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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."
Murphy writes that "For example, cost is usually important in business only if the products being compared are otherwise very similar." I work in education and cost is everything. I can really say that my Linux OS machines (running the K12LTSP) are equal to my Windows 2K/XP machines but cost is huge. I can literally put a lab in my classroom using Linux, I'd have to settle for a couple of PC's at best under the commercial software regime.
Despite conventional wisdom and some articles to the contrary, sometimes complete ground-up software rewrites are necessary. Windows 2003 is - for my money - one of the best server systems around. Its stability is equal to the linux servers I run, and finally it installs completely locked down.
Windows 2003 wouldn't be possible if 90% of its codebase was from the WinNT 3.1 kernel.
Even Macs - OSX is so completely different than OS9 that they can't even be compared fairly. OS9 was dead in the water before it came out - the rewrite of the OS (albeit on the BSD kernel) was necessary to allow Mac to continue to compete at all.
Excuse my speling.
Making The Bar Project
.. the gap is closing between the two in terms of usability and stability - in BOTH DIRECTIONS. this is hardly ever mentioned, but Windows has improved BIG TIME since 95/98/ME -> If you have used 2003 you will note the speed is much improved over older versions as is the stability. Now before you brand me a Redmond freak, I've been a linux user for 5 years (since I was 12) and will be forever, but I can hardly help noticing that everyone thinks Linux is gaining on Windows, when in fact Windows is also gaining on Linux
just my 2 pence
Tim
tim
Boils down to something like this.
Windows: easy to configure, easy to break
Linux: difficult to configure, difficult to break
Don't get me wrong, I use both, its an apples to oranges comparison. The question is what do you want to do with it? A MS firewall is unconsiderable, but so is the thought of putting Linux on my sisters desktop.
My dad (a reasonable, intelligent, only semi-computer-literate man) asked me this exact question the other day. The best I could give him was that Linux is a hobby OS and Windows is an OS driven by business interests. That gives pluses and minuses to each of them. Dad and I talked about the good and the bad; obvious things like, security issues, lock-in, consistency across apps, integration, stability. We agreed that Linux could really benefit from some of the aspects of Windows, such as centralization and consistency across the UI in every app. We also agreed that Windows could benefit from many things Linux has, such as increased peer review, freedom (beer and speech), and community. In the end, he wasn't interested in switching to Linux or anything, but he hoped that its influence was going to get Microsoft off their rear ends and improve their product. I think whichever OS can meet the other in the middle--with a balance of security, usability, and power--will win the long-term battle.
Windows still has an edge in simplicity as far as installing apps. Folks who swear by apt (for RPM) do have to realize you still need to deal with adding repositories to sources.list and dealing with GPG signatures.
OTOH, that simplicity in installing apps makes Windows extremely vulnerable as well. Doesn't take much effort to run/install anything off the Internet. Spyware can cling onto your system without much consent at all.
That brings up the major difference I've seen so far. Worms, Viruses, Trojans, Keyloggers, and other forms of malware don't seem to find their way into my Linux machine. The rest of my family who run Windows, though, get infected too many times for my liking.
Is that because most Linux users know to watch out for those types of things while Windows users can be painted with the "AOLer" stereotype? That's probably a factor. But so is the general architecture of not putting yourself in danger for the sake of convenience -- by running mail programs and browsers with enough privs to bork a system.
Cheaper, more secure, and absolutely transparent. Many thanks to everyone who makes OSS possible -- from the programmers and QA testers to the advocacy groups and spokespeople. (and the large corporations backing Open Source)
This article articulates very well the opinion I've come to hold, since being network and sys admin for about 300 Solaris and 2 or 300 NT machines for about 4 years.
My point of contention is that Microsoft built its legacy on home users, and "amatuer" (for lack of a better adjective) operating systems. Sun, HP and the other enterprise OS companies built it for business. I pitty anyone who relies on M$ servers for their bread and butter. I was talking to a DB manager for a M$ shop, that manages 7 terabytes of data. I complained how we had to bounce Oracle about once a month, and it was always the middleware failing. He laughed, and said, "We have to reboot the M$ DB _daily_ and reboot the whole machine". We only had to restart the middleware processes (e.g. ps -ef | grep middlware....kill ...and the processes would automatically kick back off) and were back up and running in seconds, without affecting other DB processes on the box running.
This speaks volumes.
Those who don't know any better will keep their opinions for their own camp (either M$ or *nix) and those who've been on both sides are probably too busy to weigh in here anyway. (I'm out of it now, so I have more time :-)
John
having to compile every damn thing before I could use it, turned me off. THe linux community should learn to offer binary executables and source because I simply just don't like the hassle of the extra step.
What are you blethering about? Provision of binary executables is the purpose of GNU/Linux distributions.
I have not run Windows at home for about five years, and I don't miss it in the slightest. I have a server for NFS, web, mail and other bits and bobs. I have an IBM Thinkpad which is my main work horse. I have an ancient Toshiba Libretto hooked up to my amplifier for playing music.
All of these run Debian. I can't remember the last thing I had to compile by hand; Debian has so many packages prebuilt that I rarely have to build something myself. Either it's already there, or something else is there that does the same job.
If I do need to compile somthing, Debian ensures I don't end up in dependency hell because almost all Free libraries are packaged. I grant you - RedHat used to be a pain. Trying to compile an up-to-date Gnome 1.0 for RedHat 5.1 was the last straw that switched me over to a distro built by it's users. But I'm pretty sure RedHat is much better these days anyway.
My day job desktop is Windows NT 4.0 SP6 and I get through the day but it can hardly be called convenient. It's so lowest-common-dominator that I end up installing all sorts of utilities that are missed out in the shipped OS. I fear Windows XP because I don't want to work in a cartoon.
And finally, I bathe in the warmth of the freedom of GNU/Linux. I don't have to invoke it much, but I know that if I do have to, I can get the source and fix it. Thanks Linus, RMS, et al.
Yours Sincerely, Michael.