Penguin
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  1. Familiarity: Everyone knows Unix, College graduates for example are often brought up on Unix. This also means you can find users who have the same problems as you and can help you fix them.
  2. Reputation for Stability: Unix doesn't die. People regularly compare how long my server has been up vs how long your server has been up, even going so far as to buy UPS's for this.
  3. Cost: Most of the unicies are Free (speech), and you usually get a large chunk of the source with them (for the Free (speech) ones, usually all of the source). Even Unix's that are commercial usually have fairly simple costs such as Per CPU as compared to other operating systems.
  4. Transparent:

    1. Processes: You know what every process is and what it does. You know what the implications of removing this process is, or replacing it with a different tool that does the same thing. For example, it's common to run a Unix machine without a GUI if it doesn't need one saving plenty of resources that a GUI requires.
    2. Files: You know what every file is for. Files are usually text files and can be easily viewed/edited.
    3. Source: If in doubt, you can always read the source. Unix has a tradition of always having the source being available. If the source isn't available, strace(1), and ltrace(1)? will both help you debug problems.
  5. Text file configuration: Configuration files are plain text, they can be easily searched and manipulated. Unix has lots of tools to work with text files, for example, you can use version control on all your configuration files.
  6. Powerful Scripting tools: Everything can be scripted, if it doesn't natively support scripting, then you can probably script it anyway. perl(1) is perhaps the best (and worst?) example of the power of Unix scripting.