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."
...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
market dominance.
thelikesofwhich.com
Linux is made with efficiency and innovation in mind, by lots of people around the world that believe in the idea of freedom. Windows is made with profit in mind, by one big corporation that wants nothing besides seizing market control. Need to say anything else?
A nice unbiased article about how Linux is superior...from a Linux magazine. Perhaps we'll be posting the article from Windows Insider about how Windows is better? No? Didn't think so.
slashdot, news for crazed liberal socialist zealots
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.
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.
As opposed to Unix, where the design is so open and extensible that anything is possible, yet there is no coherent interface and none of the non-server applications work or look as good as they do on Macintosh or Windows.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Unix revolves around the idea of simplicity. Microsoft revolves around complex systems, and misguided attempts to hide them with friendly configuration interfaces.
Net result is that you might get something done quickly, but you still won't understand how the thing works. This is not optimal, especially for critical systems.
Nobody understands Windows. I for one don't even want to understand it.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
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
I know somewhat offtopic... but the article link crashed Moz here for me.. anyone else get that? Ver 1.5
I'll AOL that.
Actually, this is a good opportunity to pinpoint all those Internet Exploder users within the slashdot community and excommunicate them once and for all.
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
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!!!!
it is that one is inately evil..
This is exactly the problem with Linux. A Linux user spends(well wastes) most of his time just trying to get a simple thing like an office suite to work, where as the Windows user can happily go about doing whatever he wants to do.
Linux is good for the geeks. But for the normal everyday man, Linux is no alternative for Windows.
I am a Linux user: that's my personal preference. But I don't see many of my friends ever using it. Quite a lot of them are very computer literate. Why don't they want to use linux?
simple because they want to use a computer as a tool, and not as a source of frustration.
Nothing to see here
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.
K-12 institutions receive lots of donated hardware. How do you make, for example, a donated scanner work with GNU/Linux if SANE lists it as unsupported? Do you reserve a Windows box just for that scanner and a few other donated peripherals that the community hasn't yet figured out how to get to work with a Free operating system?
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.
It's like driving a car you're not accostumed to every day. It's just different.
... I'm a huge Linux fan, but I also use windows. (Often tagged, albeit incorrectly, as a 'Microsoft Hater'). Anyhow, my point... what happens when someone open sources windows? Or, more specifically, comes up with an Open Source Windows clone?
But to be slightly OT...
It sort of reminds me of something
I've always wanted to write a book talking about how the two camps actually need each other. Microsoft would have more to fear from an open source windows variant than any threat Linux could ever bring.
FLR
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.
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.
While he was in New York on location for Bronco Billy (1980), Clint Eastwood agreed to a television interview. His host, somewhat hostile, began by defining a Clint Eastwood picture as a violent, ruthless, lawless, and bloody piece of mayhem, and then asked Eastwood himself to define a Clint Eastwood picture.
"To me," said Eastwood calmly, "what a Clint Eastwood picture is, is one that I'm in."
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
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
Ugh, there have been far far far too many MS-bashing linux-is-so-great posts on /. recently... yes, Windows may have flaws, but it has good points too people. At least pretend to present a balanced view, lest the Linux community comes to be seen as the mad fanatics Mac users are.
It turns people off Macs, and it can do the same for Linux.
No, and why should a user who just wants to use a computer, not configure a computer, need to know about that? This is the kind of stuff that really makes Linux and Windows different. Linux is for those who care about THE computer windows os for those who care about USING a computer...
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.
SCO owns the code to Linux
any questions? /puts on flamesuit/
here is the (very general) main differences IMO:
Windows is an OS driven by the desire for profit and more widespread use.
* ease of use
* compatibility with hardware/programs
* small learning curve
Linux is driven by a desire to create a more 'better' operating system with a desire for more configurability.
* longer learning curve
* more versatile
* not intended for the average user (and will not be anytime in the near future)
* more concentration on bug fixes and security, and less on user-friendliness
there are commercial companies obviously that sell linux, but mainstream usage is not #1 priority for the main developers, therefore it is a hard sell for the linux distribution vendors
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
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)
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
What is code bloat? Evidently, it involves kludging, which is mentioned several times. Is this one programmer attacking another's style or is this a non-programmer playing a religion card?
IANA Historian, but the "Defenestration" of Prague is what started the 30 Years War, over religions' control of govenrment. I certainly hope this is not the way the author sees the IT world.
Anyone here ever worked on a project which was perfectly clean and well commented? Show of hands? I thought not.
The terms "Code bloat" and "kludging" has been tossed around quite a bit over the years about Microsoft without anyone producing any source code examples until some were recently lifted and shared.
It would not take me long to look on any project source tree to find some code, which, IMHO, I thought was "kludged"
Have you Meta Moderated t
One has adherents that are noisy, abusive, close-minded, stubborn, silly and the other- oh, wait a minute...
--- Ban humanity.
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
- Insert a floppy into a Windows machine.
- Start up Word and type up whatever.
- "Save as..." to the floppy drive.
- With your document still up and running in Word, remove the floppy and replace with another, different floppy, maybe one with some important files on it.
- "Save" (not "Save as..", just "Save") and see what happens.
You may not have to "mount" and "unmount" but it's not like these operations don't exist in Windows. The difference is that Windows will hide this operation from the user, much like "automount" tries to do on Linux. Another difference is that because the operation is hidden, users aren't aware it's an issue. I work in a campus lab, and just yesterday one of the profs did this exact sequence of steps and lost alot of work... oops.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.
Let's not begin the quarrel of which OS has the ~better~ GUI. The point is that although a GUI can be well-designed, it will by its very nature be a greater burden on the OS than a command typed at the prompt. It's a performance burden, it's a design burden, it's a maintenance burden for the development team. (Axiom: The more complex software becomes, the less even its creators and maintainers understand it.) Eventually it produces a Support burden because users know dulcet coital nothing about their computers.
Then bring in the Internet. Make it very popular. Hell, make it commercial. People are learning that you can get things done quickly with Linux. UNIX was networking when Bill Gates was battling pimples.
Linux builds on the better tradition. So it's not just the cost, but the design philosophy of Linux that is beating Windows.
Rich And Stupid is not so bad as Working For Rich And Stupid.
Seriously. Windows and OSX I go to a store buy a product plug it in and it works. If its a camera I plug it in a icon on my desktop or in "my computer" show sup and I can drag and drop the photos from it. Don't even need to install anything (like SMB support). Anything I want to install I just double click and it installs then the program runs. I don't have to see if some dependencies are turned on/off I don't have to install anything. I buy a new soundcard I plug it in Windows finds a driver and I hear sound instantly.
I'm not a programmer. I use my computer to work on projects that require typing, graphics, spreadsheets, browsing the net, watching movies, and I want to do it without having to install/setup anything. And if I do need to install somethign I just want to click the "install" file and hit "ok" and run the "shortcut" thats been put on my desktop. Windows and OSX does that, Linux has you jumping through 100 different hurdles to ge tthe simplest things to work the way you want.
Ave Molech Setting
My comment is mostly for the beanie-heads who are newer to Slashdot than us dyed-in-the-keyboard vets of many computers, so forgive me by driving home the obvious.
An operating system is an operating system is an operating system is an operating system. It's only purpose is to provide you, the user, a human-readable interface and control system for the computer's hardware and software.
How Linux, other UNIXen, and Windows handle this, however, is the big question to me when someone asks me the question that the article posed.
Applications designed for Windows are just that--developers typically use programming tools that create apps which are hardware-and-operating-system-specific. Barring an emulator such as Virtual PC (funny, that's owned now by Microsoft, too), Windows applications simply will not operate unless it has a conventional Intel-style PC hardware architecture running a specific flavor of Windows. And nope, your 16-bit Windows apps will likely break in Windows XP, so you have to hunt and peck for the app that works in the OS you have.
The UNIX family has things differently. UNIX-family applications are frequently hardware-agnostic and non-operating system-specific. You could be running Solaris, or FreeBSD, or Mandrake, or SuSE, or Darwin, or Mac OS X--generally, the code just works. (Plenty of exceptions, like OpenOffice ports to Mac OS X, but a version does work now in OS X's X11 environment, to take an example.)
Where you would walk into a computer store to buy Windows software, a *NIX user could download the source code for an application and compile it, or build it to work for their particular operating system and platform. Of course, we could buy the source code from a store as well, or the binaries for our platform, if a software maker distributed most of the UNIX software in that format. Currently, the inability of a home Linux user to visit CompUSA for the latest UNIX application is among the greatest challenges to *NIX as a popular home desktop OS (Mac OS X's inroads notwithstanding).
Nevertheless, I can download most BSD and many UNIX and Linux source code from my Mac OS X (BSD variant) workstations, compile it, and use it, without problem or complant. Windows users generally aren't compiling squat--they have to buy or find the already-assembled binaries that run within Windows--and pray that those versions of the binaries were compiled with their Windows version (and patch version, and service pack version) in mind.
The best example of a well-written application that doesn't particularly care about platform (at least in terms of its data files--binaries must still be obtained) is BioWare's Neverwinter Nights game series. It works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. While the two expansion packs for the original game haven't yet been released in an official Mac version yet, because BioWare designed the game's data to be platform-agnostic, many impatient Mac users have figured out. without a lot of hassle, how to install the game expansions using the Linux versions of the games.
Windows is a proprietary operating system, and any applications written for it feed into that mold. The UNIX world is literally open in its design and flexibility. Don't confuse "open" for "Open Source," however--that's another (related) story.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
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
If you don't like Gnome or KDE, run fvwm or WindowMaker or
some other lean WM. Just because some distros come with large
desktop environments by default doesn't mean you need to
use them.
*sigh* back to work...
The difference between linux and windows is that the former has tons of useful POSIX utilities like sed, grep, wc, tr, xargs... and I know how to use them, and do so almost every day. There's probably a way to do that sort of thing in windows, but I haven't a clue how.
What Differentiates Linux from Windows?
A license to use code from SCO?
'Same speed C but faster'
Anyone who says that is hard is either talking out of their arse or a microsoft/apple fanboy.
It's possible to have a good experience setting up Linux - and it's likely if you know what you're doing and you know what things mean. If you don't, there's a good possibility you'll dig yourself into a hole and not even know it.
I just installed Mandrake on a machine a couple months ago. The little Samba config utility just didn't work. I didn't know why. I still don't. Anywho, I knew how to use Samba from the command line so it ended up not being a problem for me - but for another guy it would have been a complete showstopper. They just couldn't have used it for its intended purpose.
Watch yourself use Linux. Be honest about the number of times you do something not entirely intuitive.
the amount of support they had to do reduced and for those times their parents couldnt fix it they could ssh right in
You've given a good example. SSH right in, eh? Imagine how meaningful those letters would be to a new user.
To do the same task under Windows XP, you'd click "Remote Assist" - and you could assist intuitively by acting on that machine the same way you act on your own. Sure, you could use VNC too - if you know what VNC is, how to enable it, and all that.
Linux is easy to use if you know what you're doing. If you're lucky, it's easy to use even if you don't - but as things currently are you'll run up against that learning curve sometime if you're really going to use the thing. Windows isn't amazing here either, but it's further down the road to usability.
My digital camera, scanner and adsl modem "just work", so do the nic cards in my partner and I's machines
If you buy the right camera, it'll work. But some won't. You may disagree, but I've tried and failed a few times with cameras (which by itself is evidence that it is more difficult than under Windows - even if it is eventually possible).
And you won't get the manufacturers programs to manage your photos. That's a plus for me - but again it's a crippling failure for others. It means the manual that came with their camera is useless.
You're just not seeing things from a new user's eyes here.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
There's a huge difference between the two.
When I install new hardware on my WinXp machine, I turn it on and go grab a cup of coffee. By the time I get back my desktop is ready to use.
When I install new hardware on my Linux machine, I go get coffee first. It's gonna be a while....
like a scanner
or a printer
or a pen tablet
etc etc
windows: go to mfr website, download install file, run install file, (maybe) reboot. Proceed with using hardware.
Linux: go to mfr website...unsupported (dam), go to linux geek site(s)...hmmm no luck, go to google...hmm no luck, go to another linux site - helpful geek says "just download this source, read your device specs, change these numbers accordingly, compile to your kernel with this line: (insert big ass command line here) and you should be ok; tries it...works partially (not all features utilized or available). crap. *heavy sigh* *gives up*
user boots to windows...
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
These are the guys that were publishing strangely pro-SCO articles DESPITE the increasing amount of bovine feces they'd been spewing about IBM conspiracies.
Now this article. The tagline paragraph atop the article tips me off that it isn't even PRETENDING to be objective. The article feels like an over-the-top attempt to compensate for kissing SCO's ass a week ago. There are several things I could call this article--journalism is not one of them. The whole publication appears extremely contrived. I wouldn't listen to a single word they publish.
Do not read LinuxInsider.
--
Hi diablonight.
:D (oh I hope she won't stumble across this).
:o) Klay
You know what? You might be right. I use Windows too (ever since I more or less had to switch from my beloved Macintosh), and it's doing a wonderful job. Even my wife can use it so-so
But the thing is, the free OS'es offer something of the same, yet differently. And since most of that difference is in essence philosophical, people are going to divide themselves into two camps. Me, I'm fine with the fact that people use/like/love Windows *and* whateverNIX, so I hope there's not too much mud-tossing between said two camps.
I will say also that I'm currently trying to escape the grasp of Microsoft (yes, for mostly philosophical reasons) and it's really not that easy. In fact, it's pretty rough sailing, and I'm rather much raised in the shimmer of a monitor, so there.
Here's saying you shouldn't be modded down, but you may be argued with.
"Good news, everyone!"
More precisely, OS is the tertiary product. Their primary product is a solid, supported, consistent API to attract and retain developers. The secondary product is a slick user interface for their desktop API.
In all practial aspects, for most people Linux is a Unix-like environment first, an OS second, and any semblence of a desktop API or slick desktop environment is not really all that important.
Microsoft could sell Win32 on Linux without too much pain... it would not be the first time they changed OSes for their environment.
GUI's are fine for things you're new too or use rarely.
.pekwm/keys file is rather large.
It's much easier and faster to see and click a button, than to search the man-page for the keybinding you need.
However, if you use things often, you manage to learn these keybinding and then it becomes MUCH faster to just hit 3 keys with your fingers than to move your hand to your mouse, move the pointer to a button and click it, move your pointer back to the main frame and click into it to give it focus back, then move your hand back to your keyboard.
And what application do normal people uses everyday? Right, their desktop. So WHY, why, why do you have icons & menus on a thing that you use daily? It's a productivity killer.
Ok, the Start Menu has some merrit for finding programs that you use so rarely that you forgot their name, but desktop icons and the slowlaunch bar are just too inefficient compared to keyboard shortcuts and if you remember the name of a program, firing up a shell and typing the name is faster than searching in the menu.
And no, a GUI is not better because people "just wont learn keybindings". Make it gradually, add an agent that automates adding keybindings (but less annoying then Blinky) and everybody will end up using keybindings over icons.
My desktop is pekwm, and it is blank.
My
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof for my post which this sig is too small to contain.