Linux servers popularity
 

Why are Linux servers becoming more and popular these days especially in big organisations?

More uptime, more secure, more stable, less wasteful overhead. That's just a short list...

OpenSource,Multitasking capability,high security feature make linux more popular

We're making the slow migration from Windows based boxes to linux based running VirtualBox where absolutely mecessary.

We're finding if we think of it, we can do it in Linux with total control and no compromise.

Windows limits you to how they beleive it should be dne or to what they want you to do.

Linux = no limts! and no compromise.

In other words (F)ree as in freedom (O)pen (S)ource. It means what it says

The growth in Linux servers has largely come at the expense of traditional Unix, not Windows. Windows server growth has been just as explosive as Linux. Companies transition to Linux, I expect, primarily because of cost, and do so when it's obvious their infrastructure will run on Linux machines. It sometimes takes a while to get old applications replaced or ported, but the lack of licensing restrictions is certainly attractive.

Historically that was true (about where Linux server market share was coming from),... but I am not so sure you can say the same today.

Cost is negligible in terms of the factors regarding server cost. Hardware costs are largely fixed. License costs are usually a fraction of operating costs, not worth factoring in except for Small/Medium-sized Businesses. Plus, many companies may use licensed support contracts, which makes that cost factor moot.

If you are talking personnel, ... maybe. While Linux server admins generally command a 30% greater compensation package compared to their Windows counterparts, you can get by with fewer of them (estimates are 1/3 the number of personnel being necessary).

Additionally, VMs make the licensing costs moot as well. If a piece of specialty software requires Windows server,... It requires Windows server. You can just create a VM to handle that. Then, you can have multiple VMs working on the same hardware, which CAN often reduce costs (less hardware, or hardware getting used more efficiently). But that begs the question of Windows server expansion versus Linux server expansion ... Are they really happening at the expense of one another?! I would argue no... I would argue it's just more VMs getting used, so licenses being purchased, but the server environment being more dynamic and multi-platform.

In other words, the answer to the question, "Does your organization use Linux Servers or Windows Servers?" is often,... "Yes..."

i dont think this is anything new. this is taken from wikipedia (which is hosted on linux -- other popular linux hosted websites include: google, facebook, twitter, linkedin, ... practically every major website):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_%28computing%29

I believe there's a small company called Google that uses Linux exclusively (I may well be wrong!) but I'm sure I read somewhere that if you wanted to run a Window's desktop you needed permission from the CEO!!! This after some email hacking issues.

Hmmm... I'm not sure I believe my statement so someone correct me! :D

Play bonny! :hattip:

I would agree that Linux will grow the fastest by number of machines. However, traditional Unix and Windows are the big revenue generators per seat/license. Vendors aren't going to give up when there's money to be made. IBM has had decent success with it's flavors of Unix even in a very competitive environment, and Windows server is a huge moneymaker for Microsoft. MS has shown that it can be flexible on pricing when it sees a need to be, so I don't count them out by any means, and they've got a massive sales army that knows it's stuff. There are literally millions of small businesses that run Windows applications that use shared databases and such on small servers, and that will remain a core market for Microsoft. Switching these smaller businesses, which often don't have much in the way of on-site IT over to Linux is a very tough nut to crack.

That's more a philosophical thing, than anything else. While Windows can be a security nightmare in a large organization, this is due to user malfeasance more than any problem with Windows...Windows just has so much more mischief you can get in to with it. I'm sure Google has plenty of Windows machines running in their dev department, since that is by far the predominant desktop platform Google software runs on.