Not sure about that last point. In my uni, the computers booted over PXE and were often re-imaged, while mounting user files over the network. I imagine it is

Not sure about that last point. In my uni, the computers booted over PXE and were often re-imaged, while mounting user files over the network. I imagine it is a rather common setup? Anyway, since they had groups of similar hardware, software was thouroughly tested before any update was deployed to a given group. This was the case for Linux, and probably for windows as well. This was a smallish university, with an IT staff of 3-4, mind you, so that's probably not too complex to deploy. There's probably turnkey solutions out there (Red Hat likely has something like this). Linux makes sense in a company setting IMO, as companies can generally pick the machines their employees will use, so they can vet compatibility and software updates in advance. Of course, more moving parts (different HW/SW combinations) means more difficult testing.