Cant believe somebody is still using windows server? What’s the use case?

Building Unreal games. Running windows containers.

Windows server is actually kind of awesome for when you need a Windows machine. Linux is great for servers but Windows server is the real Windows pro. Rock solid and none of the crap.

The worst part of Windows server is knowing that Microsoft can make a good operating system and chooses not to.

Questions like this show the incredible disconnect between HN and the widely deployed tech that the world depends on. The use case for Windows Server is running a centrally managed office: from operating your own certificate authority and deploying PC images, to managing resources like virtual desktops, print and file servers, all the way down to individual browser settings and even the ordering of items in the Start menu.

You can recreate Windows Server on other platforms by stringing together bits and pieces, but there is nothing that comes even close in terms of integration and how everything works together. Nothing.

Mine is a ~10-person bank consultancy without time or energy to deal with elite neck beard problems. Windows server, mssql and .NET are a great combo.

I wish we could separate the paid/oss aspects from the technical ones because Microsoft absolutely runs circles around every other stack when it comes to serious business software solutions, especially in resource constrained teams. I agree that oss and free software is conceptually ideal, but I also see why you might want to try different models.

Much of the Microsoft hate seems to come back to this notion that paid, COTS software is inherently evil or bad. Also, windows 11 is genuinely bad, but at least it boots up without weird issues that take an entire afternoon to resolve. I've never had a Linux experience that didn't kick me in the balls in some way. Not even the Steam Deck was smooth.

I happily throw my wallet at Microsoft if they solve my problem. Adobe, IBM, Oracle, The Empire, etc. Doesn't matter anymore. If it provides value to me and my clients, I'm going to use it or advocate for it. Spending money on good tools is not a bad thing. This world is about to get way more competitive than many of us would like for it to be. This level of petty tooling tribalism is going to become absolutely lethal.

Companies that are bigger than startups vibecoding food delivery apps?

Even Apple and Google run AD internally.

Gotta support all those CAD workstations running Windows.

Is Apple hardware still designed on Windows PCs?

In practice, Windows is still the de facto standard in industrial software.

At least in my experience I’m based in Korea and have worked on code that goes into enterprise systems — most MES and related systems are still built around MS SQL. SQL Server is very much alive in that space. It may feel outdated from a modern app development perspective, but the reality is that it’s deeply embedded through vendor lock-in.

What’s often called “legacy” is also, in another sense, a massive accumulation of layers built on top of it. That history has weight.

In most environments I’ve seen, the architecture ends up being hybrid: Windows on one side (for equipment control, MES, vendor tools), and Linux on the other (for backend services, data processing, etc.).

From the perspective of the companies I’ve worked with, there’s also a different way of looking at Linux. I often hear that “there’s no clear owner” — meaning no single vendor they can hold accountable. With Windows-based stacks, they feel like there’s at least a defined support boundary.

In the end, I think it comes down to perspective.

Companies that aren't technology companies but use technology that has been doing the job for 20 years.

AEC companies.

Our GIS clients run WS as a Deskstop OS with ESRIs ArcGIS Pro. Incredibly common.

And once you have that - add in Active directory, DFS and random Windows Servers for running archaic proprietary licensing services.

Not a business use case, but I run it for my home server. I've got some QNAP JBOD SAS enclosures that only support firmware updates via Windows (or QNAP NAS). Every other disk enclosure I looked at involved some compromises (e.g. rackmounted, or non-SAS, or a custom-built thing that I'm not really interested in.)

The next best alterative would be a Mac Studio with Thunderbolt enclosures, but that would be notably more expensive, and macOS isn't great as a server OS.

An application that is only supported on MS Windows. Yes, those still exist. One project I am working on is supporting such an application that is a mix of desktop and web application talking to industrial monitoring devices.

It's a beast in terms of complexity, in my opinion. But the vendor only supports running it on specific configurations.

I hope we migrate our stack to Linux soon, but I think that’ll take few years.

I know big company that run their core on Windows Server 2012, I’ve no idea how they manage the software assurance and compliance

Many companies only have legacy software/server/services running on windows.

- Proprietary embedded hardware compilers that only runs on windows

- Building windows GUI apps