To all linux and windows users, please help me choose the better option.
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John Oxley wrote:
If your girlfriend/mother/sister has to use the machine, Windows. Yes, in theory you can teach them how to use Linux. Also, in theory, theory is the same as in practice...
Oh, please, give it a break :mad:
It’s not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it’s because we do not dare that things are difficult. ~Seneca
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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.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're all the same only different. It comes down to this: "What will you get paid for?". The arguments are old and tired. Oh, *nix is free? Yeah, until you need something like a database or sorting utility. Windoz, well, we're not running 3.1 any more - even the *nix guys use Win for their workstations. Don't feel stupid - *nix guys are hard-core diehards. They are very proud to still use vi. Best operating system ever is/was VAX/VMS ...
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"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." --Bertrand Russell
Sterling Camden / independent consultant wrote:
"If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing."
--Bertrand RussellVery profound, but I don't think Russell was talking about marketing a product. I guess you're implying that the market is "foolish" for having chosen Windows as it's platform. Either that or you're calling me foolish for capitalizing on it. You are certainly entitled to your opinion. I'm impressed (NOT). -Max
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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 BraunI just find it easier to do new things on Windows, and even worse, I'm actually beginning to admire Microsoft now that they are no longer the single most dominant IT company around. Their .net and Visual Studio platform is very productive and I think its overtaken Java now, though in the end, they both allow you to do pretty much the same things if you know how.
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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.
What I write is from the point of view of a home user. From the point of view of a company, unless you are constrained by legacy applications running only on Windows, and which can't run properly with wine, I think there's no point in using Windows. Both initial and operating costs are much lower with Linux than with Windows on the desktop, as any serious case study demonstrates - please be aware, however, that there are lots of flawed case studies on the 'Net, mostly sponsored by MS or by organizations sponsored by MS. (For instance, a skilled Linux administrator may cost double of what a skilled Windows administrator costs, but can easily administer a network which is maybe ten times as large, without the need to invest into expensive administrative tools.) If you'd know Windows better, you'd know that Windows security is plagued by one essential design flaw, present there since the first versions of Windows, which couldn't be removed due to backwards compatibility. I don't know W7 well enough to know how much of its evil effects are still in place, but the problem is this: since the whole Windows API was designed at a time when there wasn't even a shadow of an access rights system in Windows, there are still many operations which any application needs to perform but which require administrative privileges. This is the backdoor through which all serious security attacks on Windows boxes happen - buffer and stack over-/underflows can cause arbitrary code to be executed in contexts beyond the user's security context. Since Linux had a pretty simple and straightforward access control mechanism in place since its inception, there's no such problem with Linux. I know MS would have you believe that it's just the sheer number of Windows boxes out there that attracts virus writers to Windows, but this is stupid, if you think a little about it. Why would somebody spend significant time developing a virus which needs to get to at least a few tens of thousands of Windows boxes to be heard of, instead of spending the same amount of time on developing a virus which could just target a few hundreds or thousands of essential servers (like for instance an entire Google data center), if Linux and Windows would be equally insecure? (However, most attacks on Windows boxes aren't all that smart, and rely more on user stupidity than on OS faults. So W7 is probably an improvement on previous Windows versions from a security standpoint - can't really judge this.) As for installation and configuration easiness, I'd say this
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Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They're all the same only different. It comes down to this: "What will you get paid for?". The arguments are old and tired. Oh, *nix is free? Yeah, until you need something like a database or sorting utility. Windoz, well, we're not running 3.1 any more - even the *nix guys use Win for their workstations. Don't feel stupid - *nix guys are hard-core diehards. They are very proud to still use vi. Best operating system ever is/was VAX/VMS ...
This is stupid. Google has a policy of no windows at all in their entire infrastructure - including workstations - because it is considered a security risk. Several companies, many of them from the IT sector, have adopted Linux on the desktop. Where did you get your opinion from? A MS marketing droid? As for servers, more than half of all Internet hosts are running Linux, and most others run Unix variants. Most computers in the top500 supercomputer list run Linux, as opposed to I think about 1% or less running Windows. Wouldn't you say this means something?
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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?
The numbers argument is just a lame excuse created by MS marketing droids. Don't fall for it. Use your brain. If you create a virus for Windows, you need to have it infect several tens of thousands of workstations just to get it listed in the news. You may get access to a few mail accounts, and you are unlikely to access any really important information (such as credit card numbers). If you manage to craft an attack against one single important server or datacenter, for instance a google or ebay or amazon datacenter, or even just hacking your local ISP (which probably runs Linux in his datacenter), you could achieve a much higher impact with a lot less effort. If Windows and Linux would be similarly (in)secure, do you really think anybody would bother hacking Windows, as long as more than half the Internet is run on Linux?
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ahmed zahmed wrote:
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.
This is not quite true. If you are using a 'modern' Linux distribution (Ubuntu, Fedora, etc.) installation is a snap. Stick in the CD, boot, answer a few questions (similar to what is asked by a Windows installation) and say go. Walk away and come back to a *completely* installed computer -- OS, development tools, etc. Oh, and then you only have to run update *1* time to get everything up to date. Last time I re-installed my Windows machine I had to run updated about 9 times (rebooting each time) before the OS was completely up to date. Then I started installing my apps and updating them. As long as your distributions support the programs you are using, Linux is much easier. On the other hand it can take days to figure out all the dependencies require to install something if the distribution does not provide it ...
> On the other hand it can take days to figure out all the dependencies require to install something if the distribution does not provide it ... Right. But then again, with close to 40000 packages in the supported repositories, and with several software providers providing their own repositories, the likelihood of not finding something you need in the repositories is minimal, IMO. At least it never happened to me over the last four versions of Ubuntu.
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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 use both Ubuntu & Windows. My main OS is Ubuntu and I use VirtualBox to start a VM running Windows if I need to use VisualStudio - Best of both worlds. As to Microsoft Office, I use a product called Crossover from CodeWeavers. This allows me to use Office natively within Ubuntu.
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Perhaps it's just me, but I've used many dev tools over the years from full IDEs like Visual Studio, Netbeans, Eclipse, through great editors like Slickedit, MultiEdit and the original Brief. I've used Borland and Zorland/Zortech tools, Parallel C/C++, GNU, Mono, you name it, when it comes to dev environments. Like some other very sensible respondents here, it depends on what you want to do, but I felt I just had to respond to the above comment, because of all the IDEs I've used, VS has got to be one of the worst! I've developed for DOS, Windows, Xenix, Linux in Assembler, Pascal, C, C++, Java, VB; for web in JSP/AJAX, Java and PHP, for embedded systems in 800x, Z80, 6509, 68K Assembler, C, Occam, Transputer assembler (I even had a hand in developing the assembler for the Transputer), Parallel C/C++ etc. In other words I'm a real old git! However, it is all too easy to become so used to and familiar with your main environment (eg Windows/Visual Studio) that you never experience or become aware of the alternatives out there or realise that MS, for all it's good points, is not the only player in town, or even the best one. If you can't imagine anything better than VS, I can only recommend that you get out more :) mike
I'm using the Eclipse pack created by the guys at Spring - seems to me STS is to Eclipse like Ubuntu is to Debian. Many of my co-workers use VS 2010. Do you know what they curse most about? It simply crashes all the time. Personally, I think VS in its 2010 incarnation, if it weren't for the stability problems, could be brought up to the level of Eclipse by spending probably a few thousand dollars per workstation for various addons (resharper being just one of them).
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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
Programming experience: I do mostly Java, so don't get into VS too often. But the issue of Eclipse vs VS came up a few weeks ago during lunch break. A senior developer who knows nothing about Eclipse said: "I can't imagine anything being worse than VS 2010." Her issue: it crashes way too often. Also about programming, I don't understand why anybody would write an app without a web interface nowadays. You can use an embedded http server with an embedded database and configure it at startup to only serve locally, and start your interface in the browser. This way, it's much easier to create portable apps, and to support apps both locally and server-based. In an app created this way, you don't have limitations regarding local access to hardware or the filesystem. If you use something like qooxdoo, smartclient or sproutcore (don't use ext! You'll be in for some hard-core memory leak debugging if you do) you can create user interfaces which are as rich and fast as any native app you can build (actually, faster). Support: I only had to deal with MS support once. Since then, I'd use Google and various Linux forums as an alternative even if someone would pay me to use MS support. I'd also add a few more criteria to the comparison: maintenance, regular apps and games. Maintenance: Linux. You have just one update app, instead of having one from MS, one from Apple, one from Adobe and whatnot, and several apps having no update feature at all. The update mechanism even manages updates from one version to another, like updating from XP to Vista to W7. Regular apps - office, browsers, audio and video players: Toss up. You don't have IE on Linux - which may be an issue for corporate users tied to web apps which require IE. But you have all alternate browsers and then some available. OTOH, media players will require less of a powerful system to run a full HD movie in full screen using a very powerful codec. Games: Windows, but not by much. Most large, hugely marketed titles only appear for Windows, although there are titles which are released for both platforms. OTOH, there are small, tetris-like games for Linux that you don't get under Windows (though most care available cross platform), and which are less dumbing than minesweeper or solitaire.
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Security? Which flavour of *nix support NTFS or Access Based security than that 'rwx' based security on file? Almost all kernel objects have security attached with them? If you talk about OS security, where no one can attack - that's a different perspective, since not many are attacking Linux systems. And for programming environment and debugging-support, Windows is lightyears ahead of Linux. Windows has WaitForDebugEvent API, surrounded with other APIs that support native debugging. Linux has just a 'ptrace' which doesnt support multithreaded debugging, debugging a UI application, 'Edit-and-continue' feature and things like that. May be companies like Google, have developed their own debugging-system at OS level. I dont understand how programmers can live without a good development environment? Yes, for sure, networking is (probably) better than Windows. Someone said, down there in one of the posts that for Linux programmers there is more material available - I totally disagree. Take a look at pthread_create and CreateThread docs. Entire net would show the same 'man pthread_create' stuff, and just the MSDN doc says much more than for CreateThread, forget more info elsewhere.
Security: that's plain stupid. The really attractive targets are mostly Linux servers, not Windows machines. The reason why people attack Windows is that Windows is the low hanging fruit. It's not because there are many more Windows machines out there. More than half the Internet, and most highly visible sites, such as Google or Amazon are running on Linux. You can hack Windows with little to no effort, whereas you need to be highly skilled and put in a lot of effort into hacking Linux, that's why Windows gets most of the attacks. Windows' security issues are not necessarily related to its security system concept, but to how it is being used. Historical reasons require Windows to allow many applications to run privileged operations. If a user is able to cause a stack or buffer overflow which in turn causes arbitrary code execution, the security of the system can be easily compromised. If you look at security advisories all over the net, most relevant vulnerabilities are of this type. This doesn't happen with Linux, since on Linux privileged operations aren't allowed for code executed by a regular user. As long as the concept is wonderful but isn't really used, end users don't really care. Do you remember the Linus vs. Tannenbaum debate about micro-kernel vs. monolithic kernel? Linux didn't necessarily win market share over Minix because it's better conceived, but because it works properly. Similarly, the security system in Linux works, whereas the security system in Windows, no matter how wonderfully designed, doesn't. You can do multi-threaded debugging with gdb, and most debuggers for Linux are wrappers for gdb. Of course you can't debug into the heart of the X server, since the X server is another process, one to which you probably don't have access (and shouldn't have). Or did I get this one wrong? I won't even go there as to explaining to you why access to information is easier for whatever you do on Linux. You probably expect everything pre-digested, in which case stick to Windows - it's the right choice for you. Try identifying and mailing a question to the developer for some Windows component, to understand what I mean, and see how fast you can get insight into a library, or how fast bugs get fixed.
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Security: that's plain stupid. The really attractive targets are mostly Linux servers, not Windows machines. The reason why people attack Windows is that Windows is the low hanging fruit. It's not because there are many more Windows machines out there. More than half the Internet, and most highly visible sites, such as Google or Amazon are running on Linux. You can hack Windows with little to no effort, whereas you need to be highly skilled and put in a lot of effort into hacking Linux, that's why Windows gets most of the attacks. Windows' security issues are not necessarily related to its security system concept, but to how it is being used. Historical reasons require Windows to allow many applications to run privileged operations. If a user is able to cause a stack or buffer overflow which in turn causes arbitrary code execution, the security of the system can be easily compromised. If you look at security advisories all over the net, most relevant vulnerabilities are of this type. This doesn't happen with Linux, since on Linux privileged operations aren't allowed for code executed by a regular user. As long as the concept is wonderful but isn't really used, end users don't really care. Do you remember the Linus vs. Tannenbaum debate about micro-kernel vs. monolithic kernel? Linux didn't necessarily win market share over Minix because it's better conceived, but because it works properly. Similarly, the security system in Linux works, whereas the security system in Windows, no matter how wonderfully designed, doesn't. You can do multi-threaded debugging with gdb, and most debuggers for Linux are wrappers for gdb. Of course you can't debug into the heart of the X server, since the X server is another process, one to which you probably don't have access (and shouldn't have). Or did I get this one wrong? I won't even go there as to explaining to you why access to information is easier for whatever you do on Linux. You probably expect everything pre-digested, in which case stick to Windows - it's the right choice for you. Try identifying and mailing a question to the developer for some Windows component, to understand what I mean, and see how fast you can get insight into a library, or how fast bugs get fixed.
Yes, I know the core engine is gdb. And yes, it support MT debugging, but not as rich as VS/Windows. As I said before, ptrace is not efficient, which is used for debugging. I dont care about internals of OS, when I need to develop on top of OS. You are fan of OS/kernel level development, but do you expect entire world to do the same, and not use the interface provided by the system? Why do I care how recursive-mutex works?
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This is stupid. Google has a policy of no windows at all in their entire infrastructure - including workstations - because it is considered a security risk. Several companies, many of them from the IT sector, have adopted Linux on the desktop. Where did you get your opinion from? A MS marketing droid? As for servers, more than half of all Internet hosts are running Linux, and most others run Unix variants. Most computers in the top500 supercomputer list run Linux, as opposed to I think about 1% or less running Windows. Wouldn't you say this means something?
What is stupid is people writing "this is stupid". I would suggest a more professional approach ... perhaps avoid [attempts at] insults? As to where I got my opinion: 12 years in the VAX/VMS world, 6 with various flavors of *nix, over the course of all that and a few more years with Windows scattered in there. Many different programming languages, many different databases. In your stats, you neglected one that we often read: 90% of desktops are running Windows. Who cares about all that, eh? Like my first comment: it matters what you get paid for. We could go on and on. We could also argue about flavors of ice cream or which race of humans is superior. Be nice.
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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.
Sorry I'm late on this. Windows has a tendency (getting better) take whatever window it feels like and splatters it right on top of what you were doing without regard to how much the move made by the OS may have set you back. It's simply bad manners. Case and point: You click MS-Access, it's taking awhile, so you start an email to a buddy... then mid sentance the msaccess program takes over the screen interrupting your train of thought etc. Doesn't happen in linux. This isn't a hate thing - just something I find very frustrating. I won't go on about other things liek security being ...just different. Linux isn't perfect BUT - the source code is about, many folks (community) all are using it and can not only learn things but can go after fixing things permanently for everyone... etc. That part is kind of neat and when you think of the "SWARM" effect ... (crowd sourcing nature of many open source projects)... it's usually a win for everyone. Not always - I can see both arguements for licensed versus not - but that's another topic... I digress. Back to the question Linux vs. Windows.... Both are really good.. Linux just seems to come in more flavors...maybe more complex.. but not much more than buying a car really. All drive... just look, drive, specialize..differently. But once you know one vehicle...you can USUALLY figure out most others. To Apple's Cred - They too went with a UNIX based (or fashioned after) system - directly with the new MAC's. Cool. More "standards" really. Sure there are some chasms - but - the "world" is going one way it seems... and licensed stuff is vying for another... perhaps just trying to hang on while they swtich to some cloud revenue stream...dunno. That's my thoughts... I have more - but many folks have great thoughts too on this... I will leave with the fact that programs written for UNIX that are now 30years old will still compile and run today. Visual Basic 6 was the last in a fairly long run of Microsoft Basic's from before there was anything "Visual" about it... as in it was all console "Professional Development System" and the like. This technology has been antiquated in such a way that programs written for it can no longer be guaranteed to "re-render" or "recompile" on newer systems and be expect to run flawless. This ... above the technology details themselves; makes building on "what we know" (e.g. standing on the shoulders of giants) difficult. We can create great things with solid software building blocks with years of testing and real hard
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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.
My opinion is that each tool (OS in this case) should be used for the purpose it is best suited for. Windows is and has been great client software, hands down. If it wasn't I doubt that Windows XP would still be the most widely used operating system in the world. Linux is so configurable that you set it up to do almost anything you want, and it really makes for a great server system for that and other reasons. I love Windows 7 also, but I can pull up a website faster from the fedora box (apache server) sitting next to me than I can from IIS 7 on a windows system in the next room (almost identical hardware). Granted Windows has a pretty good server product, but I am thinking you'll find that the larger part of servers on the internet will be linux systems. Check out facebook's investment of 20+ million per year[^] on servers. You can bet that not a single one of those rack servers are running windows. It is possible to know and love them both. Some new linux distros can even create a flash drive that you can boot to selectively if you still rely on windows and don't want to have the hard drive requirements of another OS. This plus cheap usb thumb drives (8-16 GB drives are very affordable at the moment) equals a big win for linux portability in my book. In my case a 4 GB flash drive is bootable system with many programs (GIMP, Blender, InkScape, media players, browsers, Eclipse, email/chat clients, etc..) and about 2.5 GB of persistent storage on the drive itself. Maybe its just the uber nerd in me, but I like the idea of carrying a system around in a tiny pocket and being able to plug it in and use any hardware that can boot from usb or memory cards. The point is I guess that linux can be alot of fun in different ways than windows can. I like this live cd, I think it already has a USB Creator: Fedora 14 KDE spin[^] (I think it was in System Applications? or something like that.. don't remember at the moment.)
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What is stupid is people writing "this is stupid". I would suggest a more professional approach ... perhaps avoid [attempts at] insults? As to where I got my opinion: 12 years in the VAX/VMS world, 6 with various flavors of *nix, over the course of all that and a few more years with Windows scattered in there. Many different programming languages, many different databases. In your stats, you neglected one that we often read: 90% of desktops are running Windows. Who cares about all that, eh? Like my first comment: it matters what you get paid for. We could go on and on. We could also argue about flavors of ice cream or which race of humans is superior. Be nice.
I apologize if you felt offended. IMO "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" asked for "This is stupid." - I didn't mean _you_ being stupid, just the statement that "even the *nix guys use Win for their workstations." - as far as I can see it at the people I work with, most skilled admins, even Windows administrators, use anything but Windows on their workstations. It's usually Ubuntu or something Ubuntu-based. The original poster asked for a comparison of two desktop OSes - Ubuntu and W7. What does deployment of a database server have to do with this? You don't deploy databases to workstations. Even if you do, I'm only aware of a single database which isn't available for Linux. The comparison asked for initially was about "security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with". I can't see a single point in this list where W7 is better, when compared to Ubuntu. I used paid MS support, the Ubuntu forums are way more useful. Linux is free. I won't even mention security. Linux is also easier to manage, has more bells and whistles available (which is important for many users), there are about 40K of free packages in repositories supported by Canonical, you always can install something from source, if it's not prepackaged, and many commercial software vendors make their products available for Ubuntu (and derivatives) via repositories which you just add to the package management system. That's why in my opinion there's simply no point in using Windows on the desktop as a home user today, except for the latest Windows-only games. But playing games is about spending money, not getting paid. For enterprises, the big issue is Windows-only legacy applications. But that's all there is to be evaluated if a company considers using Linux on the desktop. There's lots of savings to be made when switching to Linux on the desktop. The only reason to use Windows on the desktop is if you're either forced to do so (your employer forces you to do so), or you're paid to do so. Usually you don't get paid to use an OS, you get paid to do some useful work. Unless it's programming with Windows-only technologies, or on Windows-only products, there's no point in using Windows. I'm aware that cca. 90% of all desktops are Windows today. But that doesn't necessarily make it the smarter or better choice.
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I disagree. There are plenty of hackers looking at Linux. Even taking viruses into consideration, if you run a Windows box without good protection, you deserve every single thing that happens to you. Stop breating my air! Your main vulnerability points I feel (completely unjustified) are the apps you use, in particular your browser. Throwing away the red herring of security, look at the rest. If you either want to play games use Windows. That's it. Btw, wine (Windows Emulator) does not work. Neither does that wine rip off to let you play games. It takes 17 times as long, you have to sacrifice a goat and performance sucks. If you're a Windows or .Net developer, use Windows. And Visual Studio is better than Monodevelop or Vim (Go googling for vim integration into VS2010, it rocks!). (Side note: everything is better than emacs, even notepad. Yes I said it! And I believe it!) If you have an iPhone, use Windows. No itunes on Linux. Yes you can plug it in through Amarok etc, but Apple stuff does not play well with non Apple stuff. Ease of use is simple. If you know Windows, it's a win. If you don't, toss a coin. If you're a networking guru, run Linux. You should be. It's just a gajillion times nicer. If you admin a windows network, run windows. If you admin a *nix network, run Linux. If you admin a mixed network, run Windows and buy SecureCRT. Learn how ssh keys work. Performance wise, yes you can slim Linux down more than Windows, but then you don't get all the features. They're 6 to 1, half a dozen to the other. If you want to get the best possible working environment, use linux. Warning: It will take some years. I've put 14 in so far and am getting close. If you enjoy playing with computers (I guess so cos you're here), run Linux. If your girlfriend/mother/sister non technically competent relationship person has to use the machine, Windows. Yes, in theory you can teach them how to use Linux. Also, in theory, theory is the same as in practice... I've been running Windows since 3.11 in the early nineties and Linux since Slackware 3.5 in the late nineties. Both OSes have improved incredibly in terms of usability, stability, features and getting out of my way so I can get shit done. Windows has a HUGE lead on games, and the edge on Windows development. The rest of it comes down to preference and experience. From a fresh install, it takes about 3 days to get a Windows box the way I like it. As I said earlier, I've been working on my
>If your girlfriend/mother/sister non technically competent relationship person has to use the machine, Windows. My mom used windows xp on her computer, then I got her switched to Ubuntu, and then someone else switched her to windows 7. She complained about ubuntu being different for a week. She complains about windows 7 for several months now. > everything is better than emacs, even notepad Come on now! You can't seriously expect a window system to have features of a text editor. :) > From a fresh install, it takes about 3 days to get a Windows box the way I like it. As I said earlier, I've been working on my Linux environment for 14 years and I'm still improving it! Tried to "emerge world"? :)
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This is stupid. Google has a policy of no windows at all in their entire infrastructure - including workstations - because it is considered a security risk. Several companies, many of them from the IT sector, have adopted Linux on the desktop. Where did you get your opinion from? A MS marketing droid? As for servers, more than half of all Internet hosts are running Linux, and most others run Unix variants. Most computers in the top500 supercomputer list run Linux, as opposed to I think about 1% or less running Windows. Wouldn't you say this means something?
Florin Jurcovici wrote:
This is stupid. Google has a policy of no windows at all in their entire infrastructure - including workstations - because it is considered a security risk. Several companies, many of them from the IT sector, have adopted Linux on the desktop. Where did you get your opinion from? A MS marketing droid?
Google has that policy now. Only after they personally were hacked. IE was the suspected initial entry point (not windows.) A company that bases its security only on software will never be safe. I have seen a report based on real security problems where 90% of the cases involved insiders stealing information. A company that has a publicly exposed security problem is likely to seek another source to blame for the problem. That is easier and even costs less than actually addressing the real problem of lax or non-existent (or certainly not enforced) security policies.
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I apologize if you felt offended. IMO "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" asked for "This is stupid." - I didn't mean _you_ being stupid, just the statement that "even the *nix guys use Win for their workstations." - as far as I can see it at the people I work with, most skilled admins, even Windows administrators, use anything but Windows on their workstations. It's usually Ubuntu or something Ubuntu-based. The original poster asked for a comparison of two desktop OSes - Ubuntu and W7. What does deployment of a database server have to do with this? You don't deploy databases to workstations. Even if you do, I'm only aware of a single database which isn't available for Linux. The comparison asked for initially was about "security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with". I can't see a single point in this list where W7 is better, when compared to Ubuntu. I used paid MS support, the Ubuntu forums are way more useful. Linux is free. I won't even mention security. Linux is also easier to manage, has more bells and whistles available (which is important for many users), there are about 40K of free packages in repositories supported by Canonical, you always can install something from source, if it's not prepackaged, and many commercial software vendors make their products available for Ubuntu (and derivatives) via repositories which you just add to the package management system. That's why in my opinion there's simply no point in using Windows on the desktop as a home user today, except for the latest Windows-only games. But playing games is about spending money, not getting paid. For enterprises, the big issue is Windows-only legacy applications. But that's all there is to be evaluated if a company considers using Linux on the desktop. There's lots of savings to be made when switching to Linux on the desktop. The only reason to use Windows on the desktop is if you're either forced to do so (your employer forces you to do so), or you're paid to do so. Usually you don't get paid to use an OS, you get paid to do some useful work. Unless it's programming with Windows-only technologies, or on Windows-only products, there's no point in using Windows. I'm aware that cca. 90% of all desktops are Windows today. But that doesn't necessarily make it the smarter or better choice.
Florin Jurcovici wrote:
I apologize if you felt offended. IMO "Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah" asked for "This is stupid." - I didn't mean _you_ being stupid, just the statement that "even the *nix guys use Win for their workstations." - as far as I can see it at the people I work with, most skilled admins, even Windows administrators, use anything but Windows on their workstations. It's usually Ubuntu or something Ubuntu-based.
I am rather certain others have different experiences. The following company seems to exist solely to extend windows service abilities into the unix domain. And it would seem unlikely that they could survive if quite a few people did not want to do exactly that and also thought that it was a good idea. http://www.centrify.com/directcontrol/overview.asp[^]
Florin Jurcovici wrote:
The original poster asked for a comparison of two desktop OSes - Ubuntu and W7.
The OP didn't explicitly state desktop only. Nothing in that post seemed to limit it to desktop only. Although 'W7' implies desktop from the rest of the post it suggested a general discussion.
Florin Jurcovici wrote:
The comparison asked for initially was about "security,programming experience,support, and just anything else you can come up with". I can't see a single point in this list where W7 is better, when compared to Ubuntu. I used paid MS support, the Ubuntu forums are way more useful. Linux is free. I won't even mention security. Linux is also easier to manage, has more bells and whistles available (which is important for many users), there are about 40K of free packages in repositories supported by Canonical, you always can install something from source, if it's not prepackaged, and many commercial software vendors make their products available for Ubuntu (and derivatives) via repositories which you just add to the package management system.
In your opinion. In my opinion and experience I have no expectation that an experienced and excellent Linux administrator is going to be cheaper than a Microsoft one. Matter of fact I would expect the linux one to be quite a bit more expensive. And a large number of people know how to use Word, Excel, PowerPoint etc and attempting