As businesses race to stay competitive in increasingly complex and rapidly changing markets, their technology choices have become crucial. Within this context, the operating system plays a critical role, as it ties together infrastructure, applications, security posture, and continuous innovation efforts. Once an afterthought, the operating system now shapes how efficiently data is processed, how quickly new services are deployed, and how reliably critical workloads can scale from edge to cloud. 

Linux is the backbone of cloud-native distributed architectures and the platform of choice for running AI/ML workloads. To gain insight into critical enterprise requirements from Linux platforms, TechTarget’s Enterprise Strategy Group surveyed 475 IT professionals from enterprise organizations (2,000+ employees) currently using Linux that have influence over the purchase process for data center compute solutions, including operating systems, between August 22, 2024, and September 6, 2024.