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Comment by jakeinspace | Hacker News Reader

I don't have access to the source, but I literally cannot believe that is true.

There's often dozens of Windows servers installed on site in millions of offices around the world, doing various tasks (email, active directory, file storage, etc).

I'm sure if you looked at "servers installed in a data centre" then it would be closer to what you expect. But there are so many servers doing "boring" jobs in cupboards youll never see it totally skews the figures.

But if you looked at “servers installed in a data centre” what you’d discover is that there’s millions of servers in just one building.

Perhaps we could divide the statistics into "unnecessary servers Microsoft forced you to run" and "servers you actually need"?

This is so true! Most of the in-house data centers I had seen had Windows and they didn't really bother to even think about changing. It's totally different from cloud service providers, that some of them don't even provide a Windows server option.

it says it right in the description, which you don't need a subscription to read

> In 2019, the Windows operating system was used on 72.1 percent of servers worldwide, whilst the Linux operating system accounted for 13.6 percent of servers. Compared to 2018, both companies experienced an increase to their overall market share.

I don't think what is described as unbelievable is that the source claims that, but that the claim is true.

(And since it describes both “Windows” and “Linux” as “companies” that gained marketshare, I’m somewhat suspicious of their information gathering.)

But not being registered with them, I don’t have access to what passes for their detailed source information for that claim.

That's just unbelievable on the face of it.

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