Linux vs. Windows
 

What are the pro and cons of both Linux and Windows?

Linux - most 'flavors' of Linux are available for free online or a nominal cost. Some will say it's also faster and more stable than Windoze.

Cons - most Windows programs will not run inder Linux unless you have an emulator program installed.

Other propellerheads can tell you more about it than I can... they'll chime in before long.

Unless you're a gearhead who likes to spend more time configuring his computer rather than getting work done, you don't need Linux. If you're just curious about any variant of the *nix platform and want to play around, RedHat is probably the easiest to install and use, save for Mac OS X. I've run FreeBSD, SuSe, and Debian beore, and to be honest, other than the rather dedicated community of Debian users, I couldn't tell you the difference between them. I use OS X on a daily basis -- it's the most stable OS I've ever run (I'm on 29 days without a reboot), and I can get under the hood and do command line stuff when I want to/need to. I can also run X11 which lets me run more *Nix programs.

As for Windows..well, I hate it, but again, unless you're a gearhead, it's probably your best bet. There are more programs available for Windows, and you can tweak and customize it to a certain degree to suit your computing style, but the architecture isn't open, and you don't get that feeling of freedom that you get when you run *Nix.

That is not true for most people running it. OS X is not more stable than a lot of other operating systems. And measuring stability by saying you don't have to reboot is nothing. OS X slows down, certain programs hang, you get a stupid spinning beach ball, etc.

-Rudey

I don't know anything, except my brother loves Linux and when he was at a conference in Japan got a pic taken with the penguin :)

I think Linux is appealing, only because it's not microsoft :p

What is a gearhead?

My husband is a software developer, and if you're going into that business, you really should know Linux or at least Unix. Sure, there are jobs that are all Windows, but those are the bad ones usually.

I think the best thing about unix is open source code. Less bugs is always a good thing.

It doesn't happen to me because I know how to keep my system optimized. ;)

When Microsoft bought HotMail, it ran on FreeBSD, and was very reliable. Then they moved it to Windows. That was a disaster, so they moved it back to FreeBSD. Then they moved it back to Windows, and it once again lacks reliability.

FreeBSD, a Unix flavor (like Linux,) is the most stable OS. Mac OS X is based on FreeBSD, and Yahoo uses FreeBSD exclusively.

If you're a gearhead, I'd look to that, otherwise I'd use Mac OS X. If you need specialized software, like dental office management software, I'd use Windows. Otherwise, stay away from Windows because 1) its pathetic and 2) Microsoft is an evil corporation. Very evil.

this is what my bf said. he's a programmer and used to be a computer consultant:

When it comes to computers in this day and age, you either are running a
desktop or server. Windows works best for Desktops, unix/linux works best for
servers. Personally, I think anyone that uses Windows for their server is crazy
and anyone that doesn't see the benefit of Windows on the desktop is crazy also.

Unix as a server is far more powerful than anything Windows has to offer - but
learning Unix is very difficult and time consuming. With Windows, you can setup
a server almost over night - but with Unix or Linux, you have to spend quite a
bit of time installing and tweaking stuff. For most people, unix is just too
complex to deal with. It's kind of like driving an automatic vs. a stick shift.
If you really want the pure driving experience, then you learn to drive stick.
If you just want to run down to 7-11 without a lot of work, you get an
automatic. I'd never dream of having an automatic ferrari - since it would take
all the fun out of driving - and by the same token, I would never dream of
having my truck be anything but automatic.

Windows (historically) has been a very unstable operating system. Although
it's an amazing achievement from a programming standpoint, it has never been the
most stable operating system on the planet - until just recently. But there
also really weren't many other choices. With Windows 98SE (which I used before
I upgraded to XP Pro), you could only leave your machine running for about 2
days before you started to see strange problems. With Windows 3.11 and Windows
95, you could almost count on one crash a day if you were doing anything
serious. And once you had one strange problem occur in Windows, the entire
operating system would start to crash and go down hill. The only solution was
to reboot. XP Pro (with the service packs installed) is very stable now a days.
I have yet to have a bad crash with my XP Pro machine here and I suspect I
could probably leave it running for weeks at a time with no major problems.
It's like night and day difference from the old Windows days.

However, when it comes to a real hardcore server that has to handle thousands
of people, unix or Linux is really your best bet. On my server, I have had it running without a reboot for nearly a year:

uptime
4:54am up 341 days, 3:44, 1 user, load average: 0.03, 0.02, 0.00

It's been up for 341 days without so much as a problem. Even with Windows NT or
Windows XP Pro, I doubt you could run a professional level server for that
length of time without problems. Also, the security on Windows is not very
good. There are all sorts of viruses and problems that make it a poor choice
for a server. On Linux or Unix, there are also security problems, but they
don't tend to be as bad as on windows. So when it comes to running a business
on the internet with a server, then running something like Linux or Unix is
really the best method. However, a lot of people cry about it because it's very
complex and difficult to learn and run. I've spent the last several years
learning how to setup unix and linux servers myself . It's not easy and a lot of people just would rather
buy Windows and use that because all the server stuff is point and click. They
would rather patch the security holes and click and drag as opposed to having to
learn how to type in the command line stuff. But since I come from the days of
command line only operating systems (such as CP/M and TRS-DOS), it doesn't
really bother me. When I got into computers, there was no such than as Windows.
IBM hadn't even come out with a PC yet!

Now, there are some people that think Unix will take over the desktop market
and put Microsoft out of business. They use Linux for their desktop and think
Bill Gates is the devil. Those people are crazy. Windows is the clear leader
in the desktop space and probably always will be. It's not that Unix or Linux
can't be used.. it's just that I don't feel it's as good a choice. Just like
unix is best for servers, windows is best for the desktop. Some people are
unwilling to admit that because they feel they are getting ripped off by the
"big bad" Microsoft corporate monster, but let's face it, Windows is an amazing
product for the desktop... especially XP Pro. Most people that have something
against Windows are not programmers. As a programmer, I have a lot of
administration for what Microsoft and Bill Gates has done with Windows. It's an
amazing product and operating system! Genius really.

What I have found works best is using Windows for your desktop, then if you
want to run a server, you use linux or unix. Then you run something like Putty
(which is what I run; it's a terminal emulation program) to log into the server.
That's the best setup and anyone that tells you different doesn't spend enough
time in front of the computer to know better :-)

Mac/Apple is a whole different subject. It's interesting however to note that
Mac actually runs under a modified version of Unix now (Mac OS X is actually
based around unix). Back in the old days, Mac was the
clear leader in "easy to use computers". The first time I ever setup a Mac
computer I nearly fainted. You take it out of the box, plug it in, turn the
switch on and a little happy face appears on the screen and you are done! :-)
WTF!? With a PC, you have to format the hard drive, load the OS, reboot a
zillion times, etc, etc. Then you have to go buy some more stuff, download
drivers from company websites using a modem, etc, etc. It's a mess (although
it's much easier now). That's why I was in business for so many years as a
computer consultant! You couldn't just buy a PC and "plug it in" like a Mac.
You had to load up the operating system and all sorts of things. And if
anything went wrong in that process, you were fucked. That's where computer
consultants came from.. they were people you called if you wanted to have your
PC work and if you didn't want to use a Mac. For years all the Mac users
laughed at PC users and just shook their heads in amazement that people would go
through such hassles to use a computer.

Mac - if they played their cards right - would have put the PC out of business
years ago. However, Apple (the parent company) was so tight fisted that they
stifled development by programmers. It was nearly impossible to do anything
with the Mac besides what Apple told you you could do. I looked into
programming one of them once and couldn't even figure out if it was possible
short of working at Apple/Mac! If you wanted anything for a Mac, you had to buy
it from Apple at some super high prices - whereas with IBM, you could buy any
number of cheap clone "no name" computers that cost 1/10th the price and were
more powerful. Plus, you could run Windows on them and buy programming tools,
etc, etc. There were books all over the place about how to program and so
development was real big (still is) for PC's. With Mac's, the only software you
could get was from Apple at the beginning. This really hurt them in the long
run. Windows let you do whatever you wanted with the Operating system. Mac
kept control over it. Unix was like Windows - you could do whatever you wanted
with it (although they didn't have a pretty windows interface). So Windows and
Unix (linux is just a knock off of unix by the way) took off and Mac nearly went
out of business. In fact, it's only in the last 5 years that Mac has come back
on the scene. Mac only held on by its fingernails because a lot of graphic art
people liked the easy to use interface and operating system of the Mac. So they
were loyal to it and willing to pay top dollar for Mac's (even in the face of
the company going out of business) just so they wouldn't have to mess around
with Windows and formatting hard drives :-)

It's interesting now that Mac's big new operating system is based on Unix.
That shows you how powerful Unix has become for running computers and servers.
I don't think it will ever replace Windows in the home/office market however.
For a long time, 80% of the entire internet was run on Unix/linux servers! And
I would guess that's it still very close to that today.

A lot of people think Redhat Linux will one day replace Windows on the
desktop, but I seriously doubt that will ever happen (especially now that Redhat
has dropped the freely available linux version and has now moved mainly into
commercial server products).

I think it's fair to say that Windows has a strangle hold on the desktop
market, while Unix/Linux has a hold on the server market. There is some overlap
between the two (Windows has a segment of the server market now that their
products are more stable and there are some people that use Unix for their
desktop - in fact I was thinking about trying FreeBSD's desktop just for fun).
But basically Windows is 90+ percent of the desktop market and Unix/Linux is 80%
or more of the server market. And Mac will always have their die-hard
loyalists... which now that Mac is running on Unix with Mac OS X, can actually
sleep at night and not have to worry too much about their favorite computer
company going chapter 11 again! :-) But I think Mac is only like 2 or 3% of the
desktop market.

I agree with most of the above.

For desktops, the most recent versions of Windows are pretty good. I wouldn't bother with XP Home, though; if you want XP go for XP Pro. There are a few flavors of Linux available for desktops, but I haven't tried any of them yet, so I can't comment on them.

For servers, the advantage of Windows is that you can get up and running very quickly even if you don't know 100% what you're doing. The disadvantage is that you can easily get into a lot of trouble if you don't know 100% what you're doing. Linux (and Unix in general) is not the world's most user-friendly OS, but it is powerful and arguably more secure.

IBM has started to push Linux, both for servers and desktops. (So much for OS/2 :p )

Your boyfriend isn't completely correct about certain things. Unix is not that safe. Windows gets attacked by a lot of amateurs but Unix has also become vulnerable to attack. Actually most amateurs can probably hit most *nix flavors too just because most of the scripts are already created for them.

Also, the people that run linux have no problem doing it either on server or desktop. Actually the growing trend is to see it on the lower end and the higher end - with certain very populated countries distributing it and people who need higher end functions often create their own programs that run on there. Also it's not as if you're dealing with a strict text environment; there are several gui systems and one that is upcoming that is miles ahead of OSX and Windows.

And saying you need to format and download all these drivers for a PC isn't true. That is buying it in bits and pieces. Macs you couldn't do that. If you had bought a Dell, you wouldn't do that. You connect the wires and plug it in and you're done.

-Rudey