To all linux and windows users, please help me choose the better option.
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Don't really know linux, but do know windows. I think part of it depends on what you want. My understanding (and limited experience) is that windows is easier to install and configure, especially when you want to tweak some esoteric parameter or feature. Linux is getting much better in this regard, but I don't think it'll ever really approach the ease-of-use of windows. As for security, both OS's are as full of holes as the other. The reason windows gets so much attention is due to the far greater number of machines running windows. The only real way to tell is to try it out for yourself. There are bootable linux CDs available.
If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader." - John Quincy Adams
You must accept one of two basic premises: Either we are alone in the universe, or we are not alone in the universe. And either way, the implications are staggering” - Wernher von BraunThanks, linux users are usually heard ravin on how secure the OS is but I don't believe them. I think that the only reason few viruses exist for linux is because many hackers dont find it rewarding to attack an OS thats used by a significantly lower number of people. What do you think?
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
Mike's opinion: Linux on the desktop is/was competitive with Windows XP. Windows 7 is obviously much improved. Since the introduction of Windows Vista ( X| ) Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular have somewhat stagnated. All the major desktop operating systems are pretty secure these days. Windows has the disadvantage of being the biggest target due to market share, but makes up for it with MANY more developers using much better tools than Linux.
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
It's a pattern - the most zealous fanboys are supported of something they claim to be "pure". Linux fanboy, Functional Programming fanboys, the "everything should be an object even if it makes no sense"-movement, the hardcore Open Sourcerers, and Nazis (heck yes, Godwin's law) They all think what they're supporting has something to do with purity, but even though they may be right on that part, purity does not necessarily imply quality.
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Here's a bit of heresy for you - they are both just operating systems. By themselves, they mean absolutely nothing; the question you need to ask is what you want to run on them. If you absolutely need to run Microsoft Office on your desktop, then Ubuntu's no good. If you just want to run a web server, then Ubuntu is a fine choice. That's the whole point - use the OS that provides the features you need to do your job.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility
nice answer. It truly depends with what am doing here's a little bit more info, am more interested in programming. Does linux have nice software like pdf readers, music players/codecs,antivirus,games and others that you can easily get on windows? P.S nice signature,really got me thinking
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Mike's opinion: Linux on the desktop is/was competitive with Windows XP. Windows 7 is obviously much improved. Since the introduction of Windows Vista ( X| ) Linux in general and Ubuntu in particular have somewhat stagnated. All the major desktop operating systems are pretty secure these days. Windows has the disadvantage of being the biggest target due to market share, but makes up for it with MANY more developers using much better tools than Linux.
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Thanks, linux users are usually heard ravin on how secure the OS is but I don't believe them. I think that the only reason few viruses exist for linux is because many hackers dont find it rewarding to attack an OS thats used by a significantly lower number of people. What do you think?
Pmwanzia wrote:
What do you think?
That you are right.
[www.tamelectromecanica.com] Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing.
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nice answer. It truly depends with what am doing here's a little bit more info, am more interested in programming. Does linux have nice software like pdf readers, music players/codecs,antivirus,games and others that you can easily get on windows? P.S nice signature,really got me thinking
Pmwanzia wrote:
Does linux have nice software like pdf readers, music players/codecs,antivirus,games and others that you can easily get on windows?
Yes, and no. You can get all the software you like in these categories, but you possibly won't get exactly the same games. If you walk into your local game shop, you'll see PS3, Wii, XBox and PC. You won't see Linux - but there are freely available downloads you can get. You could, of course, run both OS on the same box - this is a popular option. As far as programming goes, it really depends what you want to program. If you want to write C# programs, you can target both environments, but the framework is fuller featured on Windows. If you want to write PHP programs, then it doesn't really matter which environment you target. I hope this gives you some food for thought.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
I've used both. I like both. As Pete said below above, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I use Windows 7 every day at the office. I don't have much choice. The O/S is dictated by the company. We are a software company that develops applications for Windows platforms. I am very comfortable with Windows 7. I find it reasonably easy to use. I like it. I have found that Ubuntu is about as good as a Linux distro gets. The current version of Ubuntu is far easier to use than versions of Linux that I have used in the past. I have tinkered with Linux for many years. Ubuntu has made the installation and configuration almost as painless as Windows (unless you have some really, really obscure hardware, or something like that). Personally, at home, I have an iMac set up to triple boot. I can choose from Mac OS/X (Snow Leopard), Windows 7, or Ubuntu Linux. I find myself using OS/X about 85% of the time, Ubuntu about 14% of the time, and Windows 7 about 1%. Just my personal preference. Does that mean I find OS/X to be superior to them all? Not at all. I like all 3 for different reasons. Just depends on what I am doing. Some may find this comment weird, but I find OS/X kind of like a middle ground between Windows 7 and Linux (even though I fully realize it is closer to Linux architecture-wise than Windows). Just my 2 cents worth.
WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
I feel that this is always a biased opinion... I've had for years a Linux server and it worked really well. I've used windows for lot's of things and it worked really well also... Both systems work. No problems at all with them. What happens is that like everything each tool has it's reason and it's place. In my case I can't use Linux for work as I'm programming robots and industrial equipments that need softwares that run under Windows. If you are only surfing Internet, editing images and receiving e-mails... then both of them work... Of course if you are a techo-freak then Linux is your choice... being able to run it from a pendrive editing the bones of the OS... My question would be: what if you need to use CATIA? what if you need to put a server to work? I remember I saved 6000€ by using Linux as server in terms of licenses users... Everything depends on your needs... i.e. I can't imagine using Visual Studio in Linux... i.e. Using Linux I've been able to get access to certain robot hard drives in order to get information that was impossible to recover from Windows... Don't get me wrong... I love Linux... I also love Windows... I use them when I need them...
[www.tamelectromecanica.com] Robots, CNC and PLC machines for grinding and polishing.
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Wish I could give you more than one '5' for that. A calm voice of reason in a thread that may wind up as a bubbling cauldron of hate and loathing. Very nice. :)
Thanks for that. I try to be reasonable occassionally.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility
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It's a pattern - the most zealous fanboys are supported of something they claim to be "pure". Linux fanboy, Functional Programming fanboys, the "everything should be an object even if it makes no sense"-movement, the hardcore Open Sourcerers, and Nazis (heck yes, Godwin's law) They all think what they're supporting has something to do with purity, but even though they may be right on that part, purity does not necessarily imply quality.
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I've used both. I like both. As Pete said below above, it all depends on what you are trying to accomplish. I use Windows 7 every day at the office. I don't have much choice. The O/S is dictated by the company. We are a software company that develops applications for Windows platforms. I am very comfortable with Windows 7. I find it reasonably easy to use. I like it. I have found that Ubuntu is about as good as a Linux distro gets. The current version of Ubuntu is far easier to use than versions of Linux that I have used in the past. I have tinkered with Linux for many years. Ubuntu has made the installation and configuration almost as painless as Windows (unless you have some really, really obscure hardware, or something like that). Personally, at home, I have an iMac set up to triple boot. I can choose from Mac OS/X (Snow Leopard), Windows 7, or Ubuntu Linux. I find myself using OS/X about 85% of the time, Ubuntu about 14% of the time, and Windows 7 about 1%. Just my personal preference. Does that mean I find OS/X to be superior to them all? Not at all. I like all 3 for different reasons. Just depends on what I am doing. Some may find this comment weird, but I find OS/X kind of like a middle ground between Windows 7 and Linux (even though I fully realize it is closer to Linux architecture-wise than Windows). Just my 2 cents worth.
WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.
Your update has been really helpfull coz it all comes down to what you want to accomplish. So do I have to partion my hard disk in order to install more than one OS? I want to install windows 7 and ubuntu but my comp has 2 partions, one with windows and the other contains my backups (bad idea, I know, give me a while to buy an external hard disk).
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Here's a bit of heresy for you - they are both just operating systems. By themselves, they mean absolutely nothing; the question you need to ask is what you want to run on them. If you absolutely need to run Microsoft Office on your desktop, then Ubuntu's no good. If you just want to run a web server, then Ubuntu is a fine choice. That's the whole point - use the OS that provides the features you need to do your job.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility
You are really letting the mentor thingee get to your head. Just too dam' much good sense coming out of your keyboard these days. :sigh:
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" ~ Patrick Henry, Republican and anti-Federalist
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Your update has been really helpfull coz it all comes down to what you want to accomplish. So do I have to partion my hard disk in order to install more than one OS? I want to install windows 7 and ubuntu but my comp has 2 partions, one with windows and the other contains my backups (bad idea, I know, give me a while to buy an external hard disk).
Ubuntu (if you allow it) will split your Windows partition and create a new one to install itself. Standard disclaimer: Just be sure everything is backed-up first. That was how I got all 3 on my Mac. Boot Camp is intended to split the Mac partition so that you can install Windows into the newly created (by Boot Camp) partition. I had Boot Camp give Windows an extra large partition, installed Windows 7, and then I let Ubuntu's install split the Windows partition for itself. You should not have to go through all those shenanigans in your case however. :)
WE ARE DYSLEXIC OF BORG. Refutance is systile. Your a$$ will be laminated. There are 10 kinds of people in the world: People who know binary and people who don't.
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You are really letting the mentor thingee get to your head. Just too dam' much good sense coming out of your keyboard these days. :sigh:
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, Give me Liberty, or give me Death!" ~ Patrick Henry, Republican and anti-Federalist
Don't worry. Sooner or later, the whole facade will come crumbling down and I'll let forth putrid, bile spilled invective again. Order will be restored.
Forgive your enemies - it messes with their heads
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Mole 2010 - debugging made easier - my favourite utility
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
I been living under OpenSuse mostly, conveniently with Wine. I love it's reactionspeed, and the way one manages software. Most apps have a relative small footprint, and the harddisk still looks relative empty. Mono and MonoDevelop are a decent experience, but it's not as much a part of the system as .NET is on Windows. As a form of Windows-light, yes, dandy. Then again, why would you want to choose at all? Just install both, and download a dropbox for each OS :)
I are Troll :suss:
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
As always, it really depends on what you want to do with your operating system. (All opinion here) Security - Linux, definitely. The OS is open for the whole world to see, so more security holes get found and fixed before it gets into a stable/popular distribution. In a security-critical server app, with no dependencies on Windows, I'd definitely go with Linux (or preferably *BSD). Of course this limits you to using a stable/popular distribution. If you run the bleeding-edge revision, you're probably going to have just as many security holes as Windows. Programming Experience - Windows. I've done both Linux and Windows programming, and in years past (with techs like MVC and ATL - bleh!) it really would have been a toss up. But in the last few years, Microsoft has moved ahead with techs like WCF, WPF/Silverlight, EF4, etc. There are analogous tools for Linux, integrated into one platform. I've seen people argue that Visual Studio is "locked down" so you're stuck with what MS gives you, but that isn't true. I've written several extensions for VS to do company-specific things - the platform is very extensible. You can write a tool to do anything that isn't already done by VS (like my favorite, ReSharper). Support - Toss up. Linux has much more online support, but it's spread out all over the place. If you've got some Google-fu skills, you'll find the answer. Microsoft has less support, but it's more centralized. A lot of people make the argument that just being able to call someone for support is necessary, but generally if professional programmers can't figure it out, it's a bug. And it's not like MS is going to fast-track a bug for you unless you routinely write 6 figure checks. Here[^]'s a bug that I've been dealing with for months. Edit: Forgot to add: My personal setup is a Windows 7 Pro PC with gobs of ram and a copy of VirtualBox, for those occasions where Linux is a better choice for a task.
Before .NET 4.0, object Universe = NULL;
modified on Tuesday, April 26, 2011 4:23 PM
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
Pmwanzia wrote:
other than being free
I got Win 7 Ultimate for free :badger: ... Visual Studio 2010 Pro for free :badger: ...
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So today I faced off with some guys who were all in favor of linux and being thoughtless I defended windows 7. Never felt so stupid as they all laughed at another microsoft die hard. Is linux (read ubuntu) so good that windows 7 looks inferior? Come on, its windows 7 we're talking about! What's so good about linux (other than being free) compared to windows? And all windows fans, what's so good about windows compared to linux. Please kindly don't turn this into a hate thread coz my aim is to find which is better in terms of security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with.
Linux (Ubuntu et al) definitely has its sweet spots. If you don't need to rely on specific Windows software, it's entirely possible you could do better with it than Windows 7. I rely on a LOT of such software, but my laptop dual-boots Win7/Mint (A variant of Ubuntu, but I wanted LXDE, a very lightweight graphics environment that adds hours(!) to battery life). All in all, it depends on whether you need the specific Windows stuff and you're willing to poke around and learn a bit of new stuff. If so, Linux might just be a better fit for you. P.S. I've tried Arch, but I definitely prefer Ubuntu, seeing I don't have to build EVERYTHING from scratch: the modularisation sounds like a good idea, but there's a HELL of a lot of config files just to get a decent (e.g. smooth fonts et al) GUI... P.S.S. I'm really not liking the looks of Unity. On my laptop (netbook), it just seems to obscure everything behind a few extra layers, makes the file-manager impossible to find, and takes three seconds(!) to open the top left menu X| EDIT: Did I mention how impressed I am with Wine? Ooh boy, Wine does a really awesome job. You just want a bit more juice, but it really is impressive.
Don't forget to rate my post if it helped! ;) "He has no enemies, but is intensely disliked by his friends." "His mother should have thrown him away, and kept the stork." "There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." "He loves nature, in spite of what it did to him."
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Thanks, linux users are usually heard ravin on how secure the OS is but I don't believe them. I think that the only reason few viruses exist for linux is because many hackers dont find it rewarding to attack an OS thats used by a significantly lower number of people. What do you think?
A virus for Linux is a lot harder to write than it was for Windows XP. Because the practise of running as root (administrator) is discouraged. Windows Vista and later doesn't allow one to run everything with administrator priviledges now either so they've caught up. Of course Linux now has MAC and windows doesn't to my knowledge. So again if you want to make a system more secure you can implement MAC rules for common programs so that vulnerabilities in them did not allow the attacker to gain more priviledges than that program needs to be operational. One of the newer Linux distros that is specifically focused on security runs every application in it's own VM (thus every app runs in an isolated environment) - another thing not possible with Windows. Most of the programs you install on Linux you install from a software repository. So technically Linux is still more secure, but it's not that obvious anymore. A more prominent thing (and Windows is catching up here too) is the App Store. That is, all programs being installed from a trusted source. This feature has been available on Linux for ages now. Linux also needs less hacks because of its initial design philosophy being inherited from UNIX and its policies (e.g. the UAC is a hack). And because of that it needs less resources to run. It's not all great though. Linux is not supported by as many device manufacturers as Windows, thus a lot less drivers for it. Less games too. Some obscure software you might not find for it that exists on Windows, most of the software that you use can be replaced with open source alternatives, but you need to relearn to use it and most people don't like to do that. Some proprietary formats are not supported well either (understandable I'd say)