Inertia, plus integration - AFAIK Exchange and SharePoint don't run on Linux, so if the company buys into that, then it's Windows all the way down.
Still, all this is a red herring. Using Linux instead of Windows on workstations won't change anything, because it's not the OS that's the problem. A typical IT department is locked in a war on three fronts - defending against security threats, pushing back on unreasonable demands from the top, and fighting the company employees who want to do their jobs. Linux may or may not help against external attackers, but the fight against employees (which IT does both to fulfill mandates from the top and to minimize their own workload) requires tools for totalitarian control over computing devices.
Windows actually is better suited for that, because it's designed to constrain and control users. Linux is designed for the smart user to be able to do whatever they want, which includes working around stupid IT policies and corporate malware. So it shouldn't be surprising corporate IT favors Windows workstations too - it puts IT at an advantage over the users, and minimizes IT workload.
>Windows actually is better suited for that, because it's designed to constrain and control users. Linux is designed for the smart user to be able to do whatever they want, which includes working around stupid IT policies and corporate malware.
This just tells me you don't know linux. Linux can be much more easily hardened and restricted than windows. It's trivial to make it so that a user can only install whitelisted software from private repos.
Still, all this is a red herring. Using Linux instead of Windows on workstations won't change anything, because it's not the OS that's the problem. A typical IT department is locked in a war on three fronts - defending against security threats, pushing back on unreasonable demands from the top, and fighting the company employees who want to do their jobs. Linux may or may not help against external attackers, but the fight against employees (which IT does both to fulfill mandates from the top and to minimize their own workload) requires tools for totalitarian control over computing devices.
Windows actually is better suited for that, because it's designed to constrain and control users. Linux is designed for the smart user to be able to do whatever they want, which includes working around stupid IT policies and corporate malware. So it shouldn't be surprising corporate IT favors Windows workstations too - it puts IT at an advantage over the users, and minimizes IT workload.