Slashdot Mirror
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."
MicroSoft makes an OS to make money, Linux is designed to be an effective OS
The system had the verbosity of HTML combined with all the readability of compiled assembly viewed as bitmap images
So by the metric they care about, Microsoft is an effective OS.
dtg
The truth is an offense, but not a sin.------R. N. Marley
Although no self-respecting /.er wants to admit, there is a steeper learning curve to using Linux than Windows. How much more steep is debatable. There also is a tendency for closed-minded people who want to do as little thinking as possible to choose Windows, even though it paves the way for migraines later.
My two cents, be gentle with the flames. Ah heck, I'll post anonymously, so flame on!!!!
On one hand, we have an O/S that works with X86, once worked with one other architecture, and has gone nowhere else.
On the other hand, we have an O/S that works with X86, and now works on everything from calculators and old gaming consoles to some of the largest supercomputing clusters in the world.
Anybody who says that Linux isn't inherently more robust and flexible at the critical core areas is living their life under a rock.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
The points in the article (and others) also reflect the fact that Unix variants came about during an era of big expensive hardware and timesharing versus small cheap (relatively) hardware and a single operator. These categories can also be looked at as Unix favoring "enterprise" tasks and Windows favoring "personal" tasks. The interesting part is that both camps are trying to became more attractive to the other's "side"; i.e. Windows han been targeting the infrastructural role while Unix variants are warming up to the desktop.
Granted, this analysis is a little superficial but I think it's true in a broad sense.
Windows on the other hand is sterile and ferile. No one is personally involved in one particular aspect (at least for very long, comparitively speaking.) So you get mountains of code that, once written, are rarely re-thought. They work, they go through testing, and until some new function is needed for it or some vulnerability found, never given a second thought.
Think Bit Rot.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Maybe I read the article wrong, but it didn't state Linux was better, it just stated things that differed. It had multiple Unix type OS's Solaris, Linux, BSD and Mach kernels in the article.
The point that did come up multiple times, Microsoft has to rewrite large portions of windows code to take on new features, which make it incompatible with older software. While Unix based OS's can run older versions of software.
Linux (or BSD/etc) is more modular and can build on newer, better OS implementations. Paging file techniques, VM engines, OS Schedulers, etc.
It's more of a design philosophy article.
Well, here's my opinion, anyway.
The Unix philosophy: build tools which do one or a few things very well (and are trivial to develop, debug, and maintain) and build upon them.
I have yet to detect anything resembling a philosophy in the 'other' place. It seems to be build a single big-ass swiss army knife application (which doesn't seem to do anything very well).
Ads are broken.
Close. Microsoft makes something which runs like and O/S, but includes massive amounts of code for things you may never use, but fill up the disk and memory anyway. It's like the joke that inside every fat person is a skinny person trying to get out, but with Windows there's a bloated pile of software smothering an operating system.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Innovative? I'd have to say Linux's strength is that it isn't innovative in its design. It instead replicates tried and accepted OS paradigms. It's monolithic (although that's changing. Although it definitely isn't a microkernel like OSX or Hurd), it eschews object orientated programming, etc. OTOH NT and all of its derivatives do try to absorb some of those features; exponentially increasing its complexity (and resulting in all of those pitfalls). In some ways its a 16 part screwdriver.
Innovation in technology isn't necessarily a great thing. For every Macintosh you have your NeXT. Heck, even the Mac was just derivative of PARC's work. Linux plays it conservative and just does what it does.
What is music when you despise all sound?
" MicroSoft makes an OS to make money, Linux is designed to be an effective OS"
Why do you assume making money and making an effective OS are mutually exclusive?
Vote for Pedro
For non-trivial things, though, I have scads of problems just like the grandparent. He's right: the key difference between Windows and Linux is ease of hardware and software installation. Time and again I have problems with dependencies and searching down different versions of this or that library, or circular reference dependency problems such as MySQL needs Perl which needs MySQL-DBI which can't be installed without MySQL. Or trying to get a real video card working, and having XFree ask you 100 questions about your monitor frequencies, only to finally barf to text mode when it's show time.
Many things are wonderful and easy in Linux, but installing hardware and software is 50 times as difficult in Linux as it is in Windows.
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.
1. You'd think a journalist could write a more coherent and jargon-free paragraph, but maybe that's just me?
2. Asking what Windows vs. *nix does different is too broad. You can ask this question literally forver - if you keep abstracting down further and futher. Once again, vague journalism.
3. Ok, you can flame me (as if I would deny you that) but I don't think Linux zealots are in any position to say that windows is any less bloated than Linux. Mandrake 10.0 community from just yesterday's is 2.1 gigabytes (re: torrent), most of which is unnecessary for 95% use. Suppose I manage to start the install from CD1 without having CD2 or CD3, well I *hope* there's not a package required by default that is on CD2 or CD3.
4. Microsoft runs a few processes faster and others slower? I think he needs to define what he means by processes. Because I dont think he's using the same terminology as the rest of us when we say 'process'. Once again, too vague.
until the code becomes so bloated, slow and unreliable
5. Is the code bloated, or are the features bloated? Or are the features bloated and the code that composes those features bloated? Once again, too much abstraction.
I think I'll stop here.
Depends on what your definition of average user is. We have 20 Linux desktops where I work. We went straight from Windows to Linux. These are not tech people, they are customer service and sales reps for a mail order company. These people had no problem learning the new system. That was our definition of the average user.
The focus needs to be on business use - once everyone is using it at work, the home users will follow. Linux is perfect for business - your secretary or sales rep shouldn't be installing hardware or upgrading apps anyway. That should be the responsibility of the IT personnel.
On the other hand, my ex girlfriend sent me a screensaver she made with photos and video clips on Mac OSX (another unix varient), and lemme tell ya, she is no 1337 "power user". As outrageous as it sounds, I sometimes I think we give Windows a little too much credit in the usability department.
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
" ... Given that one is clearly not the same as the other, the real question is, "Why is making money and making an effective OS the same?" ..."
The article speaks quite a bit about how Microsoft if forced to build in back-compatibility in an inefficient manner. Every OS has to deal with back-compatibility to a certain extent, but consider how much more important it is to a company like Microsoft.
They have a business model that could easily be described as based on market share with both business users and home users "feeding" each other's compatibility needs. The business user many be more reluctant to upgrade than the home user because reliability, transition problems and cost have different consequences for both types, yet both have large numbers of current and legacy OS users.
Consider Linux. Upgrade issues remain, but cost is negligible with home users and can be attractive (or not; depends on too many things) to business users as well. However the OS itself (with the more modern code) is available and access to the software itself is not a significant cost issue. Thus, no absolute need for "kludges" to keep older OS's ( or more typically older paid programs from other vendors) running, while a significant number of truly ancient CPUs can also run an effective, compatible "family" *NIX Operating System and necessary software.
Microsoft got where it is on marketshare; it's maintaining it's current income on marketshare, and it pegs it's future on marketshare. It drives every effort from code to sales to lobbying. That marketshare requires users to implicitly agree to paid upgrades of MS and third party software.
Although a given Linux distro does have marketshare interests, a user that switches to a competitive Linux distro is not the end of the world; potential new users far exceed current users, the user hasn't really changed his way of working, and hasn't invested in new hardware. He's still there for future growth.
I think the cost of upgrading of the two OS's plays a significant role in the way they are coded, designed, and implemented. Linux advocates may be just a little blind to it, because it's not a consideration that drives the development process; Microsoft's corporate coders can never lose sight of it, and it does drive the code, design, and implementation.
But the real point: why the eff should you have to have "scheduled reboots" at all?! YOU SHOULDN'T.
My network card drivers were source only, my drivers I recieved for my sound card were source I had to compile and then it didn't support digital audio, Ummm...actually only a few things didn't come as source.
And if you haven't run windows in 5 years, you really wouldn't miss it, because you can't even comprehend how far its come.
That's like saying, I had a 386PC it wasn't very fast so I am sticking to my Dual Processor G5, it's much faster. Your comparing oranges, to old apples, you bought 4 years ago. Maybe you should try a nice K7 Athlon system running XP, even from 2000 to XP, the OS came a long way.
Anonymous Cowards - Oh God, How I hate you