Operating system
From Sysadmin
Selection of Operating System
It is often said that the operating system (OS) is selected to accommodate the applications that are needed by the organisation. This is only true if there are no other constraints on the choice of OS. In practice there often are.
The OS is constrained by those OSes that your organisation is prepared to support. If you choose an OS that your sysadmins cannot support then you will need to either train the sysadmins, hire new sysadmins (trained in the new OS) or hire outside support. Any of these choices could be very expensive.
In addition the OS is constrained by the hardware that it runs on. Reusing existing hardware may be cheaper than purchasing new servers in order to run the new application. This may dictate the selection of OS.
Using an OS that is already in use at the organisation is almost certainly cheaper than using a new OS.
Thus, rather than the OS being chosen as a function of the application to be used, the choice of application, OS & hardware are interdependent.
