Nine Out of Ten Top Webhosting Sites Run Linux/BSD
Here's some good news for everyone except Microsoft: nine out of ten of the most reliable hosting providers in April 2014 use Linux or FreeBSD as their hosting platform. Microsoft only got one of the ten slots, thanks to Netcetera, a provider specializing in WinServer 2012 hosting. Of the nine top sites, five use Linux and four use FreeBSD. The performance measurements are made at fifteen minute intervals from separate points around the internet, and averages are calculated over the immediately preceding 24 hour period. More detail on the measurement process and stats is available at Netcraft .
Mine also runs a Usenet node (www.dictatorshandbook.net for the dictator.* newsgroups), but I don't use it for much else than that. It's just so cool how much you can do with a good OS on a dedicated box (OK, virtual, but from my point of view you'd never know it), and a fixed IP address.