Linux vs Windows: What Do I Choose?

[John Creighto]

3. It also has stuff that Windows ain't got! Text editors with a wide array of useful features that MS thought were too complicated to put into any of their software. Have you ever tried to highlight and copy a column of text in Notepad? Good luck. There are some other neat things, too, but I haven't explored this very much yet.

I don’t see what’s stopping you from finding or making such a text editor for windows.

4. If you like to code and tinker, it's very easy to do in Linux. C, Python, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Lisp, LaTeX, you name it: there are high-quality, free compilers, etc., for Linux that you can download and install easily from a unified GUI interface. It is also VERY easy to write scripts for doing things on the command line, such as manipulating large collections of files, or what-have you. Microsoft is limited to vastly-outdated Batch scripts; in Linux it is quick and easy to use the full power of Perl and Python, with regular expressions that make text processing a breeze. Say you want to reorganize your entire music collection based on certain keywords in the title, filename, or ID3 tags? Imagine the headache in Microsoft Windows! But it takes less than 100 lines in Perl.

I’m pretty sure these technologies are available for windows. As for windows being batched oriented. Look up windows power shell. You can pipe entire objects from one app to another.

5. If you need any help with anything, there is a large community of Linux fans on various messageboards who will have free, easy solutions. Whenever I get stuck, I just put some stuff into Google, and I usually find step-by-step instructions to do exactly what I want. The help available is usually better than what you find on Microsoft's website if you ever need to know how to do some obscure thing in Windows.

There are plenty of support communities for windows.

 

[rcgldr]

You can still find Windows XP for sale at some online stores. The local Best Buy has a few copies, but doesn't advertise them on their web site.

 

[CRGreathouse]

1. You have control over your computer, rather than the other way around. It feels really great not to be pushed around by the Man.

I actually feel that I have dramatically less control over Linux than Windows.

2. It can do almost anything Windows can do--there are tons of great programs you can download and install instantly for free. Even some really fun and beautiful games! And you also have the GIMP, which is a graphics program to rival Photoshop (and quite powerful).

Yep. The situation is even better for me, since even in Windows I use many apps (the GIMP, Apache, LaTeX, OpenOffice, Pari, etc.) which are Linux-native. This makes it easier for me to switch between Windows and whatever Linux flavor I prefer.

3. It also has stuff that Windows ain't got! Text editors with a wide array of useful features that MS thought were too complicated to put into any of their software. Have you ever tried to highlight and copy a column of text in Notepad? Good luck. There are some other neat things, too, but I haven't explored this very much yet.?

I don't know about that. I use Crimson Editor in Windows, and it's quite powerful. It's true that Notepad doesn't select by column, but Word does -- as do many other programs, like Crimson Editor.

I would like to hear about your other examples, if you come up with some.

4. If you like to code and tinker, it's very easy to do in Linux. C, Python, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Lisp, LaTeX, you name it: there are high-quality, free compilers, etc., for Linux that you can download and install easily from a unified GUI interface.

What GUI/IDE do you use in Linux?

Microsoft is limited to vastly-outdated Batch scripts; in Linux it is quick and easy to use the full power of Perl and Python, with regular expressions that make text processing a breeze. Say you want to reorganize your entire music collection based on certain keywords in the title, filename, or ID3 tags? Imagine the headache in Microsoft Windows! But it takes less than 100 lines in Perl.

But you can just as easily use Perl in Windows (or Python, or whatever you prefer).

5. If you need any help with anything, there is a large community of Linux fans on various messageboards who will have free, easy solutions. Whenever I get stuck, I just put some stuff into Google, and I usually find step-by-step instructions to do exactly what I want. The help available is usually better than what you find on Microsoft's website if you ever need to know how to do some obscure thing in Windows.

There are plenty of Windows support communities out there. Also, I find myself running into trouble with Linux more often than Windows, so I see this as a point for Windows rather than Linux.

1. No workable substitute for Microsoft OneNote, with tablet features. There are a few attempts at imitation, but I don't think the developers on the project really understand what OneNote is for and how to use it.

2. You can't play most mainstream games, except by using Wine (a Windows emulator). I haven't tried that, so I can't say how good it is. I boot into XP if I want to play games.

Fortunately these haven't been problems for me -- even though I have OneNote installed on my Windows machine, I don't use it. And I haven't played a graphical computer game (not counting Roguelikes) for years, so I don't miss that part of Windows when I'm on Linux.

3. There are a few multimedia software publishers who do not produce Linux versions: Adobe Photoshop, Finale, etc. (Both Mathematica and Maple DO produce Linux versions; I have them both installed and they work great).

Yeah, missing Photoshop really hurts. There's always the GIMP, but it's not nearly as popular... and still not as good, though it's getting there.

 

[John Creighto]

How well does Microsoft office run on Lunix and does Open office have the same macro functionality as Microsoft office?

 

[mgb_phys]

How well does Microsoft office run on Lunix and does Open office have the same macro functionality as Microsoft office?

MSOffice runs on linux using a compatbility layer called WINE. there are bunch of hoops to jump through and not everything works. See http://wine-reviews.net/microsoft/office-2007-on-linux-with-wine-install-guide.html

OpenOffice has it's own macro language very similair to Microsoft's VBA (http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FAQ/Macros) although MSOffice macros aren't compatible.

OpenOffice can also be fully controlled from Python.

 

[CRGreathouse]

OpenOffice can also be fully controlled from Python.

That sounds like a much better option than using OOo macros (or worse, using VB in MS Office through WINE). Is there a guide for this online?

 

[mgb_phys]

http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Python

 

[signerror]

Right now I have Vista and I really don't like using it. I am looking forward to Windows 7 but it could just be another bad OS. If anyone is using Linux or has in the past I am wondering if I should start using it. And which version, Suze, Ubuntu...

I recommend experimenting, but without commitment. Use a dual-boot setup, where you retain Windows and have a linux installation on a separate disk partition. (Don't LiveCD; it's pointless). Linux is clearly worse as a home desktop OS: it has comparatively poor (but improving) hardware support, and of course much less commercial software inertia than the windows market (e.g., games).

Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE are the three popular distros. They are all good; I recommend Ubuntu (regular, not the KDE version Kubuntu), because it has the best documentation and support.

 

[signerror]

Sorry for mentioning but Mac is expensive and "made up". Don't you like the feeling when you got something free?

It is a very solid BSD fork. It is UNIX with a high quality user interface (derived from NeXTSTEP). It is expensive; Apple is very aggressive at marketing.

 

[CRGreathouse]

Thanks for the link, mgb_phys.

Ubuntu, Fedora, and OpenSUSE are the three popular distros. They are all good; I recommend Ubuntu (regular, not the KDE version Kubuntu), because it has the best documentation and support.

How do you feel about Xubuntu?

 

[signerror]

I agree that you should get linux, however I'm not sure which distribution. I think if you're just starting out, Ubuntu would be great, but i prefer Gentoo.

Don't recommend gentoo to new users; that's cruel. Gentoo's package system is based on source tarballs, not precompiled binaries; to someone who does not want to spend hours compiling their own software (e.g., most users), it is a terrible system.

 

[signerror]

Most things will work out-of-box, including things you might expect to be difficult, like printer sharing and wireless internet. A few things might take some effort to set up; I still haven't got my sound to work properly with Flash videos online (and many Flash applications simply don't work). However, this deficiency is due mostly to lack of effort; the inability to properly watch YouTube helps keep me from procrastinating, so I haven't bothered to fix it. ;)

And you've made a strong case against linux as a home desktop OS. Perfectly ordinary things, like Flash videos, take "effort" to get working. The point of a desktop OS is to make things easy, to provide a convincing abstraction layer above and away from low-level details like sound drivers. As far as linux breaks this abstraction, and burdens the user with debugging software, it is a failure.

Some of the main benefits of Linux are:

1. You have control over your computer, rather than the other way around. It feels really great not to be pushed around by the Man.

A specious argument. You are right that open-source OSes like Linux and FreeBSD allow users to inspect their source code, to read and modify their system at the kernel level. This is also utterly useless to the 99.99%+ of computer users who don't even know or care to program, let alone muck around with a messy million-line codebase of C.

2. It can do almost anything Windows can do--there are tons of great programs you can download and install instantly for free. Even some really fun and beautiful games! And you also have the GIMP, which is a graphics program to rival Photoshop (and quite powerful).

Windows has a near monopoly on the game market.

3. It also has stuff that Windows ain't got! Text editors with a wide array of useful features that MS thought were too complicated to put into any of their software. Have you ever tried to highlight and copy a column of text in Notepad? Good luck.

Very misleading. Open source software is largely orthogonal to open-source opearting systems. The famous *nix text editors - emacs, vim - are also free and available for Windows, OS X, Solaris, all the proprietary UNIXes. They are not in any way tied to Linux; so they are not realistically an "advantage" for Linux. They are OS-neutral.

4. If you like to code and tinker, it's very easy to do in Linux. C, Python, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Apache, Lisp, LaTeX, you name it: there are high-quality, free compilers, etc., for Linux that you can download and install easily from a unified GUI interface.

Every one of these runs equally on every other OS. They are NOT TIED to Linux!

It is also VERY easy to write scripts for doing things on the command line, such as manipulating large collections of files, or what-have you.

It is equally easy on Mac OS X, which has the same POSIX shells and utilities as linux. (Again, it is partly a fork of the BSD codebase, and is a true UNIX). I understand that Windows' PowerShell is comparably powerful to the POSIX utilities, if different.

Microsoft is limited to vastly-outdated Batch scripts; in Linux it is quick and easy to use the full power of Perl and Python, with regular expressions that make text processing a breeze. Say you want to reorganize your entire music collection based on certain keywords in the title, filename, or ID3 tags? Imagine the headache in Microsoft Windows! But it takes less than 100 lines in Perl.

Again, these run on Windows too! NOT A LINUX ADVANTAGE!

 

[signerror]

Visual Studio is quite sophisticated, yes. It also costs something like $1200. That's fine if you program for a living; if you just like to tinker, it's a bit overkill.

A scaled-down version is free for non-commercial tinkering.

http://www.microsoft.com/Express/

 

[signerror]

Another reason I love Linux is for the choice of window manager/desktop environment. I am currently using gnome, but when I do more than casual web browsing and emailing, I enjoy using a tiling window manager to work more efficiently (no more moving and resizing windows, and switching between them is also very easy) such as xmonad or wmii.

I love XMonad!

 

[signerror]

How do you feel about Xubuntu?

You don't need it. It is a lightweight fork of Ubuntu intended for very old computers. Xfce (the Xubuntu window manager, hence the 'X') is much less nice than Gnome (Ubuntu) or KDE (Kubuntu); if you have anything close to modern hardware, you will want one of the latter two. (However, the current incarnation of KDE is pretty weak (but it looks nice!), and it's pretty much something you don't want to use. It is a very nice concept, but the implementation is a notorious failure. Maybe a future version will fix the usability issues.)

I recommend regular, Gnome-based Ubuntu:

http://www.ubuntu.com/products/WhatIsUbuntu/desktopedition

 

[CRGreathouse]

I just found the 'lightweight' conceptually attractive, since I'll be using the computer for round-the-clock calculations and any resources not used by the window manager could be used to reduce compute time...

 

[shoehorn]

I just found the 'lightweight' conceptually attractive, since I'll be using the computer for round-the-clock calculations and any resources not used by the window manager could be used to reduce compute time...

Then why are you bothering to use a window manager at all? Skip the X-server entirely and simply ssh in and out of the machine as required.

 

[mgb_phys]

You can just switch over to another terminal ctrl-alt-f2 (to f8) X will still be running, you can go back by hitting alt-f1 but will be paged out of ram.

You can also set it to start in text mode by default if you want

 

[CRGreathouse]

Then why are you bothering to use a window manager at all? Skip the X-server entirely and simply ssh in and out of the machine as required.

It's going to be my only machine, so I'll want to be able to do normal things on it as well.

 

[shoehorn]

It's going to be my only machine, so I'll want to be able to do normal things on it as well.

Ah. Xmonad's a good choice for a lightweight window manager like this, although I tend to use http://www.modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/ .

 

[daniel_i_l]

A specious argument. You are right that open-source OSes like Linux and FreeBSD allow users to inspect their source code, to read and modify their system at the kernel level. This is also utterly useless to the 99.99%+ of computer users who don't even know or care to program, let alone muck around with a messy million-line codebase of C.

Writing kernel code isn't the only way to configure Linux. For example. the /proc file system let's users configure many aspects of the kernel without even rebooting.
Also, a lot of the userspace configuration is much more accessible to users and scripts through /etc than through the registry editor. I admit that I don't have a lot of experience installing XP so correct me if I'm wrong, but linux gives the user a many ways to configure the installation that arn't available in the XP installation.

 

[John Creighto]

Writing kernel code isn't the only way to configure Linux. For example. the /proc file system let's users configure many aspects of the kernel without even rebooting.
Also, a lot of the userspace configuration is much more accessible to users and scripts through /etc than through the registry editor. I admit that I don't have a lot of experience installing XP so correct me if I'm wrong, but linux gives the user a many ways to configure the installation that arn't available in the XP installation.

You can change the registry through scripts but maybe it is safer to do so on linux.

 

[Tacomablack]

I perfer linux, mostly for programming reason.

Problem 1.
The thing that really annoy me is that windows really does care about most convents. Opengl with vista is one issue that annoys me a great deal. OpenGL is acedemic and industry standard. And IE has a problem with CSS also, but you can use Firefox instead.

Problem 2.
When using windows it a must to use a virus scanner and firewall. This isn't windows fault that i only have a gig of memory but when my computer spends more time sniffing packets than doing actual work .

Problem 3.
Installing windows is painless but when i comes to adding programs that you need it takes forever. Install XP for my job, it took me 4 hours to install the programs that i need. When installed arch i had my system running in an hour with all that applications that i need thanks to the package manager.

I understand how people can like windows better than XP, however i just perfer Linux because there is better online support and it fits my needs. Those of you who think that linux is too confusing you should try MINT or Nubuntu, there probably the easiest ones to use. I use Arch linux(one of the fastest distros) and Backtrack( for pentration testing).

 

[tony134340]

I perfer linux, mostly for programming reason.

Problem 1.
The thing that really annoy me is that windows really does care about most convents. Opengl with vista is one issue that annoys me a great deal. OpenGL is acedemic and industry standard. And IE has a problem with CSS also, but you can use Firefox instead.

Problem 2.
When using windows it a must to use a virus scanner and firewall. This isn't windows fault that i only have a gig of memory but when my computer spends more time sniffing packets than doing actual work .

Problem 3.
Installing windows is painless but when i comes to adding programs that you need it takes forever. Install XP for my job, it took me 4 hours to install the programs that i need. When installed arch i had my system running in an hour with all that applications that i need thanks to the package manager.

I understand how people can like windows better than XP, however i just perfer Linux because there is better online support and it fits my needs. Those of you who think that linux is too confusing you should try MINT or Nubuntu, there probably the easiest ones to use. I use Arch linux(one of the fastest distros) and Backtrack( for pentration testing).

1. No retort there, I mostly agree.

2. I use no AV nor software firewall, though I do have a router. 10 years of using Windows and only one major virus in the napster days. If you use common sense, it's not generally a problem.

3. I keep commonly used apps in a folder so during any new install, they're there. Also, I keep images so installing with all my most commonly used apps can take less than 30 minutes.

I use both but mostly Windows. I just recently installed Mint and must say, I liked it and very pleased at the progress Linux has made. I've used Linux on and off for 6 years but it never really fulfilled all my needs as Windows has. If it weren't for gaming and lack of scanner driver, I would probably be using it full time. I'd like to recommend Linux but it really just depends on what you want to do.

 

[RiseAgainst]

I've been using Ubuntu 8.1 for a few weeks now, it's nice having the feeling of being a part of a community that actually cares about you. I like the look of Gnome, and the fact that nearly everything for Ubuntu is free.