There are some countries outside US. There is Europe (please, mind! it's not a country!) and they have corporations, too. And they use big servers with Linux/Unix. I work for a Swiss bank - financial operations and calculations are done on Unix servers.

Good luck using Windows Server family on mainframes... Sure, big corporations base their internal communication on the SharePoint, MS Communicator and Exchange. And that's it! But there is more out there than just big, fat companies A lot of small and middle companies who deliver on Linux.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/09/despite-enterprise-dominance-microsoft-struggles-in-web-server-market.ars
http://www.eggxpert.com/forums/thread/692631.aspx

As a sciencist, you should use LaTeX for typesetting.