[qw3rty01]

You'd be losing that bet. Larger datacenters tend to use windows because of microsoft providing support contracts.

I don't have access to the full numbers, but I'd bet on the linux side being majority red hat for the same reason.

[kristopolous]

What planet do you live on? Have you ever been to a datacenter?

Look at top500, it's literally 0% windows, https://www.top500.org/statistics/list/

Many of the VPS providers don't even have windows options because the demand is so low it's not even worth offering as a product.

Server farm sysadmins I know habitually lament they are rusty in windows whenever it's in front of them because it's completely vanished from their daily experience

If this was a survey of companies where the weight of say, a liquor store with a 20 year old beater in the back closet that they'll call a server is 1 vote, and say, all of Amazon is also 1 vote, then maybe you can get that number, but that's basically the only way

[qw3rty01]

top500 is a super computer dataset, it's not really relevant to general server market share

you could even look at Red Hat, one of microsoft's competitors, who showed microsoft's market share at 49.6% in 2017: https://www.redhat.com/en/blog/red-hat-continues-lead-linux-...

[kristopolous]

And over on wikipedia it says 24. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys...

So the position moved 71 -> 49 -> 24

There's a difference again. Is "server" a chassis in a rack with redundant power and some RAID array or is it some standard computer that was christened as such? It's not a useful category because it allows for arbitrary segmenting to pump the numbers. Are we counting by service, machine, company? Depends what result you want.

If you're going to count windows machines (as in cases) by hand at a Noc, farm or center you won't be needing a calculator or likely a second hand.

Windows is certainly more prominent than Solaris or any commercial traditional unix but outside of desktops, which have a cleaner definition, it's been going in same direction for 20 years.

Microsoft has also been pivoting away from windows as a revenue source for a while. Video consoles, media companies, Azure, LinkedIn, GitHub, they don't necessarily see windows in their future and we shouldn't either

[hhw]

Not all servers are web facing or live in data centres. There are tons of small businesses that run servers in a backroom. Those are predominantly Windows.

[kristopolous]

right but that analysis isn't useful. If I used the same logic to determine a solution for hauling a large load by vehicle and looked at how most cubic meters of things are hauled, I'd probably be forced to conclude that a sedan trunk is the best option. However that's only due to the preponderance of sedans.

It's a very careful way to state the question to make it look like the numbers back what's clearly a wrong answer.

It puts the framing of "well I guess I'm using a sedan" and resituates the problem to solve all its shortcomings. It's a classic implicit framing propaganda technique.

[chousuke]

I work for a hosting provider. Windows exists and it's used for corporate infrastructure, but the vast majority of actual applications and support services are running on Red Hat, CentOS or Ubuntu.

Windows trends to be reserved for AD, jump hosts (much to my chagrin, I prefer SSH), virtual desktops and stuff that end-users access, because user management is where Windows is still ahead.

I suppose in small businesses they will have all the user management bits but no need for more than one or two "real" servers, so it doesn't matter if it's Windows too.

In bulk, Linux servers are much easier to manage though and since most application platforms will work just fine if not better on Linux, it's just the sensible choice unless you have something specific that requires Windows. Generally easier licensing certainly does not hurt.

The fact that on any Linux distribution you get trivial, easily-managed access to thousands of software packages free of licensing worries out-of-the-box makes for a large advantage over Windows where the concept of using a package manager and central repository seems to be a fairly new thing and you have to set everything up yourself or just deal with developers and users installing random crap from who knows where because by default there's no better option. There's also the fact that Linux server software tends not to have GUIs because servers are headless by default, which also makes them easier to manage once you run out of fingers to count them.

[Bluecobra]

Why do you need paid support for your OS?

[kristopolous]

It's a requirement still.

Plenty of open source people have offered paid support so corporate clients could expense things.

[formerly_proven]

Not only does Microsoft offer comprehensive support packages for their products, but in fact the TCO of a Windows Server system is almost always lower than a Linix system while also having the better user productivity. Considering this, any business that is serious about digital transformation would do well to indeed reach for Microsoft’s portfolio.

Of course it‘s easy to make up statistics to show that the OS made by some Sovjet hacker in his mother’s basement (probably using lots of stolen MS IP) is supposedly more popular than the products made in the US by a reputable firm such as Microsoft, but who is going to believe that?

[wumpus]

I used to have a small startup with over 50 servers per engineer. Tell me all about TCO and digital transformation, I really need to learn about that stuff.