this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2026
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Ah, yes, Windows NT.
I remember how this little operating system with a kernel invented by a Finnish dude and with no real corporate back almost completelly ate their market share in the server space back in the day (not that they've had a significant server market for long in between the end of the era of corporate Unixes like SunOS and the beginning of the era of Linux).
I actual did server-side development and just about every company I worked for in 2 decades and 3 countries had masses of Linux servers and if that much a handful of Windows servers, and that included all sized of company, from small ones to massive corporate behemoths - Linux was simple the best way to get the most use and performance out of your server hardware.
Whilst I haven't been doing server side stuff for a few years, I'm actually surprised they still have any server market at all, since the only upside their server solutions have over Linux is perfect integration with their Desktop OS whilst all the rest are downsides.
I guess that they have some market share because basically their servers serve as glue between instances of to their Desktop OS in a network because of using closed protocols (i.e. a forced dependency on the desktop market rather than superior quality) whilst for any kind of generic computing they're an inferior solution to even a free OS.
I totally agreed with that: their Server OS is superior to their Desktop OS.
I just think it's mainly because their Desktop OS has fast enshittified after Windows 7 rather than because Windows server is actually all that great as a server OS.
In fact, thinking about it, one might even say that Windows Server is better than the Desktop version because it's to a very great extent a Desktop OS (in terms of having things like having an a complex UI layer and set of support applications integrated) the very thing which is actually a large part of the reason why its an inferior server OS for typical server-side scenarios because there what you most value is maximum computing resources made available to the server applications (which tend to be heavy users of computing, memory, networking or a combination of those) and an integrated UI layer actually uses more of those just for the OS (both directly for its own work and indirectly from the added complexity of a bulkier OS resulting in less streamlined execution paths) making fewer resources available for the same hardware.
If you look at the Linux distros and distro variants for server deployment they are actually vastly inferior to the Windows OS Desktop - for starters because they're command-line only, though nowadays there's often web-based management interfaces which are still a much lighter option than a directly integrated UI layer - exactly because absent an intergrated UI layer, not adding the UI support on top via something like XWindows or Wyland on a server Linux distro actually makes them better for server tasks.
I did not know that.
Took them two decades but better late than never!
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