Why do most Web servers run on Linux platforms?
The Internet and Web evolved from networking based on Linux, TCP/IP support from sockets, and C language programming. All have deep roots in the UNIX system. A secondary reason is that the most popular Web server, the Apache server, is free and worked only on UNIX computers until very recently. A third reason is the availability of Apache and UNIX (Linux) as open source “free” software. In addition, UNIX server machines are robust and stable. NT servers much less so.