its strange how people who work in professions that are considered crucial infrastructure are held to such a high standard but there's always some tech problem that cripples them the hardest
"Windows" is the combination of the OS per se and all the things needed for it to run properly. That thing is a mess of proprietary drivers and pieces of software cobbled together. It can't be called "high reliability" with a straight face.
Crowdstrike is a multiplatform malware that chronically damages computers on all major desktop OSes. This is a Crowd strike problem and an admin problem.
That's a hell of a take that should not be taken seriously. Perhaps if you hold everything else to the same standard. Anything used on macOS or Linux or whatever else fully and completely represents that core platform, then I'd agree.
Anecdotally, I have zero stability problems on my non-ECC consumer-grade 11th gen Intel Windows 11 system. It'll stay up for months, until I decide to shut it down. I had a loose GPU power cable that was causing me problems at a point, but since I reseated everything I haven't had a single issue. That was my fault, things happen. The system is great.
More significantly, I see no difference in stability between our Windows Server platform and Red Hat Enterprise (Oracle) server platform at work either. Work being one of the top 3 largest city governments in the USA.
I don't even think Linux is the definite answer. The majority of these critical apps are just full-screen UIs written in C, C++ or Java with minimal computing and networking, so they could just as easily run on Qubes or BSD without all the constant patching for dumb vulnerabilities that still persist even though Windows is 40 years old.
The problem is the middle management class at hospitals, governments, etc., only know how to use Word and maybe Excel, so they are comfortable with Microsoft, even though it's objectively the worst option if you aren't gaming. So then they make contracts with Microsoft and all the computers run Windows, so all the app developers have to write the apps for Windows.
Not really disagreeing with you, but "staying up for months" isn't a serious bar to clear, it really provides no information in 2024 everything you can install should clear that bar.
Can you say with a straight face that if you were designing a system that had extremely high requirements of reliability that you would choose Windows over Linux? Like, all other things being equal? I'm sorry, but that would be an insane choice.
Well, yes? Of course, not the consumer deployment of Windows. Part of ensuring reliability is establishing contracts with suppliers that shift liability to them, so they're incentivized to keep their stuff reliable. Can't exactly do that with Linux (RHEL notiwthstanding) and open source in general, which is why large enterprises have been so reluctant to adopt them in the past - they had to figure out how to fit OSS into the flow of liability and responsibility.
It's not as straightforward of a choice as it may seem. In theory Linux would be a better choice but there simply isn't the infrastructure or IT staffing in place to manage millions and millions of Linux desktops. I'm not saying it can't be done but for various reasons it hasn't been done and that's a major practical roadblock. Just from a staffing perspective alone if you hand millions of Linux desktops to life long Microsoftsies you're begging for disaster.
For sure, no question! There's a reason people choose Microsoft. My question was narrower, just the question on reliability (hence "all else being equal"). I don't think you can say that, leaving aside issues like this, that Windows is as or more reliable than Linux.
For instance, if you had to make deploy a mission critical server, assuming cost and other software was the same, would you choose Linux or Windows for reliability? Of course you would choose Linux.
Well, with the proliferation of systemd and all the nightmares it's caused me over the past decade, I actually might. But thankfully BSD is an option.
But Linux isn't immune from this exact sort of issue, though - these overgrown antivirus solutions run as kernel drivers in linux as well, and I have seen them cause kernel panics.
Depends i think. When i was working as a super market cashier the tils had embedded XP. in 2 or 3 years it rarely had issues. The rare issues it did have were with the java POS running on top.
Windows 10 for my home desktop crashed a lot more and just seems to have gotten more "janky" with time.
The people working in those professions are; their bosses and their IT departments are not. IT security is treated as solved problem - if you deploy enough well-known solutions that prevent your employers from working, everything will be Safe from CyberAttacks. There's an assumption of quality like you'd normally have with drugs or food in the store. But this isn't the case in this industry, doubly so in security. Quality solutions are almost non-existent, so companies should learn to operate under the principle of caveat emptor.
