I was thinking about the recent story about the DB looking for windows 3.1 administrator.
A classic issue I’ve soon working in heavy industry is that hardware last longer than windows version. So 10 years ago, you bought a component for the product you design or a full machine for your factory which only comes with a windows XP driver.
10 year latter, Windows XP is obsolete, upgrading to a more recent windows might be an option but would cost a shit load of money.
I have therefore the impression that Linux would offer more control to the professional user in term of product lifecycle and patch deployment. However, there is always that stupid HW which doesn’t have a Linux driver.
The main reason is that there is no single Linux operating system. Linux basically is just the kernel. Every thing else around this kernel, like tools, applications and libraries, is highly customisable and exists in form of various forms of Linux operating system distributions. The fact that these distributions are very different from each other makes it almost impossible to certify industrial products for „the Linux“ operating system. There are just too many variations of it.