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What Differentiates Linux from Windows?
tail.man sent in a Linux Insider piece about the difference between Linux and Windows. Quoting the synopsis "So, what's really the difference between a Unix variant like Linux and any Windows OS? It's that Microsoft reacts to marketing pressure to make design decisions favoring running a few processes faster but then finds itself forced first to layer in backward compatibility and then to engage in a patch-and-kludge upgrade process until the code becomes so bloated, slow and unreliable that wholesale replacement is again called for."
...also wrote The Unix Guide to Defenestration, which is an executive-level discussion of making a data center profitable.
He's been a Linux advocate for quite a while...
The Army reading list
I take it you've never heard of automount, eh?
yea! The only drivers I ever have to install are the nvidia video drivers linux. For the most part has all my drivers and the only reason for the nvidia drivers is so I can have gl support, otherwise I could just use it out of the box without the installation of drivers.
using KDE and Gnome, I haven't had a problem ctting and pasting between windows. It is a bit hard to figure out as ctrl-c ctrl-v doesn't always work, but selecting the text and middle clicking always does in my limited experience over the past few years.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
It's still in development, but you can boot it and run some programs on it already.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
I have found that most older hardware is in fact supported. Donated hardware is likely to have drivers out there for it. Depending on the manufacturer's attitude and device popularity, a Linux driver usually appears within two to six months after new hardware appears.
...
let's see...since the source code is available, it's a buttload more portable; hell, they even have it for embedded systems, PPC's, Dec's, Sparcs, etc. (not just x86's).
.Net for linux, since that's the only reason I'm still using Windows along with Linux (need it for my classes; though I tried to convince them that Open Watcom and GCC is a much better way for learning C/C++ programming).
Bug fixes are out faster and bugs are found faster and dealt with unlike Microsoft (e.g. that vulnerability that Microsoft sat on for months before word got out, etc.). Another example, though is old, is the old port 139 vulnerability (Ping of Death). The fix for linux was out within hours while Microsoft took days (if not more).
And with KDE, WINE, etc. Linux is getting some of the benefits (the GUI) of Windows without the baggage and the disadvantages.
It's too bad there's no version of Visual Studio
Windows is superior doing:
* Games (of course)
You actually get better preformance in most Linux games compared to their Windows counterpart (i get 20+ fps in nwn). Besides, you can use kernel sources especially designed for gaming to improve the experiene even more, so you can cross out the Games part.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
The short answer is that, unlike 2 years ago, Linux now has better hardware support out of the box than Windows.
You can't tell me that Linux is easier to use and install hardware drivers for than Windows.
Actually, I find it to be much easier -- I don't need to worry about Linux fscking up my system by auto-detecting hardware that I can't get a driver for.
Take, for example, my last experience installing an 802.11b card; same card, supported under both Windows and Linux.
Linux:
Install card, boot system, rebuild kernel with appropriate module, load module...hey, it works!
Windows:
Install card, boot, new device found, no driver, device disabled...ok. Try to install driver from CD, which installs half-way and then crashes with some bizarre error. Reboot, search the docs, and find out that you can't have the card in the system when you're installing the driver unless you have the latest version, which you can download -- too bad I'm installing the NIC driver. Kind of hard to download that.
After I got the driver installed, I then had to unload the pile of crapware that got installed on the system with it.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
Microsoft owns the code to Windows
SCO owns the code to Linux
Microsoft is financing SCO.
Therefore, Microsoft effectively owns SCO.
Thus, Microsoft owns the code to Linux.
Result: there is no difference between Windows and Linux!
~~~~~~~~~
dissertus scribendo latine videri volo.
I read the article all the way through.
Now, I like Linux: don't get me wrong. But that article was bull.
...It was quite one-sided, for one thing.
I've run windows, red hat 8, debian testing, and now mandrake 10 at various times with the gui. XP is not significantly slower. Despite what "kludge"-type hacks are in the source code- and there might be many- I'm certain there are- Windows and Linux run at comparable speeds.
The author did not go into any advantages the Windows way offerec in any detail, whereas he was careful to point out disadvantages, and the advantages in Linux.
Next time I see an article, I'd like to see a less-biased article!
/b
|f(x)dx = F(b) - F(a)
when was the last time you used a modern windows server os? in win2k, you can change network settings and not have to reboot, and this is what this guy was talking about. if it's a server, why do you need to update video card drivers? once you have some sort of video, isn't that really all it needs? i've never heard of a server needing high quality video since generally they aren't even connected to a monitor.
the problem i have with linux is the mounting/unmounting of drives. the process is so much easier in windows than linux/unix.
please me, have no regrets.
You can switch to linux today. Get a distro with KDE 3.2! Its so more user freindly than Windows XP its not even funny anymore. There are THOUSANDS OF GAMES FOR LINUX with HUNDREDS preinstalled on most distros. There is also WineX to run propreitery Windows Games on Linux. There is crossover office to run those apps you need, OpenOffice 1.1! Its fast, its free, it is a good Office Clone for linux, plus if you really want office you can use crossover.
So make that day today, grab a distro such as Mandrake 10 and be part of the future, today!
I should respond better. Which Internet Chess server do you play on? Or better yet which server software does it use. I seems to me that there several Chess Server interfaces for Linux, like Jin and Knights. They interface with FICS. Eboard also works with several. I wonder if really checked the list of available clients to see if there was one to meet you needs.
Similar problems exist in windows. It even common enough to get itself the nick name: DLL Hell.
The difference between DLL Hell in windows and the problems in Linux is that in Unix/Linux the shared libraries are verisoned. This means that you can use applications that requires different versions of the same lib in a way that is not possible in windows. Not only is the files versioned, there are also multiple places where you can put them and you can configure what libraries to use with the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable. So in my oppinion Linux is superior with respect to handling of shared libraries
However. I do think the Feodora team should have tested a commonly used application like the Flash plugin before shipping. The link should be set up automaitcally on install. Ordinary users should not have to fix things like this.
There may be some special issue in your setup. I can't remember that I had to do this when I tested Fedora. Even if I didn't find this bug, I found Fedora Core 1.0 very buggy and not near the same quality as e.g SuSE or Mandrake. I suggest that you report it as a bug to the Fedora team and switch to a distro of better quality.
God is REAL! Unless explicitly declared INTEGER
Also if you expect us to believe that after 4 months the machine can't run IE and this is a windows problem, ummm...your on crack, none of us would put up with windows if it completely failed after just a few months. Some of these office machines here at work, are used every day, and are 2 years old, running XP, with end users, lol, and they really are still doing just fine.
Of course I regularly run updates, and my virus scanner updates hourly and runs nightly, but you should do that with any PC.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you
You definitely have never used Gimp 2. There's a "goddamned" global menu bar! And thanks to the new docking system there are fewer tool windows now. The interface got a huge upgrade. Everything looks slick, clean and beautiful.
I find Gimp's MDI to be a lot less annoying than the window-in-window MDI! I can Alt+Tab between documents *and* I can use the tasklist to switch between windows. Combined with virtual desktops, Gimp's MDI is exactly like Windows's but plus the advantage of being able to Alt+Tab and use the tasklist.
And your argument with the newbie isn't a good one. Put your mom behind Paint Shop Pro and she'll get confused. Put *any* newbie with no prior experience with image editing apps and they'll get confused. Heck it took me a few months to figure out how to work with PSP properly.
I've used Paint Shop Pro. I much, much prefer Gimp. Especially with Gimp 2.0, Gimp has far surpassed Paint Shop Pro in both interface and functionality, except maybe vector support (which I don't need at all).
Gimp's tools and interface are better and a lot less annoying. I can for example tear off any menu item I want. In PSP I have to go through that deep menu structure over and over. I've discovered years ago that I'm much more productive with Gimp than Paint Shop Pro.
Question again: Have you EVER used winxp or 2003?
You can mount partitions to directories, drive letters, or both.
YOu can mount the same partition to different directories at the same time.
And its all in a nice applett were every parition/cdrom, ect has a nice listbox where it is currently mounted.
HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
I recently purchased an IBM Thinkpad 600e from ebay for real cheap. I read up online and it seemed to have excellent Linux support. I felt it was finally time, as a CS major, to learn Linux inside and out.
I purchase the laptop, download Fedore Core 1 and whip out my 1000+ page Linux manual. Install goes fine. I know why Linux distro's needs 3-5 cd's now. Why on earth do we need 8 different text editors? Especially when all of them are pretty slow (I didn't bother messing with vi/vim or emacs since I heard they were complicated, Kedit and Gedit were good enough for me).
Now, I *try* to install the operating system with as little things installed as possible. My reasoning: I want to learn Linux, what better way than to download the programs and install them myself. I figured it'd get my comfortable with compiling source, RPM's, etc. So, I *don't* install apache, php, mysql, mozilla (or any browser for that matter), only Gnome, and a few other programs. Why is it, then, when I boot up Fedora for the first time, is there a Mozilla icon on my quickstart menu that doesn't work when I click on it? It's these small, but VERY frustrating things that drive people away from Linux. I chose not to install apache, but httpd was still installed as a service. Was this necessary (someone please tell me, I don't know).
Internet access is still a big thing for me. At my apartment, I only have wireless. I can't get my wireless card to work on Fedora yet. Thus, I have to download everything on my Windows machine and burn them on a CD and then put them on my Fedora laptop. Thus, using all those apt-get and emerge and what not is not an option. I know windows update requires Internet access, but at least my wireless card worked as soon as I plugged it in. No compiling anything.
Anyway, I'm sure its just because I'm such a novice that I don't understand anything, but since I'm one of the target audiences of Linux transformation (knowledgable computer user who desperately wants to learn Linux), its something the greater Linux community should understand.
-Vic
Format your computer completely, reinstall windows. Don't install any crap software. Scan for viruses. Run adaware. Defrag fairly often (leave the computer on overnight, and set it to run at 2am). And the biggest way to make windows run well... use the latest versions of drivers.
I do that on my computer. I leave it on for weeks at a time. I have never had a virus last more than a few seconds (tell norton to scan the filesystem constantly). I have only had a handful of single program crashes, and the system has never completely frozen.
XP came a long way from 2000? that would be interesting if true - but sadly it's not. Unless you call 'a long way' a bunch of styles and cosmetic changes added to the interface (don't you just love stuff like those systray bubbles telling you 'there are unused icons on your desktop'?), a useless attempt to a firewall (to be improved in the heavily-marketed SP2), a few equally useless programs (integrated cd burning? what's the point, every major burning software integrates packet writing in the Explorer shell and the usability contest is a no-brainer) ... did I miss anything else? Granted, for instance the leap from WinME to XP Home was HUGE (hell, anything was better than ME), but 2000->XP Pro is sort of a 'regular upgrade cycle needed for balancing MS' financial books' type of thing. I highly doubt any of the extras in XP could not have been included in a SP to win2000 (some tweaks to NTFS, kernel, a bunch of new interface functions and so on). Look for instance at the rumored 'interim XP' release that will also be available as some kind of XP-SP - Longhorn is (financially) too far away and they need a new OS release sooner. Then there's the new licensing plan to consider as well ('look, you get your new release in time - we didn't say Longhorn would be the next one, did we?').
/. and all).
So unless you're an eyecandy type of guy, there's not much change from Win2000 to WinXP except making the computer appear slower at some tasks and faster at others. If the rumors are true, it's going to be about the same with the XP-SP1 -> XP-SP2 change, without any 'new OS' release. Besides, check the version number on 2000 and XP - it's only a minor version kernel change!! And the kernel IS important, since this makes for the much-touted app compatibility (although apps still have to do some kind of install-time detection and config to see whether they can use the few extra XP features or not).
my point: if you compare XP to NT4, you're right, there's a big change involved (man, NT4 was PAINFULL!!). For 200-XP comparisons, there's not much to say except that there's a fair share of people (some developers, too) that would rather use 2000, as they view XP as bloatware.
On the other hand, your linux opinions smack of a troll - unless you tried gentoo or lfs, which does not seem to be the case. If you're the Windows type of guy, stick to it and be happy. And if you're arguing its betterness, use valid points, not mudslinging, or you'll be swimming in it (this being
Okay. I'll list the problems with my W2K workstations/servers I had this week.
.dll is missing, the other works fine. Regsvring the .dll solves the problem. This happened once this week.
Outlook constantly freezes, for no apparent reason. It requires ending the task. Users get confused by this and call me to come fix it. That wastes my time. I'm sure it's a very simple problem, but I'll never be able to figure it out.
One of my user's computer's randomlly stops accepting keyboard input. It works fine booted from Knoppix, so I can only assume it is something windows is doing. I'm sure a reformat would fix it, but we don't have time... and it only pauses for a few seconds.
One of my user's desktop locks up when somebody prints to their shared printer. It pauses for about 25 seconds, appears totally frozen, but then goes again in a few seconds.
On one of our IIS servers, Explorer.exe has ceased working. You can double click on My Computer, and Explorer says "Unknown or invalid argument." This makes absolutly no sense. We do all our file work from cmd.exe on it now. It's very odd. Sure a reboot would fix it.
Our SQL server ranomlly fails to authenticate people with Windows authentication (single sign on). Nothing we can do here, we just accept it as a given that people's VB programs will randomlly crash.
Our Exchange server "pauses" every now and then. Can't place it. Everybody in the office's outlook just "stops" for a few seconds. The network is fine, i've got a ping running constantly from an affected system to the server, and it never falters. During the failure, Exchange is using 100% of both CPUs. There is no indication about what it is doing... and it doesn't show any abnormal IO usage (hard drive). The system itself responds just fine, except it's a bit slow because of the lack of CPU.
We set up a network deployment of Windows, using RIS. It distributes automated windows installs to our workstations. We can run it on two identical computers, begin installing software in the exact same order... specifically the VB runtime, MDAC. One then fails to launch our VB programs saying a
Starting VB6 starts a reinstall of Outlook 2000.
Outlook 2000 randomlly switches to Internet Mode from Workgroup mode. This requires an administrator to log into the system and switch it back. This is annoying as hell.
IE freezes. User's do not understand this, nomatter how hard I try. THey'll be browsing a web site, and it'll simple stop. THey get confused, and come ask me (help desk). This wastes my time and theirs. I believe this could have something to do with Outlook freezing since it uses IE. But really, what can I do?
That was just stuff I'd experienced THIS WEEK, with a user base of 30 people. We do not do anything "funny". We install Windows, all of the drivers are part of the standard install. We install our software. This is "normal".
We have up to date patches for every peice of software. Users do not have Administrator access. We have symantec av. We NEVER get viruses, because we filter them at the email server, just like you... I've been running Linux on my desktop for about 2 years now, and i'll admit, I have my share of problems. But fix it once, and it never comes back. I run Debian sid though, so I keep getting new problems from new pre-beta software... but I continue to visualize a stable Linux office. A problem happens? You fix it. But it never comes back! I'd be bored.
This is why I dislike Windows? You pay 200 dollars for it, and get what amounts to crap software. You pay $0 for Unix stuff, and get software that although not perfect, is definatly better than Windows. That MAKES ME MAD.
We are currently working on setting up automated linux installs, and a base, nicely configured desktop for our users. Admitidly there are a lot of technical details to figure out. But imagine how easy it will be to manage?
Try Gentoo. Once it is installed (say, up to stage3), it is easy to use. It works great: emerge kde, emerge apache, etc - no problem. It may take a little (or a lot of) time but with the 2.6 kernel on an AMD64, I do not notice any problem with speed. If your system slows down, use kvm to continue working. (In my case, my other computer is a 164 Alpha). Even on slower computers, it works well (once stage1 is done).
This is not meant to be a troll, but IMHO Outlook and Exchange in particular, are monstrosities... however, I run win2k (ran xp pro for a while)
.vbs files for maintainance tasks, as I am usually going from one machine to another.. about the only other software I rely heavily on is UltraVNC... it works for what I need.. :)
:) Also, dispite the code-red and variants, IIS is one of the nicest web servers I've ever worked with, and I've worked with more than a few... I like ASP.Net (mono is getting there), and I like a few windows programs that I haven't found as good, or easy of an equivalent for *nix.
:)
I happen to like windows, for the most part, I tend to rip out just about everything that is in here, and use firefox for my browser, and thunderbird for email.. runs great... on the media side, I *do* use WMP, it runs fine, didn't do so great on an older system, but it runs fine.. most of my time is spent in a text editor, I use crimson which seriously rocks... I also rely on batch files, and
Now, I absolutely hate MS's licensing structure, and the "activation" crap in newer versions.. I run win2k, and office2k.. and if OOo were actually written to install with en-US measurements, and friendlier settings, would probably switch to that... but it is klunky to me, but making progress..
Maybe in a few more years, my main desktop will change... I like what Novell is investing efforts towards with Suse, and Ximian... so, that will probably be my platform of choise when the time comes... each year I try out a few different distros for about a week each.. and each year it gets better.. last time was almost a year ago, and wasn't quite there yet.. maybe in a few weeks when I try again, it will work out.
Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info