I know it’s popular with professionals and scientists, and of course there’s MacOS, but I don’t know why. What makes it better or more preferable than something like Windows?
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Outside of very specialized uses there is no advantage to UNIX, you may be mixing up UNIX with Unix-like operating systems. That ecosystem is very rich with software and compatibility, if you have a need there is a *nix that will fill it, mostly at no cost to you.
That is the single best aspect of Linux, it has a massive amount of support and you can run all sorts of software on it. Most enterprise firewalls are just Linux servers that get put onto commodity servers with some vendor’s spray-paint on it. You just won’t use Windows for that application. AWS is big, right? You have heard a lot about it, underpinning all of AWS services are Linux operating systems. An EC2 instance (this is getting into the weeds) is just a virtual machine running on Linux, you could lab something very similar in an afternoon. That is not something you are likely to do with Windows, since you have to pay Microsoft for every 4 processor cores or something.
I argue, having used the big three (Mac, Linux, Windows) for nearing 20 years, that Windows is just fine as a desktop operating system, and it is even pretty good as a general use server. If the person implementing it is a professional, Windows works great. If the person implementing it is a lazy jerk, Linux works like garbage. Pick the right tool for the job and use it correctly.
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