Mb Ram at work, and a Debian and a Gentoo on 633 Celeron, 128 Ram
at home. If this make a sense,those two beats Fedora in performance context.