What Differentiates Linux from Windows? 1135
tail.man sent in a Linux Insider piece about the difference between Linux and Windows. Quoting the synopsis "So, what's really the difference between a Unix variant like Linux and any Windows OS? It's that Microsoft reacts to marketing pressure to make design decisions favoring running a few processes faster but then finds itself forced first to layer in backward compatibility and then to engage in a patch-and-kludge upgrade process until the code becomes so bloated, slow and unreliable that wholesale replacement is again called for."
Outside of business... (Score:5, Interesting)
Bottom-up Top-down is dying (Score:2, Interesting)
You decide which is which.
Rewrites necessary (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows 2003 wouldn't be possible if 90% of its codebase was from the WinNT 3.1 kernel.
Even Macs - OSX is so completely different than OS9 that they can't even be compared fairly. OS9 was dead in the water before it came out - the rewrite of the OS (albeit on the BSD kernel) was necessary to allow Mac to continue to compete at all.
I don't think anyone says this but.. (Score:5, Interesting)
just my 2 pence
Tim
Boils down to (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows: easy to configure, easy to break
Linux: difficult to configure, difficult to break
Don't get me wrong, I use both, its an apples to oranges comparison. The question is what do you want to do with it? A MS firewall is unconsiderable, but so is the thought of putting Linux on my sisters desktop.
They're just Different. (Score:5, Interesting)
But to be slightly OT...
It sort of reminds me of something
I've always wanted to write a book talking about how the two camps actually need each other. Microsoft would have more to fear from an open source windows variant than any threat Linux could ever bring.
Lin vs. Win, from the middle-aged perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Linux Zealots (Score:3, Interesting)
It turns people off Macs, and it can do the same for Linux.
Re:I don't think anyone says this but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows Linux
Usable +--Unusable
Insecure--+ Secure
Differentiating Windows and Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
OTOH, that simplicity in installing apps makes Windows extremely vulnerable as well. Doesn't take much effort to run/install anything off the Internet. Spyware can cling onto your system without much consent at all.
That brings up the major difference I've seen so far. Worms, Viruses, Trojans, Keyloggers, and other forms of malware don't seem to find their way into my Linux machine. The rest of my family who run Windows, though, get infected too many times for my liking.
Is that because most Linux users know to watch out for those types of things while Windows users can be painted with the "AOLer" stereotype? That's probably a factor. But so is the general architecture of not putting yourself in danger for the sake of convenience -- by running mail programs and browsers with enough privs to bork a system.
Cheaper, more secure, and absolutely transparent. Many thanks to everyone who makes OSS possible -- from the programmers and QA testers to the advocacy groups and spokespeople. (and the large corporations backing Open Source)
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
This article articulates very well the opinion I've come to hold, since being network and sys admin for about 300 Solaris and 2 or 300 NT machines for about 4 years.
My point of contention is that Microsoft built its legacy on home users, and "amatuer" (for lack of a better adjective) operating systems. Sun, HP and the other enterprise OS companies built it for business. I pitty anyone who relies on M$ servers for their bread and butter. I was talking to a DB manager for a M$ shop, that manages 7 terabytes of data. I complained how we had to bounce Oracle about once a month, and it was always the middleware failing. He laughed, and said, "We have to reboot the M$ DB _daily_ and reboot the whole machine". We only had to restart the middleware processes (e.g. ps -ef | grep middlware....kill ...and the processes would automatically kick back off) and were back up and running in seconds, without affecting other DB processes on the box running.
This speaks volumes.
Those who don't know any better will keep their opinions for their own camp (either M$ or *nix) and those who've been on both sides are probably too busy to weigh in here anyway. (I'm out of it now, so I have more time :-)
John
Re:I don't think anyone says this but.. (Score:3, Interesting)
For e.g. can Windows allow the following things...
Change network configurations on the fly. which may include , changin domains, sub domains, IP addresses etc, and not having to reboot ?
Restart the windowing system parameters on the fly, i.e. update the video card drivers and not rebbot.
Windows still require a lot of rebooting for tasks which can be done very easily in linux, just by reloading kernel modules. What more, I hear 2.6.4 even supports hot swapping of CPUs.
Re:It's simple. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Differentiating Windows and Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
I nuked the DLL's the worm installed. I nuked the registry entries. I even got it to the point that it doesn't reset his web page every time he opens explorer. But deep down, some dll was over-written, and it's not coming up on virus scans, and good luck tracking down md5 hashes of internet explorer components.
I introduced him to Mozilla, and implored him to sin no more.
Re:The other side (Score:2, Interesting)
I guess I'll stick with Photoshop and Paint Shop Pro. (depending on what platform I'm at the time.)
Re:It's simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
The rest of it, the "Lunix never crashes because of open-source!" I don't especially buy into.
Re:Windows has driver support (Score:5, Interesting)
Preaching to the choir (Score:3, Interesting)
I would guess at least 90% of the readers of
Re:It's simple. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Its all about the floppy disk (Score:3, Interesting)
- Insert a floppy into a Windows machine.
- Start up Word and type up whatever.
- "Save as..." to the floppy drive.
- With your document still up and running in Word, remove the floppy and replace with another, different floppy, maybe one with some important files on it.
- "Save" (not "Save as..", just "Save") and see what happens.
You may not have to "mount" and "unmount" but it's not like these operations don't exist in Windows. The difference is that Windows will hide this operation from the user, much like "automount" tries to do on Linux. Another difference is that because the operation is hidden, users aren't aware it's an issue. I work in a campus lab, and just yesterday one of the profs did this exact sequence of steps and lost alot of work... oops.Re:Lin vs. Win, from the middle-aged perspective (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:They're just Different. (Score:1, Interesting)
They get sued for copyright and patent infringement...Duh,,,
Re:The other side (Score:3, Interesting)
In contrast with Yes the handbook is old and quite tongue in cheek, but it was always +5 insightful.
copy/paste mount/etc. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:As a die-hard Windows - 1 Year Debian convert.. (Score:1, Interesting)
Learn TeX (LaTeX). Nothing looks better. And it shows when you do, further impressing your prospective employer.
It's all about the Software (Score:5, Interesting)
An operating system is an operating system is an operating system is an operating system. It's only purpose is to provide you, the user, a human-readable interface and control system for the computer's hardware and software.
How Linux, other UNIXen, and Windows handle this, however, is the big question to me when someone asks me the question that the article posed.
Applications designed for Windows are just that--developers typically use programming tools that create apps which are hardware-and-operating-system-specific. Barring an emulator such as Virtual PC (funny, that's owned now by Microsoft, too), Windows applications simply will not operate unless it has a conventional Intel-style PC hardware architecture running a specific flavor of Windows. And nope, your 16-bit Windows apps will likely break in Windows XP, so you have to hunt and peck for the app that works in the OS you have.
The UNIX family has things differently. UNIX-family applications are frequently hardware-agnostic and non-operating system-specific. You could be running Solaris, or FreeBSD, or Mandrake, or SuSE, or Darwin, or Mac OS X--generally, the code just works. (Plenty of exceptions, like OpenOffice ports to Mac OS X, but a version does work now in OS X's X11 environment, to take an example.)
Where you would walk into a computer store to buy Windows software, a *NIX user could download the source code for an application and compile it, or build it to work for their particular operating system and platform. Of course, we could buy the source code from a store as well, or the binaries for our platform, if a software maker distributed most of the UNIX software in that format. Currently, the inability of a home Linux user to visit CompUSA for the latest UNIX application is among the greatest challenges to *NIX as a popular home desktop OS (Mac OS X's inroads notwithstanding).
Nevertheless, I can download most BSD and many UNIX and Linux source code from my Mac OS X (BSD variant) workstations, compile it, and use it, without problem or complant. Windows users generally aren't compiling squat--they have to buy or find the already-assembled binaries that run within Windows--and pray that those versions of the binaries were compiled with their Windows version (and patch version, and service pack version) in mind.
The best example of a well-written application that doesn't particularly care about platform (at least in terms of its data files--binaries must still be obtained) is BioWare's Neverwinter Nights [bioware.com] game series. It works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. While the two expansion packs for the original game haven't yet been released in an official Mac version yet, because BioWare designed the game's data to be platform-agnostic, many impatient Mac users have figured out. without a lot of hassle, how to install the game expansions using the Linux versions of the games.
Windows is a proprietary operating system, and any applications written for it feed into that mold. The UNIX world is literally open in its design and flexibility. Don't confuse "open" for "Open Source," however--that's another (related) story.
Re:It's simple. (Score:5, Interesting)
In windows there are many more levels, but fewer pieces of hardware in the Just doesn't work at all category.
I remember buying a server once that was designed for Linux use and trying to upgrade from Mandrake 7.2 to 8.0 I think it was, and finding that the driver for the disk controller only existed in binary form on the install disks and that only worked with the kernels in Redhat 6.2
Re:It's simple. (Score:2, Interesting)
Linux is NOT HARD TO USE! (Score:1, Interesting)
When I got my first real Linuz distro, Mandrake 8.1, I got everything I need. It was easy to use the K Desktop Environment, It had over 100 installed games (plus lots of 3D games). It was a lot easier than Windows 98, which I had on my machine. I have gone through several distros (SuSE, Gentoo, Ark, Lindows, Debian, Knoppix, Fedora) and out of ALL of thoose, I only found Debian hard to use, so maybe we should be saying Debian is hard to use but not Linux in general?
So why do people say Linux is hard to use when it isn't give me reasons! Real reasons not silly ones. So please, tell me why you are spreading rumours that are not true.
the biggest difference for me (Score:2, Interesting)
[from: http://debianuniverse.com/readonline/chapter/01]
The Debian Universe
Debian is generally regarded as a good Linux distribution with great package management but a terrible installer. However, it's actually a lot more than that. Technically it's not even really a Linux distribution in the traditional sense, and it can be a hard thing to define for those who have dealt primarily with commercial distributions like Red Hat, Mandrake and SuSE, because Debian even embraces alternative kernels such as the BSD kernel and The Hurd.
Linux itself is grounded in community involvement and accessibility, concepts it inherited from the GNU project. But when we think of Linux distributions today they are almost all commercial ventures. What goes into each commercial distribution is a decision made by paid employees with the company bottom line in mind. That may not in itself be a bad thing, but it does leave them open to the possibility of commercial failure as we saw recently with Mandrake. If an organisation needs to make money to survive, that danger always remains.
But Debian is different. It's a totally open, cooperative project involving a great diversity of people, each doing what they do either because they want to or because they feel it's worthwhile. In fact Debian doesn't really exist in the legal sense. There is no Debian Inc, there are no shareholders, no board, not even a non-profit organisation. There is an umbrella organisation called Software in the Public Interest (SPI), but Debian itself is really just a big cooperative project. It's probably one of the best large scale examples of a true 'bazaar' style project as described by Eric S Raymond in "The Cathedral And The Bazaar" that exists today. It doesn't have to make any sales, it doesn't have to meet investor expectations, its members just get on with doing what they do best: create one of the best ever collections of open source software.
That can be both a good and a bad thing. One of the recent problems, for example, has been obtaining AMD x86-64 prototype hardware for porting and testing. AMD have limited supplies of hardware, and while it's still at the prototype phase they will only release machines to organisations that can both demonstrate a need and enter into a non-disclosure agreement. Because Debian doesn't really exist legally, it can't enter into an agreement binding on all it's developers and so AMD have been unable to provide hardware for Debian developers to test on.
However, problems like that are few and far between, and for the most part Debian's lack of structure is its strength. It's diversity and inclusiveness have resulted in its ability to package a huge range of software on more hardware architectures than any other distribution, or indeed any other operating system.
Something that many people don't know is that Debian officially supports 11 different hardware architectures: x86/IA-32(i386), Motorola 68k, Sparc, Alpha, PowerPC, ARM, MIPS, MIPSel, HP PA-RISC, IA-64 and S/390. And that doesn't mean that everything is developed for i386 first, with other architectures lagging behind and treated as poor cousins, with distribution releases delayed by weeks or months. When a release such as Woody (Debian 3.0) happens, it happens simultaneously on all 11 architectures.
That's a pretty mind-blowing concept when you consider that even the big boys such as Red Hat only officially try to support one or two. Managing development on 11 architectures has required Debian to put in place a very sophisticated auto-builder system that allows a developer to create a software package on whatever their local architecture happens to be, then upload the package to a build queue. Once in the queue the package is sanity checked, then distributed to machines in the build farm: a group of machines loaned or donated to Debian that represent all 11 architect
Re:The Difference... (Score:3, Interesting)
Personally, I think they were not "getting" it on purpose so they wouldn't have to work on the Windows systems. They punished me by making me fix all of those problems (or at least stabilizing them so they would at least keep running).
Although I can handle both Linux and Windows quite well, throw me in front of a Mac and I feel like a blithering idiot.
Re:What? (Score:1, Interesting)
and more seriously, people like to put a disk in, have something flash or jump around (tuxy?) and say "all done!".
Something I considered writing on my own is a reply to why RPM can bite me. A self-optimizing and compiling file format.
People (including me) roast RPM for being inefficent as everything is precompiled and prebinded. It might even not even be compiled on your own specific type of hardware.. ie: Celeron stuff on a AMD-FX vs AMD-FX specific.
That is the next big thing for making linux a more "simpiler".
Self-optimizing, self-compiling, and heck, optional self linking to major GUI (kde, gnome, flux, ect) to where ever you want to put it file type.
POSIX tools (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Excellent (Score:5, Interesting)
*Practically* speaking, that's a crap argument. I haven't seen any linux distros installing libc5 support by default recently. Which means old libc5 apps won't run (unless they happened to be statically linked). I even seem to recall some pain in the glibc 2.0->2.1 transition. Or how about trying to install some older rpms on a shiny new distribution? It's about a 50-50 shot that it works.
Microsoft has to rewrite large portions of windows code to take on new features, which make it incompatible with older software.
The larger problem is that backwards compatability seems to be directly proportional to bloat. Microsoft's problem is that since they aren't a "distribution" per se, they can't even attempt to fix all your executables to use new libraries as they're developed. And then when they (finally) remove or fix obsolete/broken libraries anyway, shit breaks. Then they get blamed for 'intentionally' breaking other vendors' programs. It isn't actually their fault (..sometimes).
Really, I always thought MS bent over backwards to err on the side of "bloat" whenever possible. Which is why you have the DOS virtual machine and the win16 API etc.
Re:The Difference... (Score:3, Interesting)
The main difference - strategy (Score:1, Interesting)
Seriously... (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, there are so many different ways to interact with computers that aren't being explored because we're stuck with the ridiculous "everything is a file" interface that plagues both Unix and Windows. Both OS's are brain-dead.
You want an OS that is different in a worthwhile way? Throw out the filesystem. It's a ridiculous waste of time. All the hard disk should be is permanent storage for run-time data. RAM in a system should be nothing more than another cache between the permanent storage and the CPU.
I don't have to explicity page data in and out to the CPU cache, why should I have to page data in and out to files, just because of some misguided attempt to shoehorn a dumb "file philosophy" onto everything?
Security is pathetic from an ideal standpoint too. Why are there only two, arguably three, levels of privilege in these systems? Why do I have to become root just to bind to a low port? Shouldn't I be able to allow specific applications that specific privilege, and that specific privilege only? OS's should have much finer grained controls. This isn't impossible.
A truly innovative OS would resolve these issues. You could start by mapping devices to specific areas in the address space, and controlling access to specific areas of memory for each process/thread. There are research papers all over the net describing exactly how to do this. Nobody's implemented it beyond a toy system.
For all the back slapping and self congratulation about Linux on this site and others, and the "innovative" rally cry of the free software folks, it's pretty sad when you see that all they've done is recreate 30 year old technology with minor implementation improvements.
I'll say "innovative" when you can turn your computer on and in a few seconds be right back where you left off when you turned it off. Or when you can enable a thread to bind to a port by giving it access to the address space where the "bind" function resides, instead of giving it total control of the whole machine.
That's innovative.
Re:It's simple. (Score:3, Interesting)
please tell me then how easy it is to remove the DAMANED incorrect USB-MIDI driver and have it install the right one? every single time WINDOWS finds the old one and assumes that I'm too damned stupid to know what I want so it installs the incorrect one for me, never giving me the chance to install the correct one.
You cant tell me or any IT professional that Windows has ease of use or Ease of integration. It has just as many problems as Linux or any other OS does. and dont get me going on how fragile the stupid registry and user profiles are...
windows is not "ease of use" Macintosh is.
and no I don't own a mac or even like them, but the mac's here in the graphic arts department NEVER need to be messed with.
Re:It's simple. (Score:2, Interesting)
As someone who just installed a soundcard in Windows2000, and watched the machine bluescreen then refuse to boot (even in safe-mode), I can only agree. Some things are just easier if you have a better O/S to work on.
Did I mention the 2 days it took one of our contractors to work out why Windows was helpfully disabling a fileserver he was trying to setup without ever thinking to mention that it had disabled network connections because the administrator password was blank? (internal network for a cluster..)
Or getting Windows2000 to login as somebody by default? (yes, this option is made invisible (not just greyed out) if you're part of a workgroup). That took an someone a couple of hours to fix that they could have been doing useful work.
Control panel -- Relevant option -- Advanced options -- sixth tab of the four visible tabs -- Settings -- scroll down a lot -- tick the option you want -- would you like to reboot for this setting to take effect?.
At least we're not in linux with all those darned text files
// You should enable it under these conditions:...
// If you enable it, you should be aware of these things:...
x = value
Of course, some things are more difficult in Linux also, but you can understand how hardware interfaces might be difficult when the manufacturers refuse to provide any information on how the products work. Most people here would say "fuck 'em" and ignore a hardware manufacturer if they refused to cooperate with driver-writers, but all credit to the people who actually reverse-engineer things so that they work anyway.
Re:Excellent (Score:2, Interesting)
Now to the author of the parent: what are you suggesting? That we shouldn't listen to people who are biased? Should a jury in court not listen to the defense lawyer or the prosecuter because they are biased? If you don't agree with people then don't go around whining about how biased they are but make yourself useful and attack their arguments.
Or maybe you are saying we get to hear only one side of the story. If so than please provide a link to a detailed technical story that tells us the other side. That would be worth an insightful tag.
extra quality (Score:3, Interesting)
That's to get one sale. Most companies really like it when you come back to them for future purchases, which is why having extra quality, something to set your product above others, is always a good thing. If you can make your product that much better with a reasonably small amount of cost, then why not?
You can take a bit more joy from making a better product, you look like a better company, you get higher customer loyalty. For example, MAG-Lite flashlights are extremely well made. People buy them, and the company is succesful, because they made a great product, as opposed to just another flashlight.
I submit it's always a good decision to make a better product.
Re:The Difference... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lin vs. Win, from the middle-aged perspective (Score:5, Interesting)
Only that's not true. It is a professional system made by its users, while MS Windows is a substandard one made by hired coders commanded by marketers trying to please the users' managers. Got the difference?
The only GNU/Linux minus is time: it takes time to get it right. There is no reason why, say, Debian GNU/Linux with Gnome can't reach all the same qualities of MS Windows without loosing any benefits. That is, apart from the fact that security is inherently opposed to convenience. There are things that will always be more difficult simply to keep security; on the other hand the basic design is so much simpler that the complexity coming from security can easily be offset, especially if we eventually follow the GNU/Hurd road to Lisp system programming and the Gnome road to database storage as the filesystem engine.
This is a red herring. Gnome is already quite consistent, and has most apps one needs. 2.6 will need even less non-Gnome apps, such as Gnome PDF viewer being nearly as feature-complete as XPDF or Adobe Acrobat Reader for instance. It will take a few years, but there is no reason why OpenOffice.org, LyX and such foreign software won't be totally Gnome-ised and immature software such as Passepartout or Gnome PDF won't become full-featured.
Another red herring. In fact, it is much easier to integrate GNU/Linux, because it tends to follow open standards and even to create new open standards, instead of being subject to MS's bad case of NIHS. MS integrates well only with MS or other mature proprietary MS-platform software, but not with non-MS-platform software.
Centralisation would buy you precisely nothing, and would cost much. With centralisation things would move slower, be less flexible...
Consistency is yet another non-issue. Gnome and KDE are still pretty immature, but they are consistent. The fact that you can run Qt apps in Gnome and Gtk+ ones in KDE, and text and Motif or Athena or whatever in both, is a bonus.
In fact it has been argued that if we had had a single widget set since the dawn of X, now we'd have tons of obsolete software. As widgets were never a given, people have designed their apps to be easily ported to new ones, and now we have the luxury of apps that play well with lotsa them. For example, with GNU Emacs we've curses and Motif already, and will have Gtk+ soon; with LyX we have Qt and XForms already, and someone was porting to Gtk+... MS Windows apps so old as these were already rewritten or are dead or have become bloated, choose any number of these three options.
It is happening all the time, but the cultural gap is simply too big. Microsoft will only be able to cross it by ceasing to be Microsoft. In this sense the decision by the courts not to break Microsoft in several companies (games and content, OS, tools, apps, servers) was against MS own shareholders' best interests in the long term. But this is a decision shareholders could have taken without the courts.
As I've shown it is not about balance, but about GNU maturing.
Re:Close... (Score:2, Interesting)
I didn't install the Gnome or KDE sets, the desktop is nicely responsive and usable with FVWM2 running.
Perhaps that's part of the advantage of Linux that (with Slackware, anyway) you can skip the desktop bloat and get a usable system, on a machine that sells for about $5 at auction these days. (the quad PPRo server was $15, though)
MS Windows is used more (Score:2, Interesting)
Why are people willing to pay for Windows? They have been using it, it is what they know. It has problems, they are willing to pay to have those problems fixed. Further, so many people use MS word that they have to buy the new version because they will get some random new word document they cannot view or edit otherwise.
Why is CompUSA stocked with Windows software? Because it is commonly used, so the market is bigger, so more software is written for it. Even if you are willing to pay more for a similar product under Linux, often it is not available. Of course, what is available is often free, but it may take an expert hours to complie it or set it up properly.
Why does so much hardware come with Windows drivers, but not linux drivers? Again, market size.
Why do some websites only work right under Internet Explorer? Guess.
Of course there are regions where the opposite is true. Often in science tools are only available for use under linux/unix - further, most expect you to be running some kind of unix if for no other reason then that you have xterms.
It's basically a historical accident - one came first, it became popular, people could switch, they are, but it is taking a long time and maybe Linux will become a huge desktop monopoly, maybe it won't.
_________________________________________
Re:The Difference... (Score:4, Interesting)
To the login prompt is 42 seconds. After the login prompt is about one minute 12 seconds, but not really windows fault, it has to update my files with server using active directory remote profiles, load up a real time virus scanner, load all of my network drives, load my calendar, and acrotray which is for the full version of adobe acrobat 6. I also offer that this build is only 2 months old, because I recently got this computer as an upgrade to a Pentium 3 1133. I built it myself, and could give you an exact part listing, but as for the OS install, I didn't do anything special, formatted the whole drive as one partition, ran through the install, ran all the updates, and added the system to the domain. ??? Works fantastic. and I have all XP machines here and ussually if we have a problem it when XP has to deal with running a program designed for like windows 95. and still uses hard coded LPTs for printing purposes. But other than that, I run a clean network, I do spam and virus detection at the email server, preventing worms from getting opened in email. And all in all, few problems.
This isn't a troll, I am just seriously tired of this constant anti windows shit, I think it's mostly based on the older OSs NT, and 98, but since 2000 I feel they have been doing a superb job, and when I bought XP pro moving from 2000 I really liked the upgrade.
I used to use a SGI for autocad, but then we moved to dual Proc Dells, and I really liked it. I do still use Linux, for my e-mail, and web server at home, but only because I didn't want to buy 2000 server, and I thought Linux works well as a server. Personally I used it as a desktop for years, but constant kernel updates, and having to compile every damn thing before I could use it, turned me off. THe linux community should learn to offer binary executables and source because I simply just don't like the hassle of the extra step.
Here comes the mod down. and there is nothing I can do about it. People hate me for my opinion, but I can't be like most of the people here, claim to hate windows and promote linux, but secretly use XP all the time.
This is LinuxInsider, remember. (Score:4, Interesting)
Now this article. The tagline paragraph atop the article tips me off that it isn't even PRETENDING to be objective. The article feels like an over-the-top attempt to compensate for kissing SCO's ass a week ago. There are several things I could call this article--journalism is not one of them. The whole publication appears extremely contrived. I wouldn't listen to a single word they publish.
Do not read LinuxInsider.
--
JOEL SPOLSKY SAID THIS ... AND KURO5HIN, TOO (Score:2, Interesting)
Here is why it makes sense. The OS product is only successful if it has user software. Breaking backward compatibility costs serious market share.
Microsoft obsessed about this, spending a big chunk of change testing every old program they could find with Windows 95. Jon Ross, who wrote the original version of SimCity for Windows 3.x, told me that he accidentally left a bug in SimCity where he read memory that he had just freed. Yep. It worked fine on Windows 3.x, because the memory never went anywhere. Here's the amazing part: On beta versions of Windows 95, SimCity wasn't working in testing. Microsoft tracked down the bug and added specific code to Windows 95 that looks for SimCity. If it finds SimCity running, it runs the memory allocator in a special mode that doesn't free memory right away. That's the kind of obsession with backward compatibility that made people willing to upgrade to Windows 95. [joelonsoftware.com]
As we know from Kuro5hin's code windows code review:
It's noticeable that a lot of the "hacks" refer to individual applications. In some cases they are non-Microsoft. [...] Microsoft does not steal open-source code. Their older code is flaky, their modern code excellent. Their programmers are skilled and enthusiastic. Problems are generally due to a trade-off of current quality against vast hardware, software and backward compatibility. [kuro5hin.org]
To conclude, M$ writes good code but has to use dirty hacks for backward compatibility. It's not their fault, they have customers to care for.
Optimism vs Pessimism (Score:3, Interesting)
Windows developers simply built on layer after layer on a system they knew was imperfect, adding extensions willy-nilly as the need arose; effectively, adjusting the limits to match a constantly-evolving state of the art. The result is a compatibility nightmare. Things often don't work properly together for no obvious reason; the most likely cause is a logic trap triggered by a number of unconnected events occurring in the right order. And it's still easier just to put up with it than to try to do anything about it.
Furthermore, Open Source programmers know their work is going to be seen by many pairs of eyes around the world, take care to avoid stupid mistakes -- but accept that even if they are temporarily red-faced, the worst thing that can happen in the long run is that they get to learn from the experience. Closed-source programmers, believing that nobody will ever see their code, can take bigger liberties with their code.
By having higher limits to aim for, Linux developers have been less fazed by new developments; and it's my guess that 64-bit technology will be well established long before the 32-bit timestamp space limit hits home.
Re:The Difference... (Score:5, Interesting)
What are you blethering about? Provision of binary executables is the purpose of GNU/Linux distributions.
I have not run Windows at home for about five years, and I don't miss it in the slightest. I have a server for NFS, web, mail and other bits and bobs. I have an IBM Thinkpad which is my main work horse. I have an ancient Toshiba Libretto hooked up to my amplifier for playing music.
All of these run Debian. I can't remember the last thing I had to compile by hand; Debian has so many packages prebuilt that I rarely have to build something myself. Either it's already there, or something else is there that does the same job.
If I do need to compile somthing, Debian ensures I don't end up in dependency hell because almost all Free libraries are packaged. I grant you - RedHat used to be a pain. Trying to compile an up-to-date Gnome 1.0 for RedHat 5.1 was the last straw that switched me over to a distro built by it's users. But I'm pretty sure RedHat is much better these days anyway.
My day job desktop is Windows NT 4.0 SP6 and I get through the day but it can hardly be called convenient. It's so lowest-common-dominator that I end up installing all sorts of utilities that are missed out in the shipped OS. I fear Windows XP because I don't want to work in a cartoon.
And finally, I bathe in the warmth of the freedom of GNU/Linux. I don't have to invoke it much, but I know that if I do have to, I can get the source and fix it. Thanks Linus, RMS, et al.
Windows is Not an Operating System... (Score:4, Interesting)
More precisely, OS is the tertiary product. Their primary product is a solid, supported, consistent API to attract and retain developers. The secondary product is a slick user interface for their desktop API.
In all practial aspects, for most people Linux is a Unix-like environment first, an OS second, and any semblence of a desktop API or slick desktop environment is not really all that important.
Microsoft could sell Win32 on Linux without too much pain... it would not be the first time they changed OSes for their environment.
Re:Mod parent up :) (Score:2, Interesting)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DR-DOS [wikipedia.org]
and an article from the time of the lawsuit, which was brought by Caldera (who bought DR-DOS in 1996):
http://www-cs-students.stanford.edu/~kkoster/micr
The case was settled, but you be the judge.
And Windows machines are still a pain in the arse, IMO.
I choose to run Mandrake Linux, not MS-Windows XP (Score:2, Interesting)
No, it is not secure, robust or flexible enough for my computer work.
If I absolutely had to use MS-Windows, it would be 2003 but even here I spend too much time fighting the OS to try to acheive (or even find the controls for) what I can achieve with a one-liner in Linux.
As to compiling from source, who are you trying to kid? I'm installing KDE 3.2.1 binaries in about 20 minutes (when it finishes downloading) and that was a one-liner, too. Yes, it could have been point and click if I didn't find typing faster than mousing through menus.
In fact, there is even a Linux utility which automatically finds and installs (and then runs) a program for you on the fly if you try to run it and it's not installed. I'm not personally comfortable with this idea, but in terms of automation, it's hard to beat.
My wife uses Linux and she's not exactly the world's greatest computer literate. My 4yo boy uses it too, even though he has no sensible understanding of what's really happening. Unlike MS-Windows, I can pretty much instantly lock down his desktop using the kiosk features.
I'm happy for you and your uptime, but I'm afraid it's atypical except in carefully managed environments. The norm on a home PC is to have XP do something weird about daily, and lock up every few days (that is, ten times better than '98). My wife doesn't bookmark stuff, she just minimises the browser window, and those minimised sessions typically stay there for weeks. She doesn't save as she goes, either, and didn't even know that OpenOffice.org had crash recovery until a power failure last week (hadn't saved that document in about a week).
However, this is still almost majoring on the minors. I don't have to sweat about licenses, spyware, viruses or a zillion and one other "parking meter" nuisances. Those alone make it worthwhile using Linux.
If I need to run an MS-Windows-only app (which is one of two remaining gripes with using Linux: hello software manufacturers, port now before a FOSS app arises to blow your market away - the other being indifferent interest from hardware manufacturers), it can often be done [cyberknights.com.au].
A reply from Mark Russinovich... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: What Differentiates Linux from Windows?
Posted by: Paul_Murphy 2004-03-11 15:52:44 In reply to: Paul Murphy
I just received this email:
--
From: "Mark Russinovich"
To:
Subject: Linux and Windows
Date: Thu, 11 Mar 2004 17:30:24 -0600
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2800.1165
Thread-Index: AcQHwNOxdSTMYl4xToudyRPyZYimCg==
Hi Rudy (aka Paul Murphy),
I read your article (http://www.linuxinsider.com/perl/story/33089.htm
posted today at Linux Insider comparing Windows and Linux from a design
philosophy point of view and am writing to tell you that its full of blatant
innacuracies, misconceptions and ridiculous postulations on the reasons
behind the way Windows is architected. Your descriptions of Windows memory
management, process management, and kernel behavior demonstrate almost
complete ignorance of the Windows OS.
Its exactly this type of irresponsible writing that the Linux community
always accuses the Windows community of using to promote FUD. If you're
interested in maintaining journalistic integrity for Linux Insider (or your
psuedonym of Paul Murphy), reply to this e-mail and I'll provide you
point-by-point corrections for you to publish. You can also research the OS
yourself by reading the official book on the internals of Windows NT/2000
that I coathored, Inside Windows 2000.
-Mark Russinovich
---
Re:Simple: Pet projects (Score:3, Interesting)
Come on, man. Given all the things that X does that windows and MacOS don't, you are bitching because your pr0n is dithered if you start in a lesser color mode? Well what about the fact that you can take a cheapo 486 and, using only a network card a minimal [Li]|[U]nix install, run the entire desktop environment of another machine?
Or maybe the fact you can run graphical apps transparently and securely over the network, with SSH.
And by the way that "Tinker OS for the Desktop" has been running more or less in it's present form for 25 years. I can run X apps written years ago for a completely different platform, and they still knit in properly with the desktop. Heck, I can display X apps written years ago and running on another machine.
"Tinker OS", Bah.
Re:Mod parent up :) (Score:2, Interesting)
I don't know about the "trying to stop free programming" part, but the last two years or so I have seen a trend that the "megacorps" (to use a Shadowrun term) are scooping up any old patent they can come up with, and various other general paths of action (you read
or why not try and sue open office for it's similarities, it seems to me they really aren't attacking the linux, or GNU community at all.
Well, they have taken out that xml patent that they might (might! IANAL) use to shut down OOo (or Mozilla, or
If 20 well skilled programmers sat down there could be a linux virus, so why hasn't evil M$ sat down and had this done and released from somewhere else. Linux users are making said viruses against M$.
Are you trolling? I won't comment on this, other than saying that's a generalization the size of Jupiter.
Personally I think M$ is glad *nix is around, so that they don't get sued over anti trust every damn year.
Personally, I think the scope of the GNU philosophy is beginning to dawn upon Bill Gates, and he's not liking it. But what you and I think is irrelevant, we'll see which Road Ahead they choose.
So I am not saying linux is bad, linux is ok, but I think M$ as you guys call it, gets a bad rap.
You call it M$. I call it MS or Microsoft.
Post me links as to court cases M$ has lost where they were accused and found guilty of crushing a smaller software company, or stealing it's software, or illegally pushing people out of an industry. Links from viable websites please. I will read them, I swear, and with an open mind.
Ohh, The Java dispute? The IE integration dispute? DR-DOS compatibility? I'm sure you can find linkage on your own. They do this regularly, but not all of it reaches the US news. Mind you, it does happen the other way around too, though, for example with the recent embedded media suit against MS by a tiny company from somewhere.
But I think that mass beliefs in popular myths are dangerous, even if it's attacking a big corporation.
True, true. No matter how many people believe a lie/myth/religion, it's still a lie/not the truth/reality. But being worried about the general direction of the future of software is, I feel, a wise caution.
also please consider, M$ is in our country, helps our GDP, and employs thousands of highly paid programmers as well as donates millions to college IS departments that need the money.
Err, exqueeze me? Sure, MS does have a presence in our country, but that's like 25 people or so. Oh, I'm sorry -- you don't live in Denmark then?
Sorry for being a dork, but this is a very common generalisation/misconception --
But you're right, The Gates foundation does a wonderful job, and it would be a huge loss to see it fold. But that
Re:Differentiating Windows and Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Close... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not trolling or nothin', just stating the facts.