Building Unreal games. Running windows containers.

Windows server is actually kind of awesome for when you need a Windows machine. Linux is great for servers but Windows server is the real Windows pro. Rock solid and none of the crap.

The worst part of Windows server is knowing that Microsoft can make a good operating system and chooses not to.

Companies that are bigger than startups vibecoding food delivery apps?

Even Apple and Google run AD internally.

Gotta support all those CAD workstations running Windows.

Is Apple hardware still designed on Windows PCs?

Not a business use case, but I run it for my home server. I've got some QNAP JBOD SAS enclosures that only support firmware updates via Windows (or QNAP NAS). Every other disk enclosure I looked at involved some compromises (e.g. rackmounted, or non-SAS, or a custom-built thing that I'm not really interested in.)

The next best alterative would be a Mac Studio with Thunderbolt enclosures, but that would be notably more expensive, and macOS isn't great as a server OS.

AEC companies.

Our GIS clients run WS as a Deskstop OS with ESRIs ArcGIS Pro. Incredibly common.

And once you have that - add in Active directory, DFS and random Windows Servers for running archaic proprietary licensing services.

An application that is only supported on MS Windows. Yes, those still exist. One project I am working on is supporting such an application that is a mix of desktop and web application talking to industrial monitoring devices.

It's a beast in terms of complexity, in my opinion. But the vendor only supports running it on specific configurations.

- Proprietary embedded hardware compilers that only runs on windows

- Building windows GUI apps

I hope we migrate our stack to Linux soon, but I think that’ll take few years.

I know big company that run their core on Windows Server 2012, I’ve no idea how they manage the software assurance and compliance

Many companies only have legacy software/server/services running on windows.

Questions like this show the incredible disconnect between HN and the widely deployed tech that the world depends on. The use case for Windows Server is running a centrally managed office: from operating your own certificate authority and deploying PC images, to managing resources like virtual desktops, print and file servers, all the way down to individual browser settings and even the ordering of items in the Start menu.

You can recreate Windows Server on other platforms by stringing together bits and pieces, but there is nothing that comes even close in terms of integration and how everything works together. Nothing.

Companies that aren't technology companies but use technology that has been doing the job for 20 years.