[bob1029]

Mine is a ~10-person bank consultancy without time or energy to deal with elite neck beard problems. Windows server, mssql and .NET are a great combo.

I wish we could separate the paid/oss aspects from the technical ones because Microsoft absolutely runs circles around every other stack when it comes to serious business software solutions, especially in resource constrained teams. I agree that oss and free software is conceptually ideal, but I also see why you might want to try different models.

Much of the Microsoft hate seems to come back to this notion that paid, COTS software is inherently evil or bad. Also, windows 11 is genuinely bad, but at least it boots up without weird issues that take an entire afternoon to resolve. I've never had a Linux experience that didn't kick me in the balls in some way. Not even the Steam Deck was smooth.

I happily throw my wallet at Microsoft if they solve my problem. Adobe, IBM, Oracle, The Empire, etc. Doesn't matter anymore. If it provides value to me and my clients, I'm going to use it or advocate for it. Spending money on good tools is not a bad thing. This world is about to get way more competitive than many of us would like for it to be. This level of petty tooling tribalism is going to become absolutely lethal.

[adrian_b]

I have no longer used Windows servers for a very long time, but when I still worked in a company that used Windows servers, the problem was not that we had to pay for it.

The problem was that the cost was not fixed and predictable, because every now and then we wanted to extend our activities, and that was conditioned by buying extra Microsoft licenses, for additional users, additional CPU cores or sockets, additional services, and so on.

This was extremely annoying in comparison with using a FreeBSD or Linux server, where the operating costs were the same regardless of how we decided to use it.

I agree that in a less dynamic environment, where the requirements for the server are stable and unlikely to ever be changed, using a Windows server may be OK.

However in any organization where this is not true, I believe that using any Windows server is a loser strategy, due to the financial friction that it causes against any improvements in the IT environment.

[nikanj]

I feel like this is a very common attitude amongst people who actually have delivered software as a day job for a few years. The raging sports-fan-esque Linux vs Windows fanboy battles are mostly fought by unemployed kids who still have time to customize their desktops.