Five Reasons why Linux is not winning over Windows:

 Linux has soared in recent years both in servers and desktops. Several factors are contributing to this surge, all happening at once. First, there is a change in the trend from powerful desktops to smaller, but less powerful, notebooks -- and now, netbooks. In addition, more user (and media) friendly Linux distributions, such as Ubuntu, have hit the scene. Not to forget the surge in the embedded world, especially with the Linux-based Android giving it a boost in smartphone sales. Finally, here comes the OS everybody loves to hate: Windows Vista -- significantly more resource hungry than XP and perhaps released a little too soon. All these factors probably made many users think of giving a shot to Linux.

Most people have heard that Linux is something tedious they came across at college. Other people think of it as something used by scientists and run on powerful but expensive workstations. Main concern with Linux is that it is not as easy as MacOS or Windows, and users simply miss their familiar Windows functions. Likewise, there are a number of reasons why Linux isn’t winning over Windows. I'm going to look at 5 of these reasons, some that apply primarily to servers, some to desktops, and some to both.

1)     Misleading Cost comparisons:

Let’s get what may be the most controversial point out of the way early. First, in the server space especially, we should try to compare apples to apples. This means comparing Windows Server to paid Linux. By far the most dominant flavor is Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), with about a two-thirds share of the paid enterprise Linux market, so this seems the most logical comparison. While there are plenty of free options out there, such as CentOS, for a business running mission-critical workloads, an unsupported operating system is a hard pill to swallow.
There are a couple of ways we can look at cost, neither of which is nearly as flattering to Linux as one might expect. First, we can look at the costs directly related to the acquisition of the platform. RHEL is a subscription-based license, meaning that rather than pay for the software itself, you pay for support. This doesn’t mean just phone tech support or troubleshooting (although that is included too, whether you want it or not) but also includes standard patches and bug fixes. Standard support for RHEL 5 Advanced Platform is $1,499 per year per server, or $4,047 for three years. Compare this with $3,999 for Windows Server 2008 Enterprise edition with free patching and bug fixes, and you can basically call it a wash unless you use a bulk of phone support. And there are also features that aren’t included and must be purchased separately, such as Red Hat Directory Server –few more bucks per annum. The other way of looking at cost is total cost of ownership (TCO) of the platform, and this explains our next reason.

2)     Windows Experts are more readily available

When looking at TCO, we’re not just looking at the software costs but also at staffing and administration costs, costs due to downtime, hardware costs, etc. Of these, staffing is the largest, accounting for more than half of the TCO. Here, Windows wins out because IT pros experienced with Windows are much more plentiful and generally cheaper to hire than Linux experts and because they can often be more productive.
With Linux, efficient management over many machines usually means going to the command line and pounding out a script to automate a process -- which is cool. However, with Windows Server 2008, PowerShell is now built in, which means the Windows guys can do that too, arguably better. Add that to the System Center family of tools, where virtually all management tasks are available at the click of a button (and which really have no peer on the Linux side), and Windows is simply easier to manage.

3)     Linux, not competing Head to Head

The last reason Linux isn’t winning over Windows in the server side is that it’s not really the primary focus. Right now, both Linux and Windows are gaining in server market share. How is that possible? Old granddaddy UNIX is being thrown under the bus to make it happen. Today, companies are dumping their old mainframe or proprietary UNIX servers for cheaper x86-based commodity hardware. It’s easy for a Linux sales guy to come in and make the value proposition: “It’s essentially the UNIX you know and love, but it runs on hardware a fraction of the cost.”
Unfortunately, the market for UNIX conversions and mainframe modernization is drying up. When those deals are gone, Linux will have to compete head-to-head with Windows to continue its growth, and this is a much harder proposition to make. Why should an organization already using Windows change platforms and have to build whole new skill sets around Linux?

4)     Advancement in Hardware

While Windows 7 is significantly faster than Vista, I don’t claim that it will be as friendly to the lowest end hardware as Linux. As time marches on, hardware improves. We can now get a quad-core processor and 8 gigs of RAM in our lappies. Intel has a dual-core Atom processor out, and even if it is made for nettops rather than netbooks, it's a safe bet that a dual-core Atom with netbook-friendly power consumption levels is right around the corner. In any case, as hardware continues to advance, that aspect of the Linux argument will become more and more irrelevant.
Also, while we’re on the topic of netbooks, let’s not forget that while these may seemingly be the perfect candidates for conversion from Windows to Linux, according to a Laptop Magazine interview of MSI’s director of U.S. sales, Andy Tung, the return rate of netbooks running Linux is much greater than the rate of those running Windows.
“They start playing around with Linux and start realizing that it’s not what they are used to. They don’t want to spend time to learn it so they bring it back to the store. The return rate is at least four times higher for Linux netbooks than Windows XP netbooks”

5)     The much acclaimed open source don’t stand up to scrutiny

Much of the hype about Linux is really more about open source development in general. The buzzwords all sound good: Open source is all about sharing, collaboration, proliferation of knowledge etc. To certain extent, there is nothing wrong with the open source model, and it surely helps in the advancement software development. As a business model and a model for end-user products, though, it's less reasonable. Here, it causes a lack of standardization. Egos issues among different developers collide, and the final product suffers. Let's not forget the old saying “Too many cooks spoil the broth.”
Another claim is that Linux and open source software are more secure than Windows and Microsoft software. This is largely based on problems with legacy versions of Windows. Back in the NT and Windows 2000 days, there were valid points to be made, but this is far less true today. The last several years have seen a massive emphasis on security across the industry. And now, with Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, and the whole Forefront line of products, Microsoft is running a pretty tight ship -- enough so that major competitors such as Red Hat are not really bringing up the security argument against Windows anymore.