Well, we can get academic about it, if you like. 🙂

Windows was first released in 1985 - I know this because I happen to born in the same year, so it's one of those things that's easy to remember. 🙂

Windows NT comes nearly a decade later but no, it wasn't made for the server market, it was created for universal use from workstation, to office and server and ultimately became part of Windows XP in 2001 and all subsequent versions of Windows since. Server here being just a feature rather than the original goal and if you read up on material from the era, you'll see the marketing involved very little server stuff.

Granted, at one point after 1993 Windows was the number 1 server operating system, but was quickly taken over Linux, which currently holds nearly 63% market share. BSD Unix as the forefather on Linux was since 1975 already built with networking in mind. That is a 20-year edge over Microsoft.

So, Steven in his article back in 2009 that I quoted and later paraphrased is indeed correct, and I very much agree with: Windows was never built with a hostile world in mind. This is a little bit like the Tesla Cybertruck. It's meant to be a pickup truck, it just doesn't deal well with pickup truck needs.

This is why at one point I said that Windows is by now a heap of technical debt ripe for a rewrite. Microsoft really needs to look at the competition and take what's good from both. Privacy and security from Apple and a solid network-focused architecture from Unix. It really is up to MS to change its DNA. Microsoft Windows is currently only popular because that's what comes installed with PCs, and something like Ubuntu is still not a great alternative - Linux has gotten so good at being server, it forgot to be a bog standard operating system. If Apple suddenly allowed its OS to run on PCs, MS would struggle to keep its market dominance.