Ask HN: Why Linux over Windows Server from a technical aspect

Smaller footprint. Faster reboot. Runs on more processors.

That's the weirdest question I've seen in HN. Do you have experience in both? Yeah pricing and open source are two very important technical advantages of Linux. What do you mean by kitchen sink builtin? Is it somehow related to crowdstrike?

Microsoft licensing is prohibitive for small teams and indie/open-source projects, Windows runs on less hardware (it can run on Arm now, but x86 gets emulated), it has a smaller open-source ecosystem of command-line tools, it generally costs more in VMs, and generally just doesn't have the developer mindshare of the FOSS stuff.

Pricing isn't something you can just ignore. Anyone can get started with a free LEMP stack in a few minutes. Windows Server starts at $500 and goes up from there, and you have to pay more the more instances you have. If you start with it, you get locked into it, and it can get very expensive at enterprise scale.

Some enterprises still use Windows Server, especially if the rest of their stack is Microsoft and they can negotiate a bundled license with everything they need. But web startups typically want to avoid the Microsoft tax. Their apps' business value tends to be at the level of a webpage anyway, so the underlying stack doesn't matter as much – it's not like Windows Server gives them any significant advantages over spinning up a standard VM or some managed databases and CDNs, etc. Windows doesn't do anything especially worthwhile to justify that additional cost unless you're an all-Microsoft shop. And these days, when you're typically deploying to web + apps, Microsoft matters even less. .NET is popular in Europe, but in the US it's generally Electron or React Native, etc.

As for external packages, it's a philosophical/historical difference. Microsoft has traditionally favored first-party monoliths (the "kitchen sink" approach) that they can sell as a whole solution at a high price. GNU/Linux is traditionally clobbered together from a bunch of small free utilities, each with different authors, and each managing only their own little sphere of concern. It favors modular utilities that can be piped together or little daemons that run on their own ports. It allows very fast iterations (since any one tool can be reinvented and modularly replaced), but yes, it isn't as batteries-included as a Microsoft stack.

But at the end of the day, free matters a LOT. Microsoft is perfectly capable of making/acquiring popular tools as long as they're free, like VSCode or Github.