5 ms·

I'm sure it stings Microsoft a lot more that Windows isn't the dominant server OS.

bruce511 3y ago
I'm sure it stings a lot! Windows Server is expensive, and a huge money earner for MS. They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - much higher inside business LANs), which is a very nice chunk. And I'm sure encourages them to keep working on it. Frankly the tooling for MS server keeps it in the hunt - they really understand the concept of making things easier to use.
- vasco 3y ago
  > They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - Extremely big doubts about this. How would anyone even know? All the hyperscale datacenters built by FAANG must be 99.9% Linux, and those DCs alone would probably be enough to make 20% impossible to hit for windows.
  - fomine3 3y ago
    Nit: many edge servers by N is FreeBSD at least.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    It might be that a load of Azure sites run IIS to do some auth work or something, and that's counted as Windows for each of those sites?
    - mrweasel 3y ago
      And Active Director and Exchange, they have to count for a ton of installations as well.
  - bruce511 3y ago
    See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys... (Scroll down to servers) Incidentally this is public facing Internet servers. The % -inside- enterprises us much much higher. Tools like Active Directory allow you to scale enterprise operations, which is important for companies that have hundreds-of-thousands of desktops etc. In any event your estimate of 99.9% is unlikely. AWS offers Windows based EC2 instances, and one presumes they're not doing that for 0.01% of the market. Azure will likely have an even higher %. From the data though, not just guessing, I'd say it's about 20% overall.
    - zambal 3y ago
      > Incidentally this is public facing Internet servers. The % -inside- enterprises us much much higher. I can believe private enterprise usage is higher, but I imagine FAANG and similar companies also have quite a lot non public Linux servers. Not trying to rebut your overall point, but I'm not sure the total non public % is much different.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        Ironically, despite macOS, Android and ChromeOS at Mountain View, it was Windows that got WebGPU first when Chrome went stable with it.
    - mlyle 3y ago
      Of course, we might not believe that all of those internet facing servers are of equal size and represent an equal number of servers, right? We know that all the top 25 websites are 100% Linux and represent a lot of servers each. Also a whole lot of that cited report seems to be misidentified. The top Windows site other than Microsoft properties listed is nih.gov, which looks like Drupal on Linux behind Akamai GHost -- all Linux. I do accept that Windows is probably about 20-25% of server instances and slowly contracting. But public facing webservers and the infrastructure that directly supports them? Nothing close to this.
    - stingraycharles 3y ago
      Wouldn’t that survey count e.g. Google as just a single public facing server? I don’t know in what way that survey would be representative.
- whizzter 3y ago
  It might be expensive but I wouldn't at all be surprised if MS already makes more money annually on Linux instances on Azure and I'm almost certain that Windows instances on Azure makes more than the regular enterprise installations.
pjmlp 3y ago
It surely does, yet they have a better OS to sell on the server room, Azure.
- stingraycharles 3y ago
  Most customers I work with use mostly Linux on Azure. Lots of Kubernetes and container stuff going on there.
mrweasel 3y ago
They still have the dominant desktop OS and they barely care about that. Microsoft in it's current form wants to sell you subscriptions and in that context the operating system is less relevant. What stings me a bit is that Microsoft is the dominant player on the desktop and then they are so little about making the making it a good and consistent experience. Windows 95 was never amazing, but they put the work in and gave us the impression that they at least tried. Now it's 2023 and my desktop has ads, tracking and UI elements that are 30 years old, because they could never be arsed to update them.

I'm sure it stings a lot! Windows Server is expensive, and a huge money earner for MS. They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - much higher inside business LANs), which is a very nice chunk. And I'm sure encourages them to keep working on it. Frankly the tooling for MS server keeps it in the hunt - they really understand the concept of making things easier to use.

vasco 3y ago
> They currently have around 20% market share (as Internet servers - Extremely big doubts about this. How would anyone even know? All the hyperscale datacenters built by FAANG must be 99.9% Linux, and those DCs alone would probably be enough to make 20% impossible to hit for windows.
- fomine3 3y ago
  Nit: many edge servers by N is FreeBSD at least.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  It might be that a load of Azure sites run IIS to do some auth work or something, and that's counted as Windows for each of those sites?
  - mrweasel 3y ago
    And Active Director and Exchange, they have to count for a ton of installations as well.
- bruce511 3y ago
  See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_systems https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_sys... (Scroll down to servers) Incidentally this is public facing Internet servers. The % -inside- enterprises us much much higher. Tools like Active Directory allow you to scale enterprise operations, which is important for companies that have hundreds-of-thousands of desktops etc. In any event your estimate of 99.9% is unlikely. AWS offers Windows based EC2 instances, and one presumes they're not doing that for 0.01% of the market. Azure will likely have an even higher %. From the data though, not just guessing, I'd say it's about 20% overall.
  - zambal 3y ago
    > Incidentally this is public facing Internet servers. The % -inside- enterprises us much much higher. I can believe private enterprise usage is higher, but I imagine FAANG and similar companies also have quite a lot non public Linux servers. Not trying to rebut your overall point, but I'm not sure the total non public % is much different.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Ironically, despite macOS, Android and ChromeOS at Mountain View, it was Windows that got WebGPU first when Chrome went stable with it.
  - mlyle 3y ago
    Of course, we might not believe that all of those internet facing servers are of equal size and represent an equal number of servers, right? We know that all the top 25 websites are 100% Linux and represent a lot of servers each. Also a whole lot of that cited report seems to be misidentified. The top Windows site other than Microsoft properties listed is nih.gov, which looks like Drupal on Linux behind Akamai GHost -- all Linux. I do accept that Windows is probably about 20-25% of server instances and slowly contracting. But public facing webservers and the infrastructure that directly supports them? Nothing close to this.
  - stingraycharles 3y ago
    Wouldn’t that survey count e.g. Google as just a single public facing server? I don’t know in what way that survey would be representative.
whizzter 3y ago
It might be expensive but I wouldn't at all be surprised if MS already makes more money annually on Linux instances on Azure and I'm almost certain that Windows instances on Azure makes more than the regular enterprise installations.

pjmlp 3y ago

It surely does, yet they have a better OS to sell on the server room, Azure.

stingraycharles 3y ago
Most customers I work with use mostly Linux on Azure. Lots of Kubernetes and container stuff going on there.

mrweasel 3y ago

They still have the dominant desktop OS and they barely care about that. Microsoft in it's current form wants to sell you subscriptions and in that context the operating system is less relevant. What stings me a bit is that Microsoft is the dominant player on the desktop and then they are so little about making the making it a good and consistent experience. Windows 95 was never amazing, but they put the work in and gave us the impression that they at least tried. Now it's 2023 and my desktop has ads, tracking and UI elements that are 30 years old, because they could never be arsed to update them.