Just saw a blue screen of death In the top of a taxi cab. Had no idea these kind of signs were running Windows. Why are so many companies buying licenses for Windows when they could so easily use Linux ?

They must have custom software that's written for windows.

Again... They could have custom software for Linux and not have to pay for a crappy buggy OS.

Because, guess what? They have a choice to use what they want :D

The windows licence cost is probably insignificant against the digital signage software licence costs. And yet it still crashes.

@Ratwerks what's buggy is the user. It's far easier to break Linux than Windows.

Well because this solution was the cheapest.

Windows for embedded systems, OEMs and such, can be really really cheap, so license cost doesn't matter here.

Under the line linux is expensive for alot of Situations. If something is not working well you need an expensive linux guy instead of just 10 Minutes of Google. Also who knows if there are drivers for the used devices.

Is there not expensive Windows guys ?@Salmakis

There's a cab management suite thats been around forever, it usually gets used to advertise jobs to drivers, manage breaks, locate vehicles and record transactions. It's run on embedded XP for God knows how many years, and it has a huge C backend. It doesn't usually have too many issues, but these devices have to be approaching 15 years old now, its hardly surprising that there's the odd failure.

Marketing..

Support. Windows comes with at least 10 years oft bugfixing and upgrades whereas Linux has somehow 5 years....

@apisarenco because on Linux you actually control your computer and not the other way around.

Because they have a choice, and it's probably not expensive. Could also have everything automated and it doesn't need a Linux guru to maintain it.

@kpenc riiiiiiiiight. You're in control. That's why I can't resize my /home partition without a live USB stick.

@apisarenco at least it doesn't matter at which side of the partition is the unallocated space that you want to expand it with.

@kpenc it wouldn't matter, if I could first get that free space, which I can't.

Anyway, my point is that it's an illusion that the difference between these OSes is control.
In both places you're bound by the exact same thing: programs.

Another good example to throw at you: you can't control any Linux desktop environment to play nicely with DPI scaling on HiDPI screens. There.

In most cases we dont want to control the computer, wen want it to do its job with most less possible work/time to spend on maintenancr

@apisarenco you can. Write the missing pieces yourself and share with the world. :D you have the soonest code for Christ's sake, you can do everything.

@kpenc so basically I'd have to write the software. Which I can do on Windows as well.

What's the difference again?

@apisarenco like a cat, you once again don't get the point. :D So you make no difference between open and closed source.

@kpenc no dude. There is the point, and you on the other side of the planet trying to sell a red herring.

It has nothing to do with whether it's open source or not. Not one single person on the planet is familiar with even half of sources of every single program they use. So it's as irrelevant as my cat is to the color of your socks.