Linux vs. Windows...

[Malikman]

What's ur opinions of each... NOT witch is better... just opinions.

[Soeru]

Never used Linux for more than 15 minutes, but it looks like a good OS. I keep hearing about how stable and practical the OS is, making it ideal for servers and such, but at the consumer level I don't think a whole lot of home users would find Linux very useful. It's free, so that's a plus.

Though it's cool to diss M$, I guess I'll have to stick with Windows XP since it supports all the software(and games) I'll ever want to use, runs like a dream(after some tweaking), and is pretty damned stable for a Windows OS. Oh yeah, and I can't be arsed learning how to use a completely different OS. Since I'll have my other comp running soon, I *might* try installing Linux on this machine and see what it's like, but I'll probably set up a Windows network soon after that...

[Akito]

Depends on what you want to use it for.

Linux is super for servers. You don't need to run a gui, which makes the OS far more stable and faster. Granted, setting up linux can be a total pain in the rear - sometimes to the point where I want to throw my computer out the window. On top of that, when you throw a gui on linux, it becaomes far less stable.

Windows is great for just installing and going, overall ease of use, and application/device support. It's hard to say that Windows XP isn't stable, because overall, it's very stable. Granted, it's less secure as a server system (I've heard arguments from sysadmins that server2003 doesn't have this problem as much).

Anyways, it really comes down to what your needs are. I run Linux on a virtual machine, 1 Windows desktop, 1 Windows laptop, 1 windows MCE2005 pc, and 1 OSX G3 mac.

[Urn]

Well, i like Linux because its stable and FREE!
Althrough, many people will use Windows because its easier...

[Xaenn]

Ok, the fact that it is the most used, commonly accepted, widely distributed, most supported, and easily accessible really don't say anything about whether or not it's a good system. They say that it's popular...

Of any developers I know...Windows is not their prefered environment. Open Source is a much more development friendly environment. In all fairness, the GPL kinda sucks, because it deters businesses from trying to use that code. But the Berkley license is awesome.

I'll give windows this, for a new person it is pretty easy to use. But doing stuff that's more complicated, windows isn't really the best environment for it. Troubleshooting? Forget it. You're best off just reformatting. Of all my time in windows, people don't actually solve problems, they just start over/reboot, or something that shouldn't have any part in computing.

I believe that Mac OSX is actually easier to use, and more friendly. Not to mention it has a much more stable base. However, it doesn't have the software support of Windows.

In all honesty, the only thing that's good about windows is that it has tons of developers support. And that isn't really anything good about windows as an operating system...

I find their software to be shit actually. Take Microsoft Office for example. What is it, $500 dollars for the full license to the full office suite? OpenOffice.org is easily just as good, and I would argue that it's even better. And it's absolutely free.

Most versatile? I don't really see on what grounds it is versatile. I would consider netbsd running on somewhere around 50 platforms pretty versatile.

FreeBSD! It's way better than linux IMO. It takes a little bit of time to set up, but I've written a very nice guide that makes things much simpler to do. Oh, and don't worry about package management. If you can type "make install clean" than you'll have access to over 10,000 software packages. They will automatically compile from source, and you can set make options if you so desire. About 99% of the time ports will be completely reliable. In fact, I've never had one not work on my system. Hardware support is generally pretty excellent. Things will "just work". I got a PCI raid controller, and had to install some drivers on win2k. In FreeBSD, it was automatically recognized and was ready to use. It runs much faster than windows for me, and is completely customizable. Not only that, but there's just so much more joy in running FreeBSD as opposed to windows. Anyway:
home.sandiego.edu/~reinholz/freebsd

It's pretty hard to state your opinions of both without comparting them...thus saying which you think is better.

[Soeru]

Malikman, in response to your PM:

By tweaking XP for performance, I was talking about disabling the useless Windows services, a.k.a. daemons(which I like to call caco-daemons ). You should take a look at www.blackviper.com, explains a lot of stuff you can do to XP(at your own risk) to get it to run better... and just get rid of all the useless crap that Windows XP executes in the background.

[Xaenn]

IE and outlook express! Killing that pair would give me lots of joy...the best way I know how to do it, is to not boot windows.

Software support is a good enough reason to tie someone down to windows, depending on their needs.

[Malikman]

yea... i'm a gamer... so i have to tie myself to windows X_X



It suxs like duxs.

[Xaenn]

Well, you can always dual boot...

[Malikman]

well then why not just stick with windows xp but i'm trying tout linux right now actualy and i am dual booting i might.. triple boot lol or quadruple (2 linux xp and i dunno if igured i'd try freebsd) heh i love exploring i just need pushes in a direction haha

[rpgseeker]

i up with windows......b/c...i used to it and most of the appz run in windows.

[GODJonez]

IE and outlook express! Killing that pair would give me lots of joy...the best way I know how to do it, is to not boot windows.

Software support is a good enough reason to tie someone down to windows, depending on their needs.

Exactly. I have to use Windows because most programs I use (and are vital for my work) don't run correctly under Linux Wine emulator and there are no replacement programs for those compiled in Linux.

[Akito]

Well, you can always dual boot...

Point taken. Not like you can't do both.

Or, like I stated before, virutal machines. I've got XP loaded on my machine, but run virutal copies of XP, 2000, 98 and 95.

[Chaos]

I'll go for windows.

I saw linux once and I think it's far more complicated compared to windows

[madcrow]

linux == great for productivity, programming and science-type stuff. also a bunch of great free games are available.

windows == great for gaming and emulation

end result == use both