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[–] 7 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 child)

The competition wasn't between Linux and Windows, but rather Linux with some dedicated server OSes like Solaris, HP-UX and whatnot — mostly variants of Unix, but idk which ones exactly.

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  • [–] 3 points 11 months ago

    And for those, it's pretty clear. Solaris, HP-UX, Irix, AIX... They all were proprietary offerings that strove to lock in users to a specific hardware stack with very high prices.

    Linux opened up the competitive field to a much broader set of business concerns, making performance per dollar much more attractive. Also the open source having a great deal of appeal for some of the academic market, a huge participant in the HPC community.

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