Linux vs. Windows

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computing: software: operating systems: Linux/Windows: Linux vs. Windows

Overview

Linux and Microsoft Windows are often seen as competitors, with Linux being cheaper (typically free) but more difficult to use, and possibly less reliable.

Links

Comparisons

• 2006-03-19 Ubuntu, Macintosh and Windows XP (slashdot): a comparison
• windowsserver/compare: how Microsoft sees the comparison (this page was also the link-target of a Microsoft FUD banner-advertising campaign)
• Windows vs. Linux: comparative screenshots
• Windows Supports More Hardware but Linux Supports It Better
• Get the Facts on Windows Server and Linux: a collection of studies showing the superiority of Windows (with emphasis on Server flavors) over Linux

Articles

• EMA Study: Get the Truth on Linux Management: rebuttal to pro-Windows studies
• Linux is Not Windows: a rebuttal to recent Windows-to-Linux converts who want Linux to be more like Windows
  • follow-up article

Commentary

• 2008-01-24 CRM company dumps M$, recommends fishing waders: “We quickly decided that because we wanted to distribute our product as a Web application, the Microsoft model was very expensive. To try and scale that infrastructure, with a per-CPU cost, and with the ASP pricing model, it would cost multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we didn’t see that much value in [Microsoft’s] core stack.”
• 2007-01-26 Why I Don’t Run Windows: an ongoing series of blog entries by Aaron Toponce, with several comparisons to Linux
• 2006-12-26 (updated) World Domination by Eric S. Raymond and Rob Landley: strategy for Linux to wrest domination of the desktop market away from Windows by 2008 (a hard deadline)
• 2006-08-31 Anybody But Microsoft: Diving into OpenOffice and Linux, by James E. Gaskin
• 2006-08-21 Inconsistent GUIs on Linux: "It’s a commonly repeated opinion that on Linux all application GUIs look different, but on Windows all/most applications feel like Windows applications."
• 2006-08-17 They still don’t get it... by J Greely
• 2006-05-15 Can Ordinary PC Users Ditch Windows for Linux? (Slashdot)

News

• 2007-02-20 Cuba to use open-source software: Cuba is switching from Windows to Linux

Milestones

• 2003-08-20 Rockin' on without Microsoft: without warning, guitar-string company Ernie Ball was forced to pony up $100,000 for being about 8% "out of compliance" with their licensing of Windows. They decided to drop Windows and go with Red Hat Linux, and they have never regretted it.