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Basha
Basha

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Why corporates Still use Windows when Linux is so simple and configurable

Why corporates still use Windows, when Linux is so Simple, Configurable, Open Source, etc.

I really still don't understand why windows is being used in the companies?

Could someone through some light?

Top comments (5)

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skyjur profile image
Ski • Edited

Historic reasons

  • windows is older OS and offered desktop solutions before linux was a thing
  • windows had killer app - Microsoft Office
  • for long time MS dev tools to build GUI apps and games was miles better than ones available for cross-platform open source development which leads to next point
  • more business critical applications were built for windows

Reasons in current state of affairs

  • Windows GUI experience today still covers much more than Linux. For example you can manage internal home and corporate network through GUI. Linux GUI is only good enough for pensioners with absolutely minimal needs.
  • Given that one often needs to use terminal due to lack of GUI tools - terminal is terrible human interface. It's a tradeoff between being able to do something at all as a human on computer and between being able to automate everything you do with scripts. Writing bash scripts and configuring anything on linux is far from simple - it's dreadful experience.
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bashasm profile image
Basha

I agree to disagree on current situation
Linux has greatly improved, I don't see why would companies pay so many dollars for windows

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skyjur profile image
Ski • Edited

Several points from me. Firstly about big bucks, 2 points:

1) Windows is not big bucks - it's more like peanuts

Even if you take full license fee, compared to yearly salary paid to employee who will use the pc it's not a lot. On top of this larger organizations get discounts and they pay less per pc than standard price.

Windows is often one of cheapest software pieces on computers. All professional industry-standard software pieces cost a lot more. Adobe suit is more expensive. JetBrains mutli IDE is much more expensive. Matlab is 2000 EUR per license! Then larger orgs often also have internal tooling built by either internal IT teams or custom orders that could be easily more expensive that high price tag applications such as Matlab

2) Linux is not exactly free

You still need to pay money to setup and maintain everything.

And lastly

Linux did not improve enough to be interesting to majority of people. If you think otherwise then you living in your own little bias bubble - go ask someone less techy what are their thoughts about Linux. I know friends who due to circumstances had to use Linux and none of them said they liked it (excluding developers).

Linux did do very well in other fields. As android operating system. As chrome OS. As emebedded OS, and as OS in networking devices and servers.

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bashasm profile image
Basha

I agree with some of the points sir
For the development corporations, I still feel, they are better of using Linux, it saves lots of money. I see nowadays even people are using Linux and Docker to spin of windows servers, as Linux is cheap, whereas azure and windows hosting takes a huge amount of money

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skyjur profile image
Ski • Edited

Where does your idea that it saves a lot money even comes from? I never used Windows servers so I don't really know much of it. But I've just checked Azure and Windows and Linux instances cost is same for same size of instance. And Azure is priced competitively with similar providers like AWS or GCP.