Linux vs. Windows: What's The Difference?

An important difference by andyrut · 2004-07-01 10:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

What's the difference? About $299.

Or much more if you consider a server comparison.

Re:An important difference by TwistedSquare · 2004-07-01 10:09 · Score: 5, Funny

I think you'll find that means Windows is 400 dollars cheaper than Linux.
Sincerely,
Darl.
Re:An important difference by pbox · 2004-07-01 10:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

# compilers! you can't program sh*t on a windows install without buying separate software.

Unless you download mingw

# your choice of how your desktop environment looks

themes?

# games, not just freecell and solitaire

like gnubg, tux racer in cygwin?

# real networking tools, such as nmap, a variety of firewalls, heck the list is too long to begin here

Which almost without exception available for windows?

# a powerful command prompt for expert users

cygwin?

--
Code poet, espresso fiend, starter upper.
Re:An important difference by JKR · 2004-07-01 10:46 · Score: 5, Interesting

Here's your loop; run along now.

for /L %I in (1,1,10) do @echo %I

Jon.
Re:An important difference by david_reese · 2004-07-01 11:33 · Score: 5, Informative

Compilers - Microsoft just released free versions of their Visual Development environments. The VC command line compiler is also available. There are several other free compilers available as well.
Sure, they're free... but they're also Beta, and the licensing agreement says you can't publish any software you write with the environment. How does that compare to Linux... it doesn't.
Re:An important difference by letxa2000 · 2004-07-01 11:39 · Score: 5, Funny

I can download and install a Windows utility more quickly than I can build and install a Linux package.
And, best of all, you get malware, spyware, viruses, and trojans for free with your installs!
Re:An important difference by DMadCat · 2004-07-01 11:55 · Score: 5, Funny

Everything you listed is just a download away. I fail to see the problem.

Hell, with Windows some programs even download themselves! Now that's service!
Re:An important difference by rattler14 · 2004-07-01 12:05 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sadly, that's the attitude most people take in any arguement... trying to ignore anything that might shatter there theory/arguement, no matter how strong the evidence.

--
my last sig was too controversial... now, a new and improved useless sig!
Re:An important difference by Cereal+Box · 2004-07-01 12:39 · Score: 5, Informative

Can you ssh into your windows machine and restart the webserver with one simple command?

Uh, yes. Guess what, cygwin has a port of sshd! So yes, you can ssh into your machine. And if you're running Apache (also ported to Windows), you can do just what you described quite easily.

Can you totally modify the way your computer runs by writing shell scripts or modifying existing ones?

Elaborate.
Re:An important difference by xp · 2004-07-01 12:40 · Score: 5, Funny

But what about the Total Cost of Ownership?
----
Software Ideas
Re:An important difference by upsidedown_duck · 2004-07-01 12:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

cygwin has a port of sshd

I think it can be argued that Windows + cygwin != Windows.

--
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
Re:An important difference by Pharmboy · 2004-07-01 13:36 · Score: 5, Insightful

I think it can be argued that Windows + cygwin != Windows.

Well, it isn't exactly Lindows either ;) I have used Cygwin for a long time, and while it is pretty handy, it will not compile everything and has serious limitations. I still love it and find it useful, but its not a substitute for a Linux environment. You can run sshd in Cygwin, but there are still some limitations. Also, I find that PUTTY is easier to ssh and sftp with, rather than cygwin's ports of ssh and sftp. The Perl windows port is a bit handier than Perl in Cygwin also, for local machine tasks.

Cygwin is the next best thing to a Linux install, but it is far from being the same thing.

--
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Re:An important difference by rnd() · 2004-07-01 15:45 · Score: 5, Informative

looking for a command prompt? Download Microsoft Unix tools for Windows. You'll get a better integrated variation on cygwin (based on one of the bsds)... it's free for download and works pretty well, particularly for things like grep and awk, which i couldn't live without.

--
Amazing magic tricks
Re:An important difference by Slime-dogg · 2004-07-01 17:52 · Score: 5, Informative

I'm no big fan of windows, but it seems like you're not really knowledgeable about this stuff.

Can you ssh into your windows machine and restart the webserver with one simple command? Can you totally modify the way your computer runs by writing shell scripts or modifying existing ones?

In essence, yes... and yes. There are probably a few open ssh implementations that run as a service in Windows, just as there is an Apache service. Also of note, Microsoft released a POSIX / UNIX compatibility thing for NT/Win2K/XP (Unix services for Windows? I don't know what it's called.). It's only a few steps then, to get sshd up and running.

As for the web server... "iisreset" I think is the single command. I could be wrong, I don't have IIS installed on my home XP machine at the moment.

Lastly, Windows has a scripting host. You can do nearly everything with vbs. VB sucks as a language, but it's what they chose. I think that javascript might also be available. Anyways... there are scripts out there that let you shut down machines remotely, force the current user to log out, etc. etc. Of course, RPC has to be enabled, but it's all there. If there's an OLE, COM or ActiveX representation of whatever service or object that you wish to work with, you can access it through the scripting host.

I've had to work with Windows boxes at work, so I've had to learn a lot about everything. The security model is really interesting, and can be extremely *tight*, if you wish it to be. You can limit access to almost all OLE/COM/ActiveX objects to groups, you just need to find or develop the right tool.

Yes.... Mingw provides a bourne again shell for windows. Borland provides a free c++ compiler. Java is free (as in beer). Hell, even the MS .NET SDK is a free (as in beer) download, and Mono is a free (as in freedom) alternative that works in Windows.

I don't use a GUI to do much administration in Windows anymore, it just isn't my preferred method. Don't bitch about GUI being the *only* way to do it, since it most likely is not. I'd venture a guess to say that about 95% of everything that you can do with the GUI, you can do with the command line.

Now... creating symbolic and hard links in NTFS, and having the boot partition on a separate HD than your C:\Windows (C:\WINNT) directory, well those are options that you have to go without.

--
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Re:An important difference by gbjbaanb · 2004-07-01 21:22 · Score: 5, Informative

links have always been part of NTFS, only there are a lackof tools to play with them.

XP has fsutil which you can use to create hard and soft links.

I'm not sure if it works with directories, for that you want a tool that creates 'junctions'.

Apparently the problem with using hardlinks was that programs weren't aware of them - some would always try to delete the file, some would have issues when recursively deleting, etc. I think MS must have put some checking or other work into the system to prevent problems, or they wouldn't have released the tool now.

It's a vicious cycle by strictnein · 2004-07-01 10:06 · Score: 5, Funny

And it's gotten even worse with Mac OS 10.4 because now:
Linux copies Windows which copies Mac which copies Linux
(I'm sure SCO Unix gets copied in there somewhere too)

Uh oh... doesn't that sort of relationship end the universe in some sort of giant BLIP!?

Now, for those who want to actually read something that matters, Ars Technica has a primer on PCI-Express. Impress your friends, neighbors, and countrymen!

--
Casual Games/Downloads

Re:It's a vicious cycle by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 10:18 · Score: 5, Insightful

Nah, it's more like this ... with the circle (in dots) being common ideas, which grows larger and larger and bulges in some directions as two of the three share ideas that the others don't. The three lines represent new ideas coming in. Over time, each OS picks up the best (and sometimes worst) features of the others. Windows \ \ . . .\ . . \______ Linux . / . / .. / / Mac OS
Re:It's a vicious cycle by Pharmboy · 2004-07-01 10:23 · Score: 5, Funny

I think it's the reverse; Windows seems to be getting more POSIX-like with each release.

Its all that code they licensed from SCO... ;)

--
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Re:It's a vicious cycle by plj · 2004-07-01 10:47 · Score: 5, Interesting

Mark Russinovich is a known pro-windows guy, whose views are for sure heavily biased. Kudos for him though, that he really knows his OS inside out - he is one of the guys behind Sysinternals, and I've more than once found their tools very helpful when dealing with problems of Windows boxes.

Despite his talk being biased, I think he got one important point mostly right:

But ultimately, said Russinovich, the gap between the two operating systems will continue to narrow to a point where their underlying kernel becomes irrelevant. "Layered services will become more important," he concluded.

On server space the kernel performance probably counts out more, but at least for most (not all, though) desktop users the kernel really isn't the most important part; it is the common APIs that do the trick. One could build two very similar boxes, one running Linux and the other FreeBSD - both running same apps, with differences hardly noticeable for the end user. Switch the BSD box to Mach kernel, keep userland, and still no much difference. But then just throw Apple's Quartz instead of X on top of that, and we suddenly have totally different world! This is just because we'll now suddenly have a totally different set of APIs.

However - what Russinovich left out - Windows will inevitably be the very last one to jump on this bandvagon, due to Microsoft's policies' closed nature and it's dominant position on the market. Windows just does not have to be compatible with other systems on the market the same way POSIX systems does have to - not at least from it's vendor's viewpoint.

--
“Wait for Hurd if you want something real” –Linus

Please note... by XaXXon · 2004-07-01 10:07 · Score: 5, Informative

The article is talking about the Linux KERNEL not the Gnu/Linux system. He's comparing the linux kernel and the windows kernel, and the difference betweent he two with regards to windowing systems is that Windows has windowing operations in the kernel, whereas Linus has it in unser space.

Just a little summary for people too impatient to read the article..

A rushed list... by danielrm26 · 2004-07-01 10:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

1. Security. // Linux is usually more secure by default and is able to be secured easier due to the fact that users have complete access available to the system

2. Philosophy. // as a quasi-altruistic community, the Linux world often has Google-like aspirations regarding concepts of free information and such - as opposed to views that are arguably centered on money alone

3. Stability. // most uptimes in Linux are measured in months and years rather than days and weeks (with exceptions, of course), and the GUI being a completely separate component from the kernel helps this greatly

4. Cost. // nuff' said

Those are just a few for starters...

--
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge

Re:The Difference by kaschei · 2004-07-01 10:08 · Score: 5, Funny

Great-- this is going to attract the anti-linux trolls AND the anti-microsoft trolls, each arguing over whom you're talking about.

--
I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. -Henry David Thoreau

Unix-derivatives easily identified. by OpenGLFan · 2004-07-01 10:09 · Score: 5, Funny

A Unix-like OS is easily identified by the backspace key not working.

Re:Unix-derivatives easily identified. by SethD · 2004-07-01 10:20 · Score: 5, Funny

I dont ^H^H't understand. Mine seems to work fine!

Linux in general by LaserLyte · 2004-07-01 10:11 · Score: 5, Insightful

I have to agree here. Linux is becoming more and more a "desktop" operating system. Default installs with lots of bloat and installed services. One of the reasons I try to avoid using mainstream software... besides any security (etc.) advantages, is because I like being a geek and doing things the hard way :). I like to get my hands dirty. I also like powerful, flexible software that does the job over fancy GUIs and the like. But, it seems Linux is drifting away in the direction of Windows.

HOWEVER, one of the reasons the Linux community has become so splintered (different distros, etc.) is because people are taking Linux in different directions. SuSE, LinSpire, and many other commercial providers are trying to make Linux a friendly, easy-to-use experience. Whilst Slackware and Debian are sticking to their roots.

As a side note: BSD is a server OS (no question about it). Windows is a desktop OS (being twisted into a server platform). But which is Linux?

monolithic by captnjameskirk · 2004-07-01 10:12 · Score: 5, Funny

He says in the article: "Both kernels are monolithic". I thought the Windows kernel was monopolithic.

Some observations.. by wfberg · 2004-07-01 10:32 · Score: 5, Informative

Mark Russinov is the guy from wininternals who have some very cool utilities for windows - frequently mentioned in the microsoft knowledge base. If you're looking for windows utilities to show processes, logged on users, open file handles/mutexes etc., don't look no further.

Having said that, the talk was about the kernel. Obviously the differences between a GNU/linux distribution and a Windows variant run very deep.

My pet peeve about windows is the registry. Sure, the staggering number of sometimes quite byzantine file formats of all those different /etc/ and ~/.somethingrc files can be quite daunting, but it's so much better than the registry in real life situations where things can go wrong and you want to edit stuff by hand or restore stuff, it's just not funny.

The biggest difference in the kernel would have to be security. Windows has a lot riding on their weird security system with it's SIDs and groups (which isn't enough to actually lock down your users, you need to use funky policies for that), whereas linux usually tries to get by with a simple uid/gid combination. Of course, if you'd want to, you could SELinux the kernel up beyond recognition, when it comes to security. (Try to do that on windows).

Also, printerdrivers don't run in Ring 0. They do on NT (and on windows 2000/XP as well, if you install old drivers. There's no warning or nothing. Yay.)

--
SCO employee? Check out the bounty

I like what Mark Russinovich does... by sw155kn1f3 · 2004-07-01 10:33 · Score: 5, Insightful

Mark Russinovich is well-known NT kernel expert and I respect him. Summary posted here is just plain misleading and is a flamebait for zealots from both camps. It's just disgusting.

He doesn't say a thing about user-mode software, usability etc. The article is about kernel differences, so saying "Linux is becoming more and more like Windows" is plain wrong. He doesn't even mention API.

What article actually's talking about is how various successful ideas in kernel co-relate in windows kernel and linux kernel and how windowing is handled. He talks about pros(good remoting) and cons(all calls are actually messages) of X Windows.

And he says "Security was also another area where there significant differences remain between the two operating systems. But ultimately, said Russinovich, the gap between the two operating systems will continue to narrow to a point where their underlying kernel becomes irrelevant."

WTF the article poster pulled that "He says the only current difference is 'how windowing is handled.'"

Well... I cannot really express how I feel about such misleading posts slip. Especially if it's about GOOD people and experienced coders like Mark is.

--
- Arwen, I'm your father, Agent Smith.
- Well, you're just Smith, but my father is Aerosmith!

Re:Well, speaking on the article... by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 10:55 · Score: 5, Informative

Well son,

in the old days, before windows even existed, there was X1(0|1) and most people commonly referred to it as X-windows.
We even thought it was plagiarism that Microsoft called their stuff "Windows"

But you must be of that young generation that grew up with windows so I guess it sounds strange to you.

Sincerely,

Grandpa

Re:The Difference by j1m+5n0w · 2004-07-01 11:01 · Score: 5, Insightful

The difference is that one is unstable and easy to use while the other is stable and hard to use.

Windows is catching up on stability and Linux is catching up on ease of use. These will likely be more or less resolved problems in a couple of years. On the other hand, one system will allow allow you to do whatever you want with your computer (as long as its possible, and you know how to tell the computer what you want it to do), and the other will allow you to do whatever someone else wants you to be able to do with your computer.

-jim

Re:Ooh! Selective comparison... by linuxelf · 2004-07-01 11:24 · Score: 5, Insightful

I have to disagree. The majority of home users simply want web browsers, word processors, email clients and the like. All of these are available in a default install of any Linux client. It certainly isn't something that I can send my mom on CD and just say "Here it is, go at it." she wouldn't be able to install Windows on her own either. I have been using Linux as my home OS for 8 years or so, and have never had any reason to switch back. I do, however, keep a Windows box around to play games on. Windows is still the best platform for games, but for any serious use, I find Linux a much better fit.

--
- "That's just the kind of fuzzy-headed liberal thinking that leads to being eaten."

Re:Not entirely free if you're on dial-up by Anonymous Coward · 2004-07-01 11:30 · Score: 5, Insightful

Sure, downloading Linux ISOs is much faster.

Re:Ooh! Selective comparison... by Newander · 2004-07-01 11:38 · Score: 5, Funny

I keep switching back to Windows to work with PSpice or Xilinx software, etc. For home users Linux really doesn't belong YET.

Yeah, home users spend most of their time simulating circuits and writing VHDL.

--

Jesus saves and takes half damage.

Don't you guys see? by rd_syringe · 2004-07-01 15:51 · Score: 5, Insightful

You in the Linux community have put enough pressure for Microsoft to compete again. The parent is right; Windows Longhorn will indeed ship with all the compilers pre-installed, specifically so that no matter what machine you sit down at, the tools will be available to you.

They've been more open lately, specifically because the heat being put on them. As a result, they're slowly becoming a better company. I'm very happy with the .NET technology and the level of community involvement the developers have shown. Thanks to the OSS community.

Slashdot Mirror

Linux vs. Windows: What's The Difference?

34 of 1,219 comments (clear)