Windows v/s Linux

Basic points of comparison

TTooppiic LLiinnuux WWiinnddoowwss Price The majority of Linux variants are can run between available for free or at a much lower $50.00 - $150.00 US dollars per each price than Microsoft Windows. license copy. Ease Although the majority Linux variants Microsoft has made several advancements have improved dramatically in ease of and changes that have made it a much use, Windows is still much easier to easier to use , and use for new computer users. although arguably it may not be the easiest operating system, it is still Easier than Linux. Reliability The majority of Linux variants and Although Microsoft Windows has made versions are notoriously reliable and great improvements in reliability over the can often run for months and years last few versions of Windows, it still without needing to be rebooted. cannot match the reliability of Linux. Software Linux has a large variety of Because of the large amount of Microsoft available software programs, utilities, Windows users, there is a much larger and games. However, Windows has a selection of available software programs, much larger selection of available utilities, and games for Windows. software. Software Cost Many of the Although Windows does available software programs, utilities, have software programs, utilities, and and games available on Linux games for free, the majority of the are freeware and/or open source. Even programs will cost anywhere between such complex programs such as $20.00 - $200.00+ US dollars per copy. Gimp,, OpenOffice, StarOffice, etc are available for free or at a low cost. Hardware Linux companies Because of the amount of Microsoft and hardware manufacturers have Windows users and the broader driver made great advancements in hardware support, Windows has a much larger support for Linux and today Linux support for hardware devices and a good will support most hardware devices. majority of hardware manufacturers will However, many companies still do not support their products in Microsoft offer drivers or support for their Windows. hardware in Linux. Security Linux is and has always been a very Although Microsoft has made great secure operating system. Although it improvements over the years with security still can be attacked when compared on their operating system, their operating to Windows, it much more secure. system continues to be the most vulnerable to viruses and other attacks.

Open Source Many of the Linux variants and many Microsoft Windows is not open source and Linux programs are open source and the majority of Windows programs are not enable users to customize or modify open source. the code however they wish to. Support Although it may be more difficult to Microsoft Windows includes its own help find users familiar with all Linux section, has vast amount of available online variants, there are vast amounts of documentation and help, as well as books available online documentation and on each of the versions of Windows. help, available books, and support available for Linux.

1] Worldwide usage

Windows Linux Estimated Desktop Usage 92.00% 1.02% Share Pre-installation Pre-installed by default on almost Pre-installed by default on very few all new desktop PCs new desktop PCs. However, is now available on all System76 computers, some Dell Computers, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop on some Lenovo ThinkPads. Recently many more Linux-based low-end consumer laptops have been introduced.

Server revenuemarket share 7.3% 33.8% Top 500 Supercomputer 1.0% (absolute 5) 88.6% (absolute 443), the 14 fastest operating system family supercomputers run Linux share 2] User interface

Windows Linux Graphical user The Windows . The window manager interface is the Desktop Window Manager on Windows Vista, and a Stacking window manager built on top of GDI(Graphics Device Interface) in older versions. The desktop environment may be modified by a variety of third party products such as WindowBlinds; or completely replaced, The KDE Plasma Desktop for example by Blackbox for Windows, A number of desktop environments are or LiteStep. With Windows Server 2008 and available, of which GNOME and KDE are later, there is also the option of running the most widely used. By default, they use "Server Core" which replaces the standard as their window window manager with the command managers Metacity and KWinrespectively, prompt. The graphics drivers, subsystem, though these can be replaced by other and core widgets are included with all window managers such as Compiz Fusion. installations, including those used as Other desktop environments and window servers. managers includeXfce, LXDE, Enlightenment, Xmona d, Openbox, Fluxbox, etc. The X Window system runs in user-space and is optional. Multiple X Window system instances can run at once, and it is a fully networked protocol.. Command-line interface

A sample Windows PowerShell session A sample Bash (Bourne-again shell .) session The Command Prompt exists to provide Linux is strongly integrated with the system direct communication between the user and console. The command line can be used to the operating system. A .NET-based recover the system if the graphics subsystem command line environment called Windows fails. A large number of Unix shells exist; PowerShell has been developed. It varies with the majority being "Bourne shell from Unix/Linux shells in that, rather than compatible" shells, of which the most using byte streams, the PowerShell pipeline widely used is GNU Bash. Alternatives is an object pipeline; that is, the data passed include the feature-full Z shell; as well as between cmdlets are fully typedobjects. shells based on the syntax of other When data is piped as objects, the elements programming languages, such as the shell, they encapsulate retain their structure and and Perl Shell. Many applications can be types across cmdlets, without the need for scripted through the system console, there any serialization or explicit parsing of the are a lot of small and specialized stream. utilities meant to work together and to integrate with other programs. This is called the toolbox principle.

3] Accessibility and usability

Windows Linux User Focus Mostly consistent. Inconsistencies The quality of graphical design varies between appear primarily through backports desktop environments and distributions. The —software ported from newer two biggest desktop environments operating systems to older ones. For (GNOME and KDE) have clearly defined example, software ported from interface guidelines, which tend to be followed Vista to XP must follow the Vista consistently and clearly. These provide guidelines, those of the newer consistency and a high grade of system (IE7 and Windows Media customizability in order to adapt to the needs Player 11 are examples of this). of the user. Distributions such However, Microsoft continually as Ubuntu, SuSE, Fedora or Mandriva take pushes for consistency between this one step further, combining well- releases with guidelines for functioning usability and safety. However, interface design. The latest are inconsistencies may appear, since GNOME- Windows Vista User Experience based programs, following different guidelines. Their focus is on guidelines, look notably different consistency and usability, but with from KDE programs. There are other increased concern for safety in new environments/window managers, usually versions. Third-party applications targeting professionals or minimalist users, may or may not follow these featuring some very powerful programs with guidelines, may have their own rudimentary, minimalist graphical front-ends, guidelines, or may not follow any focusing much more on performance, small rules for interface design. size and safety. WindowMaker and the Fluxbox/Openbox/Blackbox environments are such examples. Some other environments fit between the two models, giving both power, eye candy and simplicity (Enlightenment/E17, Xfce). Consistency between User interaction with software is Consistency ranges from high to poor between versions usually consistent between versions, distributions, versions, window releases, and editions. managers/desktop environments, and programs. Software is generally highly user- customizable, and the user may keep the customizations between versions. Consistency between All Microsoft software follows the Highly consistent within KDE and GNOME. applications same guidelines for GUI, although However the vast amount of additional not all software developed for software that comes with a distribution is Windows by third parties follows sourced from elsewhere; it may not follow the these GUI guidelines. As stated same GUI guidelines or it may cause above, backports tend to follow the inconsistencies (e.g. different look and feel guidelines from the newer operating between programs built with different widget system. toolkits). Customization By default, Windows only offers Linux offers dozens of different user interfaces customization of size and color of to choose from through numerous desktop the graphical elements, and it is environments and window managers. Different typically not possible to change environment offers various levels of how the interface reacts to user customizability, ranging from the basic colors input. and size to extreme customizability of user A few third-party programs allow input, actions, and display. some more extensive customization, It is possible to switch from one to another like WindowBlinds or LiteStep, but interface at any time, though graphic radical changes are usually out of applications will generally need to be closed. reach. It is not possible to customize the applications that do not use the default look-and-feel beyond the options the specific application offers. 4] Performance

Windows Linux Process Scheduling NT-based versions of Windows use a CPU Linux kernel 2.6 once used a scheduler based on a multilevel feedback scheduling algorithm favoring queue, with 32 priority levels defined. The interactive processes. Here kernel may change the priority level of a "interactive" is defined as a thread depending on its I/O and CPU usage process that has short bursts of and whether it is interactive (i.e. accepts and CPU usage rather than long ones. responds to input from humans), raising the It is said that a process without priority of interactive and I/O bounded root privilege can take advantage processes and lowering that of CPU bound of this to monopolize the CPU, processes, to increase the responsiveness of when the CPU time accounting interactive applications. precision is low. However, The scheduler was modified in Windows Completely, now the standard Vista to use the cycle counter register of scheduler, addresses this modern processors to keep track of exactly problem. how many CPU cycles a thread has executed, rather than just using an interval- timer interrupt routine. Memory Management/ Windows NT family (including 2000, XP, Most hard drive installations of Disk Paging Vista, Win7) most commonly employs a Linux utilize a "swap partition", dynamically allocated pagefile for memory where the disk space allocated management. A pagefile is allocated on for paging is separate from disk, for less frequently accessed objects in general data, and is used strictly memory, leaving more RAM available to for paging operations. This actively used objects. This scheme suffers reduces slowdown due to disk from slow-downs due to disk fragmentation fragmentation from general use. (if a variable size paging file is specified), As with Windows, for best which hampers the speed at which the performance the swap partition objects can be brought back into memory should be placed on a hard drive when they are needed. Windows XP and separate from the primary one. later can defragment the pagefile, and on Linux also allows to adjust NTFS filesystems, intelligently allocate "swappiness" e.g. the amount of blocks to avoid this problem. Windows can data it needs to buffer (this is not be configured to place the pagefile on a equivalent to adjusting the separate disk or partition. However, this is virtual memory size). Windows not default behavior, because if the pagefile does not support such features. is on a separate partition, then Windows cannot create a memory dump in the event of a Stop Error. On the NT family, executed programs become part of the paging system (to improve performance). Programs cannot normally access each others address space. It is possible to configure the OS to have no additional paging file. The Windows 3.1/95/98/ME family does not have true virtual memory and uses a simpler swapping scheme easily leading to needless swaps and disc fragmentation. Programs on this family can access each other's address space.

5] Security

Windows Linux Malware According to Kaspersky Lab, more than As of 2006, more than 800 pieces 11,000 malware programs for Windows of Linux malwarehave been were discovered just in the second half of discovered. Some malware has 2005. However, it is common for anti- propagated through the malware software to have more than 1,000Internet. However, in practice, signatures against which potentially reports of bonafide malware malicious components can be presence on Linux-based systems compared. Botnets – networks of infected are extremely rare .Nonetheless, computers controlled by malicious anti-malware tools such persons – with more than one million as ClamAV and Panda Security's computers have been witnessed Once DesktopSecure for Linux do exist. malicious software is present on a These programs are mainly Windows-based system, it can sometimes intended to filter Windows be incredibly difficult to locate and malware from emails and network remove. As such, users are advised to traffic traveling through Linux- install and run anti-malware programs. based servers. The extreme rarity of this type of occurrence is such that it is not usually necessary to use anti-malware programs Open vs. Closed Claims its platform is more secure Claims its platform is more secure because of a comprehensive approach to because all of its code is reviewed security using the Security Development by so many people that bugs are Lifecycle. detected (referred to as Linus's However, because Windows is closed- law). source, only Microsoft-employed Anyone with programming programmers (or licensed third-parties) experience is free to fix bugs and can fix bugs. Because the software is submit them for inclusion in future closed-source, consumers have to trust releases and updates. that Microsoft is not doing anything against them. Response speed Claims closed source offers a faster and Bugs can be fixed and rolled out more effective response to security within a day of being reported issues, though critical bug fixes are only (often within hours), though released once a month after extensive usually it takes a few weeks before programming and testing and certain bugs the patch is available on all have been known to go unpatched for distributions. months or even years. User Accounts In Windows Vista, all logged-in sessions Users typically run as limited (even for those of "administrator" users) accounts, having created both run with standard user permissions, administrator (commonly called preventing malicious programs (and "superuser" and named "root", inexperienced users) from gaining total has UID 0) and at least one user control of the system. Processes that account during install, preventing require administrator privileges can be run malicious programs from gaining using the User Account total control of the system. Note Controlframework. For standard users, that the user "root" is not the same this presents a credentials dialogue thing as the root level of the (example) that requires the password of a filesystem, indicated by "/" alone. member of the administrators group (who In most Linux distributions, there are listed). For users who are already are commands (su, sudo) that will logged in an administrator, only temporarily grant confirmation is necessary. The first user root/administrator privileges to account created during the setup process isprocesses that need it. In practice, automatically a member of the the sudo command is generally far administrators group. The majority of less of an annoyance, leading to its users did not change to an account type use over su in distributions like with fewer rights, meaning that, in Ubuntu, in spite of the additional Windows versions prior to the security risk. In addition, a user introduction of UAC, malicious programs can log into the PC as the "root" or would have full control over the system. temporarily become root with su (normal console logout returns the user to normal permissions). No elevated permissions are needed for anything when logged in as root. In practice, this can be very dangerous, as a simple typo error at the command line can wipe a hard drive clean or clear the contents of system RAM. Unlike Vista's UAC, a privileged process has complete, unrestricted access to the system