Linux vs. Windows: What's The Difference? 1219
underpar writes "This zdnet article covering Microsoft's Tech Ed conference quotes one of the speakers, Mark Russinovich, as saying that Linux is becoming more and more like Windows. He cites many examples of where Linux 'copies' Windows and other operating systems. He says the only current difference is 'how windowing is handled.'"
An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Or much more [microsoft.com] if you consider a server comparison.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Funny)
Sincerely,
Darl.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Funny)
----
Software Ideas [blogspot.com]
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
With all the companies cashing in on training we then get a flood of barely trained admins who fill up the workplace. Because there is a surplus of these Windows admins business' believe it is easier to get a good (subjective) Windows admin, rather than a rare, but usually considered more capable, *nix admin. This drives them more and more into Windows territory, since once they spike that first rush of Windows into their infrastructure, it's hard for them to stop, even when they realise they are causing themselves long term damage.
We saw this effect with the release of VB, making any old Joe think he was a coder, and remember the flood of completely shit VB craplets that soon followed. It's this same principle, lowered barriers of entry lead to lowered quality.
Re:An important difference (Score:4, Funny)
Dude, no-one owns Windows. Once installed, Windows owns you.
Re:An important difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Etc., making linux a vi
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Unless you download mingw
# your choice of how your desktop environment looks
themes?
# games, not just freecell and solitaire
like gnubg, tux racer in cygwin?
# real networking tools, such as nmap, a variety of firewalls, heck the list is too long to begin here
Which almost without exception available for windows?
# a powerful command prompt for expert users
cygwin?
Re:An important difference (Score:3, Insightful)
themes?
Themes are a pathetic substitute for being able to totally switch desktop environments and/or window managers. My environment looks and acts nothing at all like Windows, and I prefer it that way. I've heard of alternate GUIs for Windows, but since Windows ties you down to using a GUI for nearly everything, I can't imagine that you'd ever have enough flexibility. (Control panels are for pussies.)
cygwi
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, yes. Guess what, cygwin has a port of sshd! So yes, you can ssh into your machine. And if you're running Apache (also ported to Windows), you can do just what you described quite easily.
Can you totally modify the way your computer runs by writing shell scripts or modifying existing ones?
Elaborate.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it can be argued that Windows + cygwin != Windows.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, it isn't exactly Lindows either
Cygwin [cygwin.com] is the next best thing to a Linux install, but it is far from being the same thing.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Informative)
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Informative)
I'm no big fan of windows, but it seems like you're not really knowledgeable about this stuff.
Can you ssh into your windows machine and restart the webserver with one simple command? Can you totally modify the way your computer runs by writing shell scripts or modifying existing ones?
In essence, yes... and yes. There are probably a few open ssh implementations that run as a service in Windows, just as there is an Apache service. Also of note, Microsoft released a POSIX / UNIX compatibility thing for NT/Win2K/XP (Unix services for Windows? I don't know what it's called.). It's only a few steps then, to get sshd up and running.
As for the web server... "iisreset" I think is the single command. I could be wrong, I don't have IIS installed on my home XP machine at the moment.
Lastly, Windows has a scripting host. You can do nearly everything with vbs. VB sucks as a language, but it's what they chose. I think that javascript might also be available. Anyways... there are scripts out there that let you shut down machines remotely, force the current user to log out, etc. etc. Of course, RPC has to be enabled, but it's all there. If there's an OLE, COM or ActiveX representation of whatever service or object that you wish to work with, you can access it through the scripting host.
I've had to work with Windows boxes at work, so I've had to learn a lot about everything. The security model is really interesting, and can be extremely *tight*, if you wish it to be. You can limit access to almost all OLE/COM/ActiveX objects to groups, you just need to find or develop the right tool.
Yes.... Mingw provides a bourne again shell for windows. Borland provides a free c++ compiler. Java is free (as in beer). Hell, even the MS .NET SDK is a free (as in beer) download, and Mono is a free (as in freedom) alternative that works in Windows.
I don't use a GUI to do much administration in Windows anymore, it just isn't my preferred method. Don't bitch about GUI being the *only* way to do it, since it most likely is not. I'd venture a guess to say that about 95% of everything that you can do with the GUI, you can do with the command line.
Now... creating symbolic and hard links in NTFS, and having the boot partition on a separate HD than your C:\Windows (C:\WINNT) directory, well those are options that you have to go without.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Informative)
XP has fsutil [microsoft.com] which you can use to create hard and soft links.
I'm not sure if it works with directories, for that you want a tool that creates 'junctions'.
Apparently the problem with using hardlinks was that programs weren't aware of them - some would always try to delete the file, some would have issues when recursively deleting, etc. I think MS must have put some checking or other work into the system to prevent problems, or they wouldn't have released the tool now.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An important difference (Score:4, Informative)
Oranges are sweet.
Hmmmm.
You're comparing a system whose (original) philosophy is "provide basic tools needed by everyone and let people add additional capabilities with 3rd party applications" with one which is "provide everything anyone is ever likely to need on one set of CDs and give them a huge menu asking what to install at the start".
Of course the former (Windows) isn't going to be as capable as the latter (most Linux distributions) if you don't use it the way it's supposed to be used.
You might as well say you can't do word processing on Windows because WordPad's so shite.
Learn to live in the real world, will you?
Don't you guys see? (Score:5, Insightful)
They've been more open lately, specifically because the heat being put on them. As a result, they're slowly becoming a better company. I'm very happy with the
Re:An important difference (Score:4, Informative)
There are many compilers out there for many languages. Other then VC++ I cant think of any language that dosn't have a free compiler out there for Windows.
"your choice of how your desktop environment looks"
There are so many desktop replacments/customizers out for windows I wouldn't even know where to start.
"games, not just freecell and solitaire"
Are you REALY trying to claim that there are more freeware games out for Linux then for Windows? Even the most basic of searches will prove this wrong.
"real networking tools, such as nmap, a variety of firewalls, heck the list is too long to begin here"
Most of them are available for windows.
"a powerful command prompt for expert users"
Ok, whats the diference between the BASH/TCSH/etc shell on Linux and the same shell on Windows?
Everything you listed is just a download away. I fail to see the problem.
Re:An important difference (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the MS Visual C++ compiler is free now. Just not the IDE.
http://howtos.beaucox.com/win32-vc7-compiler.html [beaucox.com]
Re:Not entirely free if you're on dial-up (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Funny)
Hell, with Windows some programs even download themselves! Now that's service!
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Interesting)
Additionally, I assume you're referring to SFU or Cygwin when you say you can get real shells on Windows, and there the difference is obvious as soon as you try some filesystem access. Permission thunking between NTFS ACLs and Unix-style perms slows it all down quite a bit, and the funny mounting stuff isn't bulletproof.
My day to be pedantic, I guess.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
I see two problems. First, pretty much everything you mentioned involves a third-party "strap-on" items. This works fine for some things, but many apps suffer a fate that Windows either overrides them or just don't work quite right with them, causing random lockups of the machine or the app. Most times, there is nothing wrong with the app itself, since it runs under Unix/Linux/OSX/whatever (a perfect example is gnupg, which runs fine on Linux, but when I tried to run it on XP Pro, problems). Unix uses what may be considered third party apps, however, Unix (and Linux) were designed from the beginning as a collection of tools which do one or two things, and do them exceedingly well. These tools can be mixed and matched as needed to accomplish tasks. Therefore, plugging a tool in to a *nix box is absolutely natural. Windows, OTOH, was designed and built as a monolithic entity (some would say belligerently so). Adding third-party tools to Windows can be akin to strapping a JATO pod to a '65 Ford Fairlane.It doesn't make it an airplane, but it can sometimes make a mess.
The second issue is security. I hear every day from Windows advocates that "Linux has as many or more security holes as Windows." This is a straw-man, since many Windows security problems of a higher level of risk than the average Linux one. If I have 10 rifles, I am still less of a risk than if you have one nuke. Either because of the difficulty in exploitation of the Linux holes, or because they are local-only exploits.
Many Windows problems are a result of the "point and click" mindset. IE autoinstalling malware, Outlook auto-opening unknown attachments, and so forth, and being configured to behave this way. Can Linux be configured this way? Sure. Is it out of the box? Not generally. And this doesn't even begin to address the disparity in fix release time.
Those are some of the problems I see.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Interesting)
for
Jon.
Re:OK Mr. DOS-hell smartypants... (Score:5, Informative)
e.g echo %DATE% will return Fri 02/07/2004 (today anyway). If you only want the year then you do echo %DATE:~-4% (last four characters of the variable). If you want the day part only, you do echo %DATE:~4,2%. (two characters, starting at the fourth if you count from zero)
There's some quite flexible stuff built into cmd.exe if you're willing to look - some excellent for loops which are my favourite.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Linux distributions come with several competing tools to do the same thing, this maximises choice for consumers.
Microsoft bundle pieces of software made by Microsoft designed to be integrated with the system in a way that unrelated functions depend on said bundled app, making it impossible to remove. Consumers then run said bundled app because it is the only one supplied with the OS, and don't bother to look at competing products, minimising consumer choice.
Re:An important difference (Score:4, Insightful)
Removing IE from Windows ("removing the bloat" in the parlance of the current line of argument) is rather like removing the roll-cage from a Hummer.
By contrast, removing Mozilla, Konquerer, Galeon, or Lynx from a Linux distro is relatively easy -- usually not much more trouble than using the distro's package manager. So "removing the bloat" is a comparatively simple task.
I guess what I'm saying is that proper bloat is the excessive stuff that you can't get rid of. (Kind of like wearing poofy clothing doesn't make you fat.) Otherwise, it's just not very bloaty.
(My argument may fall apart here in the Konquerer case, as I don't use Konquerer and don't know how tightly it is integrated into KDE. Whatever. My argument may also fall apart in as much as it may be easy to remove the roll-cage from a Hummer. I don't know.)
Re:An important difference (Score:4, Insightful)
2. Themes and skins are available. And if you don't like them, you can download and install other shells.
3. Plenty of games for Windows.
4. Plenty of real networking tools available.
5. Ok, the command prompt could definitely use some work.
Of course, on 1, 2, 3, and 4, you might have to (gasp!) download something off of the Internet. They don't come with the OS. On the other hand, none of the above actually come with "Linux" either. They come with a distro, or as packages. While the available "Windows" distros may not quite suit your fancy, compared to Linux, it is just as easy (actually, easier in my experience) to get your Windows installation up to snuff. I can download and install a Windows utility more quickly than I can build and install a Linux package.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Funny)
And, best of all, you get malware, spyware, viruses, and trojans for free with your installs!
Re:An important difference (Score:3, Insightful)
The post is talking about things that come packaged in most distros.
Last time I checked cygwin + windows themes managers werent bundled with $99 windows XP home
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Informative)
Compilers - Microsoft just released free versions of their Visual Development environments. The VC command line compiler is also available. There are several other free compilers available as well.
Environment - ever heard of Litestep? Completely replaces Explorer. As well as BB4Win, ObjectDesktop and several others.
Games - there's all sorts of free games out there for windows. Try Google once in a while.
Networking tools - you are correct on that point.
Command Prompt - bash for windows, 4DOS/4NT/TakeCommand (non-free, but inexpensive). Both of those work within the constraints posed by the operating system. Bash mimics the Unix CLI, while 4DOS/4NT/Take Command provide extra functionality. Bash runs on top of cmd.exe, 4NT replaces it. Take Command is an alternate shell environment.
Do some research next time.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Informative)
Sure, they're free... but they're also Beta, and the licensing agreement says you can't publish any software you write with the environment. How does that compare to Linux... it doesn't.
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Informative)
Of course the solution set looks pretty small, after you've arbitrarily eliminated half of it. Nothing's stopping you from downloading Cygwin [cygwin.com].
Sure [microsoft.com] you [microsoft.com] can [microsoft.com].
Try Google. There are plenty of free games and skinning tools out there.
Microsoft doesn't put all this stuff on a CD and put it in the box with Windows, but that doesn't mean that these programs don't exist, or aren't useful. The only advantage GNU/Linux has is a distro that throws everything and KitchenSink 3.1, with sources, onto a DVD-ROM, like SuSE's Professional package. But that doesn't quite raise GNU/Linux to the level of superiority you suggest.
OTOH, the availability of source in the first place does give Linux quite a lift. :-)
Re:An important difference (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ignore windows ports of other GNU applications, you end up with linux having a great superiority over Windows
Huh? You can't just ignore the GNU stuff just because it's on Windows. If you're going to do that, you might as well say that if you ignore the things that were ported from UNIX to Linux, UNIX has a huge advantage.
Just because it doesn't come with Windows doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Technically, none of that other crap comes with Linux either. You just get your copy of Linux from a supplier that includes all those tools with it.
Re:An important difference (Score:3, Insightful)
And think of the added productivity boost you'll have when all your games stop working!
Re:Ooh! Selective comparison... (Score:5, Informative)
Spoken like a true flamethrower! IHBT, but I'll bite anyway. I just installed Mandrake 10 and I'm amazed at the usability -- it's really quite polished.
Drivers are slow to arrive mainly because nearly every single one requires someone to spend a month or two reverse-engineering some proprietary interface. But again, they're not really much of a problem anymore. There are still a few new-ish unsupported devices (the Centrino wireless cards are an example), but the windows compatibility layer takes care of that.
Re:Ooh! Selective comparison... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ooh! Selective comparison... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ooh! Selective comparison... (Score:5, Funny)
Yeah, home users spend most of their time simulating circuits and writing VHDL.
Ooh! Bad comparisons... (Score:5, Insightful)
2) Usability still needs some work, but it's progressing very quickly (much quicker than windows did), so people HAVE BEEN working on it for quite a while.
3) Most linux drivers are written by independent developers (with obvious exceptions, nvidia, ATI, several others). MS publishes an API and thousands of companies have to build to it. When most of the drivers that don't ship w/Windows are built in house by MS, then you'll have a decent comparison
SO you're in the majority? That doesn't prove much. If you like Windows, cool, it's your choice and we respect that; Making extremely poor justifications for your choice cost you some of that respect.
Now, you wanna talk about TCO with linux maybe being higher (unix techs cost more), etc.
Re:Ooh! Bad comparisons... (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition - Retail Price $199 (U.S.) [microsoft.com]
Microsoft Windows XP Professional - Retail Price $299 (U.S.) [microsoft.com]
RedHat WS Basic - Retail Price $179 (U.S.) [redhat.com]
RedHat WS Standard - Retail Price $179 (U.S.) [redhat.com]
Suse Personal - Retail Price $29 (U.S.) [suse.com]
Suse Professional - Retail Price $89 (U.S.) [suse.com] And you can find many other distributions for various prices including free.
Usability is really defined by what you intend to use the sytem for. As a common system, it is probably missing some of the functionality you would find on a MS Win32 system. For most of the common desktop functions, it has most of the features. Where Linuz is suffering is the massive vendor support that MS Win32 systems have. This will change as Linux gains acceptance (recall the days where applications only ran on UNIX systems and eventually vendors started to add MS Win32 support). Drivers also suffer a similar fate.
As for the administrator cost, the TCO is debatable. The company I work for pays basically the same rates for administrators on either platform. This also applies to any of my previous employers (although skills with MS Exchange and Active Directory seem to demand higher prices than the equivilent skilled workers on UNIX systems).
Mainly wanted to back up your post.
Re:Ooh! Selective comparison... (Score:5, Insightful)
But to address your "argument", Linux cost me zero...nothing...nada. Not one dime. Not $30 bucks, not 60, not 90 with a piece of hardware.
As far as usability and driver coverage, everything works fine here....but these are moot points really.
Linux runs fine, Windows runs fine. Some like Linux, some like Windows, some like other OS's. So what? I don't make my choices based on "the Market". The "Market" put things like "Titanic" as the highest grossing movie of all time, does that mean it's the best? We all know market share doesn't automatically mean better. Better comes from application on how it's used. XP is better for you, Linux is better for me...I'm sure there's someone who feels OS/2 is better for them. Who's right? We all are!
It's a vicious cycle (Score:5, Funny)
Linux copies Windows which copies Mac which copies Linux
(I'm sure SCO Unix gets copied in there somewhere too)
Uh oh... doesn't that sort of relationship end the universe in some sort of giant BLIP!?
Now, for those who want to actually read something that matters, Ars Technica has a primer on PCI-Express [arstechnica.com]. Impress your friends, neighbors, and countrymen!
Re:It's a vicious cycle (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows
\
\ .
. \______ Linux
. /
/
Mac OS
Windows copies OS/2. (Score:5, Interesting)
There is only one program that has ever been written from scratch -- "Hello World.". Everything else is just cut and past from that.
Re:It's a vicious cycle (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite his talk being biased, I think he got one important point mostly right:
But ultimately, said Russinovich, the gap between the two operating systems will continue to narrow to a point where their underlying kernel becomes irrelevant. "Layered services will become more important," he concluded.
On server space the kernel performance probably counts out more, but at least for most (not all, though) desktop users the kernel really isn't the most important part; it is the common APIs that do the trick. One could build two very similar boxes, one running Linux and the other FreeBSD - both running same apps, with differences hardly noticeable for the end user. Switch the BSD box to Mach kernel, keep userland, and still no much difference. But then just throw Apple's Quartz instead of X on top of that, and we suddenly have totally different world! This is just because we'll now suddenly have a totally different set of APIs.
However - what Russinovich left out - Windows will inevitably be the very last one to jump on this bandvagon, due to Microsoft's policies' closed nature and it's dominant position on the market. Windows just does not have to be compatible with other systems on the market the same way POSIX systems does have to - not at least from it's vendor's viewpoint.
Re:It's a vicious cycle (Score:5, Funny)
Its all that code they licensed from SCO...
Re:It's a vicious cycle (Score:5, Funny)
Please note... (Score:5, Informative)
Just a little summary for people too impatient to read the article..
Windows (Score:3, Funny)
Well, speaking on the article... (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, what the hell is "X-windows"? I know of the X Window System, X11, X, X.org, XFree86 -- but I know nothing of this "X-windows."
Now, what the author of the article fails to point out, is that the more significant difference between the operating systems, is that one requires the use of GUI display, while the other finds it entirely optional.
Re:Well, speaking on the article... (Score:5, Informative)
in the old days, before windows even existed, there was X1(0|1) and most people commonly referred to it as X-windows.
We even thought it was plagiarism that Microsoft called their stuff "Windows"
But you must be of that young generation that grew up with windows so I guess it sounds strange to you.
Sincerely,
Grandpa
Re:Well, speaking on the article... (Score:4, Interesting)
That is not correct. NT (and hence XP) was designed with the flexibility to support multiple OS Environments. One such option is the POSIX environment which is not a GUI.
So it is optional in both, albeit more optional with Linux because the Win32 environment is the default with XP.
Re:Please note... (Score:3, Funny)
A rushed list... (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Philosophy.
3. Stability.
4. Cost.
Those are just a few for starters...
Re:A rushed list... (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course, winding my way through half a dozen different Ways To Do It [tm] trying to find the one that works on THIS flavor of Linux as opposed to the last one I used isn't much better.
Re:A rushed list... (Score:3, Interesting)
I've yet to place a serious bet with any Windows(tm) fanboy, but lets say you just loaded to the harddrive 300 vacation photos from the digital camera and the task is to scale them all to say, 800x600 pixels. Under Linux, with ImageMagick installed (usually is), all one has to do is:
cd
mogrify --resize 800x600 *
and get a cup of coffee while the computer churns away for a few minutes.
Now, under windows, what other option do you have besides opening all 300 photos in a photo
Re:A rushed list... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if you want to say Linux is more efficient because you can compile only what you need into the kernel, that would be valid, although I'm not sure if Windows has something like modules.
Re:A rushed list... (Score:3, Informative)
Open Irfanview [irfanview.com] (free), half a dozen mouse clicks and it's churning away doing the job.
This is assuming you're not running XP and have the MS Image Resizer PowerToy [microsoft.com] (also free) which makes the job even quicker. Browse to the folder with the photos (usually MyDocs > MyPics > Folder, or it'll be open after the automatic picture transfer has done it's stuff), Ctrl-A, right-click, Resize Pictures, click on Medium (800x600), OK.
Or just install ImageMagick for windows.
I'm no windows fanboy, but it's ea
Re:A rushed list... (Score:4, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Paging Microsoft Goons with strange European Names (Score:3, Insightful)
That means that it's incredibly hard to say that somebody actually *copied code* from somebody else- they may have just been thinking along the same lines. AdT, are you listening?
AdT response (Score:5, Funny)
"la la la la la I can't hear yooooooou la la la la la la"
Apps remove the difference (Score:5, Funny)
He's kinda right. I work with OpenOffice and Firefox for my basic stuff, and each time I launch those two or am in the middle of something, I have to look at the task bars to remind myself where I am at. User interfaces are so much alike.
The usual routine is pressing Win+E to launch Windows Explorer, then observe no Windows Explorer window launching, then cuss silently for the bug, then realize it's Red Hat 9 I am in.
Re:Apps remove the difference (Score:3, Informative)
Unix-derivatives easily identified. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unix-derivatives easily identified. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unix-derivatives easily identified. (Score:5, Funny)
Corollary to the corollary: A Unix newbie can further be identified by separating those who say "newbie" from those who say "n00b".
Key difference... (Score:3, Funny)
The difference is pretty obvious from where I sit (Score:5, Informative)
Linux in general (Score:5, Insightful)
HOWEVER, one of the reasons the Linux community has become so splintered (different distros, etc.) is because people are taking Linux in different directions. SuSE, LinSpire, and many other commercial providers are trying to make Linux a friendly, easy-to-use experience. Whilst Slackware and Debian are sticking to their roots.
As a side note: BSD is a server OS (no question about it). Windows is a desktop OS (being twisted into a server platform). But which is Linux?
Two things off the top of my head... (Score:5, Insightful)
1) A monolithic kernel that can be customized and tailored by any end user willing to take the plunge, or at least just compile from source.
2) A variety of command shells that are intended to be used as full-fledged operating environments, without the need for a GUI.
(ObDisclaimer: haven't read the article, probably won't)
Some of the windowing environments and GUI-based programs try to emulate the Windows look-n-feel, but I haven't run across many things in the rest of Linux-based operating systems that can be thought of as copied from Windows... well, except for the embarrassingly registry-like GConf2 database (the first time I used the graphical gconftool to change spatial Nautilus back to usable-for-me Nautilus, I nearly regurgitated at the bad memories it brought back).
I think this guy might as well say any operating system "copies" things from Windows, Mac OS, and every other operating system.
monolithic (Score:5, Funny)
Repeat After Me (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux only looks like Windows(tm).
Linux only looks like Windows(tm), and then, only sometimes.
Seriously, Gnome is not Linux, KDE is not Linux. The ever-increasing familiar Linux desktop is not the actual operating system, mmmmkay?
There are dramatic differences in the underpinnings of both desktops. More striking is the philosophical difference. From http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch01s06.html [faqs.org]:Windows rarely does this.Now we don't have access to the Windows source, so we can't really say. But we can easily surmise the worst, given it's behavior.Not on any MS platform, at least not without using a protocol or other IPC/RPC devised by MS.No MS program manager has ever heard these words.Explains Windows. Perfectly.
Re:Repeat After Me (Score:4, Insightful)
The article was discussing kernels, not desktop interfaces.
Liar liar pants on fire (Score:3, Insightful)
The article says, and I quote:
The link to 'readily admits' points to another ZDNet article which says nothing of the kind. I take it that the AdT institute's FUD is spreading rapidly for some reason. People have to understand that just because someone spreads FUD, that does not turn an undisputed fact into a contested issue. Jesus.
"layered services" (Score:3, Insightful)
It was always about the layered services, and always will be, to the majority of users - the users are what's changing ...
Some observations.. (Score:5, Informative)
Having said that, the talk was about the kernel. Obviously the differences between a GNU/linux distribution and a Windows variant run very deep.
My pet peeve about windows is the registry. Sure, the staggering number of sometimes quite byzantine file formats of all those different
The biggest difference in the kernel would have to be security. Windows has a lot riding on their weird security system with it's SIDs and groups (which isn't enough to actually lock down your users, you need to use funky policies for that), whereas linux usually tries to get by with a simple uid/gid combination. Of course, if you'd want to, you could SELinux the kernel up beyond recognition, when it comes to security. (Try to do that on windows).
Also, printerdrivers don't run in Ring 0. They do on NT (and on windows 2000/XP as well, if you install old drivers. There's no warning or nothing. Yay.)
I like what Mark Russinovich does... (Score:5, Insightful)
He doesn't say a thing about user-mode software, usability etc. The article is about kernel differences, so saying "Linux is becoming more and more like Windows" is plain wrong. He doesn't even mention API.
What article actually's talking about is how various successful ideas in kernel co-relate in windows kernel and linux kernel and how windowing is handled. He talks about pros(good remoting) and cons(all calls are actually messages) of X Windows.
And he says "Security was also another area where there significant differences remain between the two operating systems. But ultimately, said Russinovich, the gap between the two operating systems will continue to narrow to a point where their underlying kernel becomes irrelevant."
WTF the article poster pulled that "He says the only current difference is 'how windowing is handled.'"
Well... I cannot really express how I feel about such misleading posts slip. Especially if it's about GOOD people and experienced coders like Mark is.
I hope he's right (Score:4, Insightful)
Change is very difficult - that's what lock-in is all about. Sit an intelligent Windows user or developer down on debian and they will be completely lost. Soon they'll be back on Windows.
So, since the vast majority of potential Linux users are only familiar with Windows, Linux must become more like Windows (at least in terms of interfaces) if it wants to grow.
It doesn't mean that the Windows' way was better - better has nothing to do with it. The Windows' way is simply more familiar, and that is very important.
WinUx (Score:4, Insightful)
Since it's introduction, NT has grown POSIX compliance, terminal services, adopted parts of the BSD TCP/IP stack, and now even has a free UNIX emulation layer available directly from Microsoft in the form of Services for UNIX.
It's great to see that Operating Systems are adopting things that work from each other, but there's certainly no grounds to say that either Windows or Linux is clearly superior in every respect and the other is playing catch-up, which is what this guy seems to be implying.
preemptive kernel (Score:5, Insightful)
"I also pointed out that a pre-emptible kernel is a lot more responsive to a high priority thread," said Russinovich, moving on to his next target. "The Linux kernel 2.6 was made fully pre-emptible."
I can personally promise that the preemptability of Windows was not a factor in the desire to code a preemptive kernel or its eventual design.
Small yet BIG differences (Score:4, Insightful)
Nowadays, installing a Windows app is anything but easy; you have to shut down everything on the computer and reboot at least once. Un-installing applications is 'iffy' at best, and if something goes wrong, or you need to migrate to another machine or hard drive, most users have to trash everything and re-install everything from scratch.
In reality, Unix has become a lot more standardized and consistent in terms of application management, installation and migration. It's really a lot easier now to remove an app from Unix, whereas with Windows, you never know if you could ever remove a program without leaving tons of remnants and agents clogging things up.
Re:The Difference (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The Difference (Score:3, Interesting)
In fact, my workstation won't let me restart or shutdown without asking why I'm doing that. It gets annoying if I have to reboot for something, but it tells how little MS expects to have the OS go down.
Re:The Difference (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The Difference (Score:5, Interesting)
I didn't mean that to be impugning your abilities, but consider it.
Re:The Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
If there was one evil I could rid us of in this world it would be the Windows Registry... Please MS, take the hint and get rid of it!
Re:The Difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Difference (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Difference (Score:3, Interesting)
That's no excuse. No OS should ever crash for any software-induced reason, ever. There's a famous story (perhaps in the Jargon File?) about a UNIX system that got half-blown-away by a misplaced "rm -rf /" and was recovered without rebooting. Now that's robust.
Re:The Difference (Score:3, Funny)
Doing something stupid
v. intr.
Taking some action that causes Windows to crash.
Re:The Difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows is catching up on stability and Linux is catching up on ease of use. These will likely be more or less resolved problems in a couple of years. On the other hand, one system will allow allow you to do whatever you want with your computer (as long as its possible, and you know how to tell the computer what you want it to do), and the other will allow you to do whatever someone else wants you to be able to do with your computer.
-jim
Re:The difference? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, I know you have software that absolutely must run on Windows. But the vast majority of popular computing tasks can be accomplished quite well on Linux.
Re:Comparing Kernels or Windows? (Score:3, Informative)
POSIX isn't a kernal. It's a standards specification. The first POSIX-compliant OS was VMS, which is about as un-unixy as you can get.
I went to a DECUS symposium in the early 1990s where two VMS engineers explained what they had to do to achieve POSIX-compliance. It was humorous in that the official validation suite couldn't necessarily run on a strictly POSIX-compliant OS, because it assumed the presence of common UNIX tools that weren't actually in the spec at the time.
Re:Install... (Score:3, Interesting)
On Debian, or with apt2rpm on Red Hat or SuSE its "apt-get install program". On Red Hat and other RPM distributions its "rpm -ivh program.rpm", even Slackware, which is what I use, some stuff like what's on linuxpackages.net is available with "installpkg program.tgz".
No compilation needed, at least for the several thousand or so most
Re:Install... (Score:3, Insightful)
RPMs have given me install problems in the past. Some have refused to install and i being only a novice linux user, had one hell of a time finding out why.
My solution was to give up linux at that point because i had been using it for a few months. I did like it quite a bit. The powerful tools that linux comes with are quite incredible however gui graphic performance, very hard install problems (dependencies, rpms that wont install etc) and the fact that i had to use Wine to run Newsb
256 kilobytes min? (Score:3, Funny)