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How Linux and Windows Stack Up in 2006
Jane Walker writes "How does Linux stack up to Windows in 2006? Experts weigh in on that question in these articles, comparing the operating systems' security, reliability and usability. Get insiders' views on Microsoft's proprietary stack versus open source software, as well as Windows-to-Linux migration tips."
Where's The Fucking Article? A link to a bunch of links...great.
Linux when it works is perfect. Linux when it doesn't is just weird and fucked up. I tried installing Ubuntu for a newbie recently, and sudo decided it just wasn't going to work. So I'm futzering around with weird commands and the Ubuntu forum for a couple hours, and yeah, my newbie was real pleased with her new system. Uh huh.
Now my home Ubuntu computer has decided (again!) that flash doesn't need sound. No more Youtube for me anymore...
"What is Internet Explorer 7? Are you saying we can't access the normal internet?" - I love tech support. Really.
I'm a computer geek who regularly uses Windows. Yes, I know, boo, hiss, whatever. My software development happens under Windows because that's what I learned on, that's where most of the market currently is, and that's what I've got a job doing. I'm not going to stop working for a company I like doing what I enjoy just because I happen to do my work on Windows.
In any case, periodically I load Linux on an alternate hard disk in my machine to play around with it and see what I can get going. I do like to keep my knowledge of it up in the event that I run into it on the job (I also do field work from time to time), but I also like to see how far it has progressed. At some point in time, I really would like to use it as my core operating system, even if I still have to drop into Windows when I work.
Recently (about a week ago), I decided to try a couple of different distributions. They all seem to suffer from one problem -- the USB keyboard no longer works when it hits the installer. "You forgot to turn on legacy mode for USB in your BIOS!", is the first thing most people would say, except that I haven't forgotten to turn it on. It works perfectly fine for the BIOS-based boot menu. I even triple checked it, thinking I was missing something. I tried numerous options to try and get the damn thing working, to no avail.
Yes, I could get a USB to PS2 converter and yes, it does work fine after that. But that's not the point -- I shouldn't HAVE to do that. Critical things like that will kill any interest your average user will have in the operating system. But, for what it's worth, I was very pleased with what I saw after I did finally get it loaded. It's come a long way from the operating system I tinkered with 6 or 7 years ago.
``I don't think a regular user could switch their machine from Windows to Linux with one CD and a reboot yet... right?''
It depends on how fancy you want to get, and on your hardware. Certain distributions (e.g. Ubuntu) make it very easy to install the system while wiping everything that was there off the harddisk, and they do a good job at autodetecting a lot of hardware.
Things get more difficult if you want to set up a dual-boot system, preserve (some) of the data that was on the harddisk before the Linux install, customize what apps are installed, run Windows or Mac software, etc. etc. Whether or not this is beyond the reach of any particular user is mostly up to how much this user knows and is willing to learn; i.e. it's not particularly difficult to wipe OpenOffice.org off an Ubuntu install and install Koffice instead, but it does take a certain amount of effort and knowledge.
As for hardware not being supported, there are certain classes of hardware that are problematic. Most generally, any new or unpopular-with-developers hardware that doesn't adhere to some standard and for which no specification is publicly available. In particular, WinModems (software modems), wireless network cards, and video cards (specifically, the hardware acceleration features) tend to be problematic. Having said that, in each of these classes there are plenty of devices that _are_ supported, and, of course, there are devices outside these classes that don't work. Also, sometimes things fail to work in Linux because they are broken, although they happen to work in Windows; e.g. I had a laptop once whose USB controller didn't work due to a wrong value listed somewhere in the BIOS; it (sort of) worked under Windows, but it took some patches to the Linux kernel to get it to work there.
Searching the web to see if your hardware is supported is a good idea, and I recommend anyone buying hardware to consider Linux compatibility even if they don't want to run Linux; if you ever do want to run Linux, at least your hardware won't prevent you from doing so.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Every time someone mentions blue screens, the Microsoft guys say "Oh, XP is stable for me, it never crashes!". Yet they still mention this "compile from source" which is so 1998.
Most of the applications I use today are available in one of the Debian or Ubuntu repositories, so a simple click in synaptic or adept will install it for me, including all the necessary libraries. I have also a few other apps, such as Google Earth for instance, that aren't under the repositories, but it has been a long time since I had to compile anything.
You Microsoft guys have no idea how complicated is getting software for Windows if you are a newbie. You just think it's easy because you are so familiar with the whole thing. Getting winamp or nero or whatever application you want is very easy if you know which app you need and where to get it. But show me where is the centralized application install function in XP, like Adept or Synaptic in Linux. Where is the simple way to look for a software to install, searching by category? I need a software to edit a video or to manage a network or to do scientific calculations, where is the simple interface where I can find it and install it with a few mouse clicks? Without knowing beforehand the name of the software? Let's face it, the closest equivalent to Synaptic or Adept in XP is Google!
Besides, even when I had to compile stuff in the past, it was much simpler to type "./configure; make; make install" in a console than trying to solve all those "missing vbrun.dll" problems one often got when trying to install software in MS-Windows. I may be out of date myself here, because it has been a long time since I did this, but I remember that even in 1998 automake/autorun were easier to use than solving all the incompatibility problems between windows applications and DLLs.
``It's still much, much easier to deploy applications on Windows, even when you're using the GNU toolchain.''
./configure && make && sudo make install mantra (which isn't necessarily more complex than your average Windows installer), and there are often front ends to the compilation that ease the process.
For you or for users? Installing and maintaining software that is packaged for distributions can be easier than it is on Windows, and so much software has been packaged for Debian and Ubuntu that I feel the claim that "software installation and maintenance is easier on Debian than on Windows (or OS X)" is justified. On the other hand, packaging software for various distros can put an enormous burden on the developers.
Going the other way, providing software that can be installed on many different Linux distributions is a piece of cake for the developer. As long as you stick to a few sensible conventions (like not assuming things that tend not to be true across distros), users should be able to install your program without too much trouble, once they have all the necessary dependencies in place. Of course, this effort might still be too much for would-be users.
Other alternatives are targetting only a select few distributions (see also my other post about "the Linux OS" not existing), and/or leaving the packaging in the hands of the distributors - arguably, it is their job. Also, it's not uncommon for users to post step by step instructions or even creating binary packages for installing software on distributions that don't include that software.
``With windows you're guaranteed binary compatibility on a majority of systems''
Yes, but this comes with a hefty price tag. For example, binary compatibility will be broken the moment another hardware architecture comes along (AMD64, anyone?). It's entirely possible that this has kept PCs from evolving past x86 for so long - with actual drawbacks; various other architectures have been more performant, more affordable, etc. at various points in time. And that's just the hardware side; I'm sure many people can point out bugs and vulnerabilities that have persisted because of the need to maintain binary compatibility with some flawed earlier system.
Also, binary compatibility isn't completely achieved on Windows, either. Think of DLL Hell, for example.
``with Linux, it's pretty much expected that your users are advanced enough to be able to compile from source.''
Which doesn't have to be very advanced at all. For a lot of software, a single command suffices; often, it's the familiar
Also, if a user wants to run your software on an operating system that you do not support, is it your fault or theirs if the installation isn't easy? With the source, at least they _can_ make it work.
``Ironically, Windows with mingw et. al. seems to be a more hospitable environment toward deployment of open-source software than "Linux" is.''
Some companies (at least Google) actually develop their software against winelib, and then create a Windows binary that works on Windows and any x86 Linux distro with Wine installed. Although I dread the ugliness of win32 programs on Linux, it does solve the binary compatibility problem.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
``Let's face it, the closest equivalent to Synaptic or Adept in XP is Google!''
Which, of course, runs Linux.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I've had the opposite experience. Linux is great when it works. When it doesn't, it's always been broken in a sane way. I can diagnose the problem and fix a config file and be pretty confident that the problem isn't coming back. I may not have understood the problem beforehand, but after I get a handle on it the solution is obvious. Windows, on the other hand, has never made any sense when it breaks. I suspect that Windows is as rational and fixable as Linux underneath, but it's even harder to figure out the obscure tweaks that may be needed to fix it, which leaves you with solutions like "install the driver again and hope it doesn't break this time" or "try reformatting".