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The best Windows versions (XP, 2000, etc) and Linux (Mandrake, Red Hat, etc). What are the pros and cons of each?

Also, which version of Linux is the best out there?

I know very little about linux, but some of the pros of Win 2k are:

1) NTFS file system for security
2) GUI ineterface that most users are familar with
3) Remote admin capabilities ( ie: starting/stopping the spooler service on another machine on the network )
4) It is more stable when compared to other versions of windows.
5) It is fairly forgiving of hardware changes when using ghost images.

Pros of Windows:

1. Runs all the games.
2. Lots of software available, particularly if you don't mind breaking the law.
3. Easy to use.
4. Easy to configure.

Cons of Windows:

1. Expensive.
2. Proprietary.
3. Continued domination will inevitably lead to an abusive monopoly situation (which we're already seeing the beginnings of), arbitrary price hikes, forced "upgrades", customers being screwed when support runs out, etc.
4. Unstable relative to competing platforms (as opposed to its own predecessors).
5. Plagued with security problems; Windows alone generates almost as many security alerts as Linux and all of the application software being made for it.
6. Prime target for viruses, trojans, etc.
7. Most software updates and many installs force you to reboot, which makes Windows poorly-suited to server duties (you can't go rebooting a server all the time).

Pros of Linux:

1. Free.
2. Comes with loads of software built in; no need to install any other apps in order to do most things. Even big apps like full-blown relational database servers are usually bundled for free.
3. Vastly superior remote-computing capabilities when compared to Windows; you can do anything over an SSH login that you can while sitting at the box, as opposed to being restricted to certain "approved" remote operations.
4. Lower hardware requirements.
5. Easy to use and support; once a user is set up on a UNIX/Linux box you generally don't hear from them again.
6. Virtually reboot-free. You can install a new desktop GUI and new video drivers without rebooting in Linux; try that in Windows.
7. Segregation of GUI from OS means that GUI crashes (the most common form of crash) do not affect the underlying OS (unlike Windows, where the two are tied so tightly together that a GUI crash will crash the whole system).
8. Superior customizability; Windows is designed so that you can configure it ... within the bounds set by Microsoft.

Cons of Linux:

1. Difficult to configure and install. Not for newbies, although this is slowly improving.
2. Hardware support lags behind Windows (everyone writes device drivers for Windows first, and any other OS later if at all). For example, the only video card that's any damned good on Linux is NVidia; everything else simply sucks.
3. Graphic performance lags behind Windows.
4. Very few games available.
5. Apps are all "different". You can usually do all of the things most normal people do in Windows, but the names of the apps will be different, the interfaces will be different, it might not be as user-friendly, etc. People place a great deal of stock in familiarity.
6. Poor video processing features (VirtualDub is only made for Windows).

If I am ever rich, I will own a Windows box for gaming, and a Linux box for everything else.

HemlockGrey wrote:If I am ever rich, I will own a Windows box for gaming, and a Linux box for everything else.

Bling-bling!

Which is the best Linux pack to get for a beginner anyway? I was eyeing Red Hat at one point but heard they were going tits up, but if I ever get to using Linux or some other OS other than Windows I want to know what to get.

Which is the best Linux pack to get for a beginner anyway? I was eyeing Red Hat at one point but heard they were going tits up, but if I ever get to using Linux or some other OS other than Windows I want to know what to get.

I dual booted my Thinkpad Laptop with Madrake 8.2. I tried using Linux Red Hat and it kept failing. I found the Mandrake install to be much easier. For a first time install I would recommend not trying dual booting like I did, but just starting with a freshly formated machine.

TrailerParkJawa wrote:

Which is the best Linux pack to get for a beginner anyway? I was eyeing Red Hat at one point but heard they were going tits up, but if I ever get to using Linux or some other OS other than Windows I want to know what to get.

I dual booted my Thinkpad Laptop with Madrake 8.2. I tried using Linux Red Hat and it kept failing. I found the Mandrake install to be much easier. For a first time install I would recommend not trying dual booting like I did, but just starting with a freshly formated machine.

Ah, gotcha.

Unfortunately Mandrake is apparently not 100% free.



<off-topic> 2200th post!! Well on my way to 2500, then 3000 >


EDIT: Whoops, didn't look at the whole page. Mandrake is free. Sorry.

Shinova wrote:Unfortunately Mandrake is apparently not 100% free.



<off-topic> 2200th post!! Well on my way to 2500, then 3000 >

It's not? Did something change? I downloaded Mandrake 8.2 for free, oh about 6 months ago.

Check out their site. Now they have some Mandrake club thingy going on.


EDIT: Again, I was being inattentative.

There are several versions of Mandrake. The regular version is completely free. Then they have deluxe versions with stuff added on.

If you want a sense of security, RedHat is the single Linux vendor with the best financial situation and which is in the best position to survive Microsoft's war on Linux. However, Mandrake is more user-friendly and it's a lot easier to install. Mandrake's installer blows any other Linux installer out of the water, and rivals (even exceeds in some areas) the Windows installer IMHO.

Admiral Valdemar wrote:

HemlockGrey wrote:If I am ever rich, I will own a Windows box for gaming, and a Linux box for everything else.

Bling-bling!

Which is the best Linux pack to get for a beginner anyway? I was eyeing Red Hat at one point but heard they were going tits up, but if I ever get to using Linux or some other OS other than Windows I want to know what to get.

Nope other way around. Mandrake is going bankrupt.

Anyways don't really care (well fine a little, since widespread use will mean more software), since I use LFS . Not fully working though, since I'm still downloading (everything is in console, since all my graphical apps are on the other computer; I'm not burning CD until I get everything downloaded, and I keep adding stuff faster to my download queue than are being downloaded).

Mandrake is still free. The Mandrake club is just it's way of asking users for support (bad business model- that accounts for a significant chunk of income) If you are getting Mandrake, join the club, since they are going bankrupt and need support- also they just gave out Staroffice 6.0 to their club members which is worth 70$ (Staroffice 6 isn't free).

Other benefits are:
http://www.mandrakelinux.com/en/club/

Darth Wong wrote:

1. Vastly superior remote-computing capabilities when compared to Windows; you can do anything over an SSH login that you can while sitting at the box, as opposed to being restricted to certain "approved" remote operations.

Hey I was wondering if there is any application out there for windows that would allow me to access my linux account from home and be able to run graphic application. I'm using putty right now but it only allows command line applications. It would be much easier for me if I didn't have to compile on one machine then send it to another.

Specialist wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:

1. Vastly superior remote-computing capabilities when compared to Windows; you can do anything over an SSH login that you can while sitting at the box, as opposed to being restricted to certain "approved" remote operations.

Hey I was wondering if there is any application out there for windows that would allow me to access my linux account from home and be able to run graphic application. I'm using putty right now but it only allows command line applications. It would be much easier for me if I didn't have to compile on one machine then send it to another.

Read these:
http://xfree86.cygwin.com/docs/ug/using ... -apps.html
http://xfree86.cygwin.com/docs/ug/cygwin-xfree-ug.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/H ... -Apps.html
http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/docs/H ... e/LBX.html

and get Xfree86 for Cygwin, install, etc.

My University uses something called exceed for remote X connections if that helps any.

Darth Wong wrote:Pros of Windows:
Unstable relative to competing platforms (as opposed to its own predecessors).

With the latest iterations of windows since 2000 I don't think thats true, I have better stability on XP than on Mandrake 8.2

His Divine Shadow wrote:

Darth Wong wrote:Pros of Windows:
Unstable relative to competing platforms (as opposed to its own predecessors).

With the latest iterations of windows since 2000 I don't think thats true, I have better stability on XP than on Mandrake 8.2

You must have one seriously fucked-up MDK8.2 install if it locks on you. I never had MDK8.2 lock on me. Mind you, it might depend on your definition of a lock. Are you talking about a GUI problem which forced you to log out and lock back in again, or are you talking about an actual OS hard-lock?

Now for some techincal pros and cons that no one but CS will possibly understand.

Windows Pros

1.) Superior Virtual Memory management than linux
2.) Multi Processor Support
3.) Advanced Microkernel
4.) Advance Multithreading support
5.) Optimized for x86, (I'm sure Microsoft uses ICC to compile the windows kernel)

Windows Cons
1.) NTFS is still inferior to UNIX filesystems, FAT32 is from what I understand, what a CS college student would produce, if given only 2 weeks to produce a filesystem.
2.) Permissions system is still inferior to UNIX, in addition encrypted filesystem is weak (although I don't believe LINUX has an encrypted filesystem.)

Linux Pros

1. Extendable kernel
2. Superior Filesystem
3. Runs on a number of different processors
4. Separate from Gui, meaning that X windows could be ditched if someone comes up with something better.
5. Open source kernel
6. Kernel can now be compiled by ICC, increasing performance.


Linux Cons

1. Limited Multithread support
2. Poor Virutal Memory Support
3. Does not scale to multiple processors (which is whay Solaris is still preferred when lots of processing power is needed)
4. Big Kernel
5. Security and stability of Kernel lightyears behind that of FreeBSD. I'm not sure but in comparing stability at the kernel level, Windows beats Linux, but I have no evidence to back this up. Correct me if I'm wrong.
6. X windows
7. The GPL, the BSD license would be a superior license for the Linux kernel, which is why I believe the Free BSD 5 kernel is the future is some comapny decides to endorse it and develop with it,

Shinova wrote: Also, which version of Linux is the best out there?

hahaha, so controversial. Well, here's a list of the more popular ones, you should go for what sounds like it's most compatible your usage style. Also note that all Linux distros can have GUIs.

All that said, I myself use Debian exclusively, because it has an exclusive application-management system, apt-get, which I find superior to the Redhat Packet Manager that other distributions use.

http://www.distrowatch.com

Basically an index of all the Linux distros out there. They're also rated...

Lord MJ wrote:Now for some techincal pros and cons that no one but CS will possibly understand.

Windows Pros

1.) Superior Virtual Memory management than linux

A dedicated swap partition is better since no fragmentation of the swapfile

2.) Multi Processor Support

Linux has that too.

3.) Advanced Microkernel

A microkernel is slightly slower than a monolithic kernel. Besides linux stll has support for loadable modules, which are not any slower than if they were compiled in.

4.) Advance Multithreading support

Why is it inferior?

5.) Optimized for x86, (I'm sure Microsoft uses ICC to compile the windows kernel)

I think Microsoft uses their own in-house compiler, otherwise they would advertise that they used ICC. Besides if they don't you can't do anything about it, while on Linux, just get the necessary patches from Intel, fork over 400$ for ICC, or download the free (RMS would kill anyone saying ICC was free, because of the noncommercial thing and open source) noncommercial version:
http://www.intel.com/software/products/ ... noncom.htm, and recompile. And there's no free noncommercial version for windows .

Windows Cons

1.) NTFS is still inferior to UNIX filesystems, FAT32 is from what I understand, what a CS college student would produce, if given only 2 weeks to produce a filesystem.

Well one advantage is that it allows a file owner to allow specific users access without having to contact a sysadmin to create a group

2.) Permissions system is still inferior to UNIX, in addition encrypted filesystem is weak (although I don't believe LINUX has an encrypted filesystem.)

See above. There are many encrypted filesystems for linux:
Loop-AES: http://loop-aes.sf.net
TCFS: http://tcfs.dia.unisa.it/tcfs-faq.html
CryptoAPI: http://www.kerneli.org/index.php
Too lazy to list all the others.

Linux Pros

1. Extendable kernel

2. Superior Filesystem

The standard Ext2 is flaky, but ReiserFS and Ext3 solve that.

3. Runs on a number of different processors

4. Separate from Gui, meaning that X windows could be ditched if someone comes up with something better.

Well there's Fresco(Berlin) but it has no apps. Besides with today's hardware who cares about X's sluggishness

5. Open source kerne

6. Kernel can now be compiled by ICC, increasing performance.

Yeah and you can get ICC free for linux too. And I don't think windows is compiled with ICC. Anyways windows is sluggish.

Linux Cons

1. Limited Multithread support

2. Poor Virutal Memory Support

3. Does not scale to multiple processors (which is whay Solaris is still preferred when lots of processing power is needed)

I'm not sure, but I think 2.4 has solved some problems. I'm also not sure whether or not intel chips can support SMP configurations >8 processors anyways. Linux is the most widely used OS for clustering though.

4. Big Kernel

Who cares unless you are working on embedded systems, and then you can just omit some features. Besides isn't the Windows kernel big because of the GUI?

5. Security and stability of Kernel lightyears behind that of FreeBSD. I'm not sure but in comparing stability at the kernel level, Windows beats Linux, but I have no evidence to back this up. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I think most crashes are due to X apps. Of course linux is less stable than BSD, but BSD is older, and had more time to mature.

6. X windows

Not too bad, bit bloated, but with today's hardware a non-issue. Of course it's an issue for me, since I have shitty hardware. Stability needs to be worked on though.

7. The GPL, the BSD license would be a superior license for the Linux kernel, which is why I believe the Free BSD 5 kernel is the future is some comapny decides to endorse it and develop with it,

They can develop with it now, they just have to open everything they do, unless they make modules that are open, but linked to closed libraries (my winmodem driver works this way. It's a good thing, since we don't want MS or others embracing and extending, do we? However there's an optional "feature" that allows GPL developers to prevent proprietry modules from using the GPL module. This is bad. Fortunately, I don't think anything uses this. Besides somebody already endorsed BSD: Look at Apple.

I think we need to distinguish between competing definitions of stability. If an app crashes in Linux, that's not an OS crash. If the GUI locks up and you have to ctrl-alt-backspace out to the login prompt, that's not an OS crash either. Those are apps. However, in Windows, a GUI crash means a total OS hard-lock.

Similarly, we need to distinguish between the way uptime is measured. *nixers like to brag about uptime in terms of "how long can I go between reboots". Microsoft, on the other hand, brags about uptime in terms of percentage time up vs down. In other words, if a Windows installation runs for a year and takes 3 minutes to reboot every single goddamned week, they brag that their uptime is 99.999% (five nines; that was their stability advertising catch-phrase for quite a while).

Darth Wong wrote:I think we need to distinguish between competing definitions of stability. If an app crashes in Linux, that's not an OS crash. If the GUI locks up and you have to ctrl-alt-backspace out to the login prompt, that's not an OS crash either. Those are apps. However, in Windows, a GUI crash means a total OS hard-lock.

I've crashed the OS from the console several times (running as root, which I shouldn't have done in the first place- stupid flaky SVGAlib apps. I've also managed to crash it running as a normal user running aspell with a dictionary meant for Abiword, which caused it to spawn more and more processes faster than I could kill them. The point is you have to be intentionally stupid or running as root to crash the OS.

Similarly, we need to distinguish between the way uptime is measured. *nixers like to brag about uptime in terms of "how long can I go between reboots". Microsoft, on the other hand, brags about uptime in terms of percentage time up vs down. In other words, if a Windows installation runs for a year and takes 3 minutes to reboot every single goddamned week, they brag that their uptime is 99.999% (five nines; that was their stability advertising catch-phrase for quite a while).

X windows needs to be replaced on BSD and Linux and replaced with a new graphical front end using OpenGL.


It would be like creating OSX for the pc, it would be superior to Linux.



Oh, and Mike, is the gui/os integration present in 2k/XP? I'mnot exactly sure, but I think M$ may have actually improved thier OS engineering here. The only times I've had XP crash is due to flaky harddrives, one of which died totally not too long ago.

I've had Linux freeze once and crash once, on the same harddrive, but I think something else caused that crash, more than likely a kernel fault.