Holy War: Windows vs. Linux, open source vs. propritary soft, command line vs. GUI

Originally Posted by placebo

For the serious and dedicated computer users, i would believe that Linux beats the sh*t out of M$ as*es At the same time, me and my (professioinal) work environment are all still on winxp (released in ~ August 2001 *ggggg*) and it is quite easy to use, fast and quite modest in its requirements (Pentium 300MHz, ~1GB hdd space, 64MB RAM. Compare with Ubuntu requirements ), actually as modest as Windows 2000 (released in ~1999). and it helps a lot with Real Rhapsody and stuff

In the past 6 months i purchased a host of software programs (tools, mini applications) in order to support financially their further development. And guess what, none of them is available as Linux version!

Installing Ubuntu onto Pentium 300MHz, ~1GB hdd space, 64MB RAM doesn't make any sense indeed. You can get a better Linux for a PC like that.

And I still consider Windows XP one of the best OSes out there. I really enjoyed it. The only problem is that I consider it too risky to use it without an antivirus and firewall. And if you install both onto such a computer, I don't think you will enjoy using it. If you don't use Internet, then it is fast, reliable and allows to install most software, so an absolutely great choice.

It is Windows 7 that annoys me. Some people say that it works faster than Windows XP even on slow computers... I wonder whether all of them work for M$, because this is not the case for me.

And I don't see much improvement in Windows 7 (which should be Windows Vista SP3). I've notices a better Explorer, better security (although it is still far away from Linux), but that's about it... besides several gigabytes of new "decorations".

I still need Windows or Mac for editing videos and photos. Although there are several apps for that in Linux, which are not ideal for professionals yet.

[danny0085]

No doubt that the best option is ubuntu linux. Specially for servers

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Windows is a single proprietary product of Microsoft. A new version is released at Microsoft’s discretion, time gaps between versions have had different ranges.

Linux has two levels of versioning. First, you have “flavors” or “distributions.” Linux is not a single product, but a family of operating systems all released by different companies or organizations based on a common foundation. The central part of Linux that is maintained alone is the kernel, the core of the OS.

Through distributons, Linux has major flexibility. Distributions each have their own goals, intented use, release schedule, and other differentiating factors. There are distributions geared to function as desktops, servers, NASes, etc. There are distributons created to serve certain languages, localities, even religions!

Both of these models have their pros and cons. Linux is able to acheive major flexibility through distributions, but some suggest that this causes confusion amongst users, whereas the Windows product line is much easier to follow.

Some of Linux’s more popular distributions are Ubuntu, RedHat, SuSE, Debian, and Mandriva.