The web runs on Unix-like systems. W3Techs 13,241 ' survey of 23 September 2026 puts them at 92.1% of the sites whose operating system it can identify, Linux alone at 62.5% and Windows at 8.1%. Tutorials, Docker 514 images and cheap virtual machines all assume Linux.
You gain four concrete things. A package repository: one command installs Apache 129 , MySQL 524 and PHP together, signed and patched by the distribution for years. A visible process model: every running thing has a PID, a parent, an owning user and open files, and standard tools show you all of it. Configuration as text: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf is a file you can diff, commit to Git 1,932 and review. And remote administration over one encrypted connection. There is no per-instance license, and the parts are separable: swap Apache for Nginx 75 or MySQL for MariaDB 3,681 and the rest keeps working.