I remember going some of these questions over in the early 2000's. ('02, maybe.) Around the time Linux was starting to make inroads into businesses. Usually by

I remember going some of these questions over in the early 2000's. ('02, maybe.) Around the time Linux was starting to make inroads into businesses. Usually by the backdoor - internal services needed platforms they could install without going through the usual acquisition processes. If it cost money, some beancounter was going to object. (I witnessed a couple of cases first hand.) So the techies installed some flavour of Linux on decommissioned boxes instead and ran their systems where they could. Individually the cost savings were negligible, but when you suddenly find out that 30 or even 50 internal services are running on top of OS stack that had cost nothing, the upper echelons finally take notice. The fact that the OS could be customised and repurposed for a particular need was an amplifier, and only later became the core "feature". I recall (with horror) the days when "tweaking the OS" meant running regedit.exe and turning a number of undocumented knobs in directions you could only guess at. Not to mention pray that the system worked on the next boot. So Linux use began as a way to cut costs (or skip the acquisition process altogether). It ballooned because it was possible to customise and extend the system on the OS level as needed.