No Stupid Questions

Because someone in sales ordered it to be done that way.

Linux is on a shitton of products nowadays, but often people don't recognise it as such.

In terms of the DB - Windows 3.1 story the solution is simple: It's time. Windows 3.1 is old as fuck and while Linux is one year older in theory it was a hobby project back then and, more important, was not providing any graphical interface back then - which is what the German Bahn used it for - as a graphical interface. While Unix would have been an option these systems were often hardware-vendor specific(AIX for IBM, HP-UX for HP) and the then standard supplier Siemens-Nixdorf did not provide it's own Os afaik.OS/2 was basically still Microsoft at that point so there was little reason to not use MS.

The other point are the incredibly long development and usage times of industrial equipment - if you start to design a new high speed train from scratch it can easily take 15 years from start to finish - and the decision which OS you use is one to be done rather early on. And that train will then be used for 30-40 years. The complete IT business will change A LOT during that time. And maybe you bring out a newer model but need it to be backward compatible for some reason. And bam,you use Windows 3.1 in 2030.

For a matter of fact I know of at least one nuclear plant still being controlled by a Digital Equipment PDP11 and one conventional power plant controlled by a Robotron system.

Which brings us to the old:"Never change a running system". If your application works under windows XP and usually these things do after so many years, why do you need a new OS ? Unlike consumer systems these systems are often in a walled garden or not connected at all and there is literally zero reason to change it.

Nowadays things are different - we have much more outside connections in hardware and linux/Unix is in many more products than people think - I personally would even be fairly sure that it's in more products than MS nowadays, since they got rid of CE there has been a steep decline in their market share afaik.

The main reason is that there is no single Linux operating system. Linux basically is just the kernel. Every thing else around this kernel, like tools, applications and libraries, is highly customisable and exists in form of various forms of Linux operating system distributions. The fact that these distributions are very different from each other makes it almost impossible to certify industrial products for „the Linux“ operating system. There are just too many variations of it.

I don't think it's the marketing crap, but business people like to have warranty and someone to blame when something goes wrong.

Now, GPL and MIT explicitly state that there is no warranty, not even implied warranty.

Look at your keyboard and you'll get your answer (hint: Microsoft symbol)

Microsoft integrated itself into every aspect of the industry (and beyond) to be a monopoly, as part of making technology.

Linux in the other hand, is just a technology, which doesn't really cares about market share, profits and being a monopoly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

I also look at it as Coca Cola vs. Natural freshly squeezed juice

Others have given good reasons. I just wanted to point out that you are generally supposed to use a dedicated computer that is firewalled or, preferably airgapped. And never patch anything unless absolutely required.

It does but for the 90's/00's a computer typically meant Windows.

The ops staff would all be 'Microsoft Certified Engineers', the project managers had heard of Microsoft FuD about open source and every graduate would have been taught programming via Visual Studio.

Then you have regulatory hurdles, for example in 2010 I was working on an 'embedded' platform on a first generation Intel Atom platform. Due to power constraints I suggested we use Linux. It worked brilliantly.

Government regulations required anti virus from an approved list and an OS that had been accredited by a specific body.

The only accredited OS's were Windows and the approved Anti Viruses only supported Windows. Which is how I got to spend 3 months learning how to cut XP embedded down to nothing.

Purchasing decisions are often made by people who are not IT experts. They are heavily advertised to and lobbied at by Microsoft. Also, the people who make purchasing decisions now won't have to live with the consequences twenty years down the line. So they go with the easy option.

At least the whole automobile industry runs on Linux (and now more and more Android)

One thing to also remember is 15 years ago there was a lot of anti-Linux marketing. To be fair, Linux sucked back then

it should be noted, that the hardware doesn't necessarily last longer than the windows support- in large server farms that have been running for a long time, it's normal for the occasional odds and ends to go down and not come back up. hard disks in particular come to mind.

you think windows 3.1 was old... the IRS's largest database (and much of the financial world,) runs on emulations of the original IBM Mainframes; specifically running KOBOL.

Also Linux has a reputation of being used by pirates. a lot of industrial tools are expensive; and the fear is letting it go on Linux is likely to lead to it being pirated; so corpo dicks freak out over it. The reality is, it's going to be pirated anyway, probably. Unless your tool is so obscure, uselss or just down-right awful. but don't tell them that.

Finally, supporting multiple environments is relatively expensive, and leads to increased complexity. So, developers focus on the environment they think will be most frequently used by their end-users. which is why most games are "exclusive" to windows, for example.

2 main reasons in my view:

• windows is the de facto standard for desktop ans users management. So each corp has at least one guy used to the interface to dofirst-level debug
• windows comes with support, not linux. So corps don't want to employe one Linux admin "just in case". That's the main reason I keep hearing from sysadmins I know

the simple answer is Microsoft

they have so much backwards compatibility built into their operating system it's becoming a problem

Linux systems are also more varied, having one target is easy so you know it works,

anither reason is Windows is the largest desktop operating system, so if some random has to use it they've probably seen it before

You said it - money. They want you to have to buy new.

Market share. If you look on the server side though, you find the total opposite.