Linux or Windows? You decide

It is easy to get religious about operating systems. We receive emails every week from sys admins fighting the open source cause (though often at the same time forced to work with Windows or Solaris, for example), or MDs happy with their Microsoft environments and telling everyone else to grow up.

Those are two instances. Perhaps to get even more general, we could say there are millions of open source software advocates out there and one big closed source OS backer. That Microsoft is also the most successful OS vendor says something about millions of quiet Windows users. It's what politicians might have once called the Silent Majority.

So who should you put your money on? This is one of the biggest questions in IT and not one we pretend we'll answer in the following 200 words. However, two analyst reports out today are instructive.

Butler Group, in some circles still regarded as one of Microsoft's more friendly assessors, has come out and backed Linux - the most popular open source OS - as the long-term server OS winner, "by a knockout".

Read that and you might doubt Windows' future. Don't. Linux may rise at the expense of NT in the file and print space but across servers it is proprietary Unix OS's such as AIX, HP-UX and Solaris that will suffer.

Microsoft's future is with its .Net framework and server OS, all linked into its web services vision. Butler places .Net in second place, in terms of market share far above where it is now.

A second study, albeit sponsored by Microsoft, carried out by researchers at IDC controversially finds Windows has a lower total cost of ownership (TCO) than Linux in most cases. You won't find a whole lot of studies that say this. Yes, Windows is straightforward, well-known, entrenched and well-marketed but most serious IT departments that have experimented with open source find benefits to be had with Linux.

But IDC says the lower costs for IT staff familiar with Windows puts Microsoft's baby ahead - just.

Of course things will change. People attain skills in certain OS's. Not all technologies live up to their hype. Companies that have money normally do a good job of holding on to it.

We can't give you an answer. Only you will decide the winners over the next 20 years.