Linux vs Windows
From WikiVS, the open comparison website
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[edit] Popularity
Windows has a much larger user base. It is so popular, and has been for so many years, that PC vendors typically pre-install a Windows operating system. But this is changing--some vendors offer systems pre-loaded with Linux. Dell--the world's largest PC vendor--is now shipping some of its products with Ubuntu Linux. There are many small vendors who offer systems pre-loaded Linux. And many of the new subnotebook machines offer Linux; the ASUS Eee PC, the first of this new breed, was initially only available with a modified Xandros Linux.
Another factor in Windows' popularity is software availability. Many software vendors choose to create software solely for Windows because they believe it's their biggest market. Also, many Linux users prefer open-source software to proprietary software, so software vendors whose business models are not compatible with open source development have less incentive to create and sell Linux software.
Until recently, Linux-based operating systems were seen as much less "user-friendly" than Windows. Distributions such as Ubuntu have made a serious effort to increase Linux's user-friendliness, in part by using graphical desktop styles that emulate Microsoft Windows and Apple MacOS X, attempting to create a familiar operating environment to ease the process of migrating to a new OS.
[edit] Available Software
There are mounds of free and open source software available for Linux. There is not as much free/open source software available for Windows, although it has a lot more proprietary software.
On many Linux distributions, software installation is integrated into the system. You do not have to search the net to find it, you only need to search a local database and then install it.
On Windows, you must manually acquire your software by searching the Internet.
Some proprietary software, such as Google Earth, Skype, and Opera, as well as free/open source software, such as Firefox, GIMP, and MySQL, run on both Windows and Linux.
The Linux Alternative Project provides a list of Windows applications and Linux counterparts.
[edit] Development Platform
In general, the best platform for development is the same as the platform on which you plan to deploy the software. There are cases where the target platform cannot reasonably be the same as the development platform, however, such as when the target platform is a Web browser (as in the case of Web applications), or when the target platform is an embedded system. There are also cases where the choice of target platform may follow the choice of development platform, rather than the other way around -- as in situations where one may consider development environments when deciding what OS platform should be used for a particular project.
Unix-like systems provide a plethora of free, standards-compliant tools like the GNU Compiler Collection, as well as feature-rich commercial development environments like Synergy/DE.
Windows system development is largely dominated by Microsoft development tools that do not usually play well with other commercial development environments, but Visual Studio and certain other, third-party, commercial development environments are very well regarded by many programmers.
Some of these toolsets and development environments are available on both Linux and Windows systems, such as Eclipse and the GNU C programming tools, with varying degrees of suitability to different platforms.
[edit] Security
[edit] Malware
According to Kaspersky Lab, more than 800 total pieces of malware have been discovered that affect Linux systems, over the entire course of its existence since the early 1990s. More than 11,000 pieces of malware that affect Microsoft Windows systems were discovered in the second half of 2005 alone.
[edit] Privilege Separation
Microsoft Windows has a long history of providing poor privilege separation, while the Unix-like design of Linux provides strong privilege separation. NT-based MS Windows versions have improved on privilege separation to some degree, and Vista offers a sudo-like graphical privilege escalation tool known as User Account Control. There is strong evidence suggesting that even Vista's privilege separation is deeply flawed, however, such as the fact that UAC requires escalation to perform tasks considered unprivileged in other OSes and the ability of DRM systems to turn off UAC behind the scenes so that the OS can send protected data to Microsoft without requiring administrative user intervention.
[edit] Vulnerability Response
The quickest response from Microsoft, from public announcement of a security issue to distribution of a patch, was around ten days. Most patches take longer, and in fact Microsoft only offers patches on a once per month schedule in the majority of cases. Linux security patches have been developed, tested, and issued in a matter of hours, and the average response time for patch deployment is less than a week. Availability of a Linux patch may be delayed in many cases by the process of incorporating patches into various distributions, however -- see your individual distribution's security response time record for details.
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