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10 year latter, Windows XP is obsolete, upgrading to a more recent windows might be an option but would cost a shit load of money.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.
Linux is on a shitton of products nowadays, but often people don’t recognise it as such.
In terms of the DB - Windows 3.1 story the solution is simple: It’s time. Windows 3.1 is old as fuck and while Linux is one year older in theory it was a hobby project back then and, more important, was not providing any graphical interface back then - which is what the German Bahn used it for - as a graphical interface. While Unix would have been an option these systems were often hardware-vendor specific(AIX for IBM, HP-UX for HP) and the then standard supplier Siemens-Nixdorf did not provide it’s own Os afaik.OS/2 was basically still Microsoft at that point so there was little reason to not use MS.
The other point are the incredibly long development and usage times of industrial equipment - if you start to design a new high speed train from scratch it can easily take 15 years from start to finish - and the decision which OS you use is one to be done rather early on. And that train will then be used for 30-40 years. The complete IT business will change A LOT during that time. And maybe you bring out a newer model but need it to be backward compatible for some reason. And bam,you use Windows 3.1 in 2030.
For a matter of fact I know of at least one nuclear plant still being controlled by a Digital Equipment PDP11 and one conventional power plant controlled by a Robotron system.
Which brings us to the old:“Never change a running system”. If your application works under windows XP and usually these things do after so many years, why do you need a new OS ? Unlike consumer systems these systems are often in a walled garden or not connected at all and there is literally zero reason to change it.
Nowadays things are different - we have much more outside connections in hardware and linux/Unix is in many more products than people think - I personally would even be fairly sure that it’s in more products than MS nowadays, since they got rid of CE there has been a steep decline in their market share afaik.