[dragon513]

This is a straight copy and paste from my blog. Comments on my blog would be also appreciated

I’m a frequent visitor to JustLinux, LinuxForums, and UbuntuForums.
And occasionally I run into threads asking the reason of using linux instead of Windows.
One of the popular answers are ’stability’ along with freedom.

And I just can’t agree with their statements.

The first time I tried linux for the first time was almosta decade ago. I was still a 4th grade in elementary school and I didn’t know much back than. I would install linux on my computer on a Sunday morning, play around a bit and back to Windows by the afternoon.
Since than I’ve been a occasional linux user. I would use linux for 2~3 months, but Windows is the one I always ended up with.

Currently I’m dual-booting Windows XP Prof. and Ubuntu Linux 5.10 on my AMD64 3000+ system.
For the past a few months I used Ubuntu extensively and it was the most easy to use linux distro I ever tried.
Installation was breeze, and getting softwares through apt-get could not get any easier. The hardware detection was excellent. Except for the wireless and 3d, all the componets were working right out of the box. Plus the support from the UbuntuForums was more than I expected. Whenver I encounter problems, I would go search for solution and in most cases I would fix whatever the problem without much hassle.

However, I don’t know why but Firefox crashed a couple of times. I looked for solution from the forums I visit, and I couldn’t find real solution to this. The best guess was the Macromedia Flash plugin is causing trouble.

Anways, this is my story with MS Windows. I used MSDOS when I was seven, and I remember using Windows 3.1 briefly. I also used 95 for a coule of years and used 98 until the Windows 2000 came out.

And it was Windows 2000 that really brought the big change.
I must agree that up to Windows 98, blue-screen-of-death was more familar than my mom’s face to me.
However, I have seen only a handful number of blue-screen-of-death since using Windows 2000 and none of them were serious enough to damage my data in harddrive.
Mind you that I perform disk defragment, clean up temporary files and scan viruses or mal softwares regulary.

There is no slow down or system lockups even when I work on memory hogging applications such as Photoshop or 3dMax on Windows XP.
Regardless of platform, on my taskbar I have music player and MSN(Gaim) and 2~3 webbrowsers each having 5+ tabs.
Except for occasional Firefox crash on linux, I have not experienced anything too bad on either of them.

So what in heaven are those MS hater talking about?
I would say stability of Windows is about the same, if not better, compared to linux for general purpose.
The only possible reasons I could come up with is that they don’t maintain their system properly.
With proper care Windows envirnment is much more reliable and fun to use due to all those good softwares.

Except linux is free(OK, free as in freedom and free as in $), I don’t find it really appealing.
Or… am I missing something big?

[a thing]

I remember every program made by MS that wasn't the OS as the whole crashed like every other day.

And what do you mean except free?

[chopin1810]

No. Linux is not as stable as Windows XP. It just isn't. Nor is it near as fast. I have a rather old computer system, and I just don't know how people find XP so slow. It's faster than any other operating system I've tried.
Linux, in this current situation, can never be as stable or compatible as Windows XP is. This is just the truth, because, in this current situation, hardware companies just refuse to provide enough information for fill compatibility.
Now...
I didn't mention security, product activation, hidden processes, monopolization, poorly designed internals, business models or trusted computing in any of the above paragraphs, now did I?
1.) Linux is, most certainly, without a doubt, much more secure than Windows. Even if a Linux virus were written, it would not get very far. It would violate far too many permissions.
2.) Product activation is silly. I want one good reason why Microsoft needs my address and phone number.
3.) I can't count the amount of hidden processes Windows XP has. I wonder what they are doing...
4.) Is it anything near ethical to run 95% of the computer market? Is it ethical to assist communist China in violating human rights?
5.) Windows XP does not crash easily, but it is very easy to bring down the entire system in one click of the mouse with the idea of the registry. This is a good example of a poorly designed internal operating system mechanism.
6.) It has become very obvious that the open source model makes isolating bugs and security holes much easier than the closed source model. It has also become very obvious that Microsoft does not tell us about all of the security holes it finds, or otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more downloads on Windows Update.
7.) Give me one good reason that product activation helps protect my computer.
Take all of the above arguments and you have an excellent case for the use of Linux.

[Schrödenberg]

If you want my two cents, four variables come into play here: the quality of the OS code, the quality of the software running, the quality of the drivers, and the quality of the hardware.

The Windows 9x line was a piece of crap, but the NT lineage was quite stable in my experiences. Windows XP got more or less everything right, and it rarely crashes on me, even on the crappiest $5-to-manfuacture, made-in-China POS, using almost only Microsoft's generic drivers.

As for Linux, it's a mixed bag. Not all distros are created equal. So far, anything Debian-based has yet to crash on me.

So far as security and whatever else goes, there are many factors involved. For a closed-source OS that's used on 95% of desktop computers in the world, I'd say Microsoft is doing a very good job. Heck, since SP2, I haven't had any issues with spyware or malware of any sort whatsoever. (At least none that I know of, but I use 3 different antispyware apps, and two AV apps [with one always disabled while the other is running, of course]).

On a side note: before anybody flames me for my signature, just know that I'm not completely serious about it and that it's meant in good humor.

[nalg0rath]

Originally Posted by chopin1810

No. Linux is not as stable as Windows XP. It just isn't. Nor is it near as fast. I have a rather old computer system, and I just don't know how people find XP so slow. It's faster than any other operating system I've tried.
Linux, in this current situation, can never be as stable or compatible as Windows XP is. This is just the truth, because, in this current situation, hardware companies just refuse to provide enough information for fill compatibility.
Now...
I didn't mention security, product activation, hidden processes, monopolization, poorly designed internals, business models or trusted computing in any of the above paragraphs, now did I?
1.) Linux is, most certainly, without a doubt, much more secure than Windows. Even if a Linux virus were written, it would not get very far. It would violate far too many permissions.
2.) Product activation is silly. I want one good reason why Microsoft needs my address and phone number.
3.) I can't count the amount of hidden processes Windows XP has. I wonder what they are doing...
4.) Is it anything near ethical to run 95% of the computer market? Is it ethical to assist communist China in violating human rights?
5.) Windows XP does not crash easily, but it is very easy to bring down the entire system in one click of the mouse with the idea of the registry. This is a good example of a poorly designed internal operating system mechanism.
6.) It has become very obvious that the open source model makes isolating bugs and security holes much easier than the closed source model. It has also become very obvious that Microsoft does not tell us about all of the security holes it finds, or otherwise there would be a hell of a lot more downloads on Windows Update.
7.) Give me one good reason that product activation helps protect my computer.
Take all of the above arguments and you have an excellent case for the use of Linux.

Unlike you I have the experience of Windows XP to be both slower and less stable than any Linux distro I use. This is MOST evident when I use slower machines as my four 486s. Three of these computers have a uptime over 100 days which is much more than I ever have been abe to reach with a XP system that I use day-to-day.

It is also contradicting the basics of computing to state that Windows ever could run the same programs as fast as a (self-compiled) optimized OS (as you can create with Linux) can do. So if you feel that Windows is faster, you can compile your own (LFS) distro and optimize it for your computer.

[borromini]

Originally Posted by chopin1810

No. Linux is not as stable as Windows XP. It just isn't. Nor is it near as fast. I have a rather old computer system, and I just don't know how people find XP so slow. It's faster than any other operating system I've tried.

I suppose you're running KDE or Gnome on your Debian box? Those DE's can make your system really unresponsive... And yes, Linux boots slower (I know... You can resolve that though but it takes some tinkering). Even with light DE's like Xfce, it will still be fairly slow (but much faster than KDE and the likes).

Linux, in this current situation, can never be as stable or compatible as Windows XP is. This is just the truth, because, in this current situation, hardware companies just refuse to provide enough information for fill compatibility.

Linux itself is very stable. What is not always as stable are the apps running on top of it, or the X server (which you can shut down easily: ctrl+alt+backspace). As for compatibility - it is very easy to be compatible if you are ruling the desktop market. If a sw developer wants to sell he has to make sure his products run on windows. Not the other way around. We have to beg for 3D drivers from ATi or nVidia...
When it comes to compatibility Linux is unrivaled (maybe BSD's are also but I know nothing about them). Software developed for linux has been ported to PPC, x86-64, SPARC, and numerous other (exotic) hardware platforms. Software that originated on linux will run on Windows, BSD, ... On many Unixes. Go and find me an app developed on windows that has decent Linux support out of the box. You won't find many. I found linux apps like xchat, wget, gaim, and so on, all have a win32 equivalent... Of course not every single linux app does, but it's quite clear this community has another (more open) mentality than people developing windows-based sw.

[Cabhan]

borromini speaks the truth. I have NEVER had Linux crash on me for any reason other than I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing.

I have had X crash on me before, and every now and then there's a Firefox bug, but Linux itself has been stable on a level I've never before experienced.

Also, in Windows, it takes about 10 minutes for my computer to fully start now. Which is just annoying as hell.


That said, I will agree that most Windows problems are caused by user stupidity. I am a safe user, I keep a firewall and regularly-updated anti-spyware and anti-virus, and I have never been infected or gotten spyware.


The main issue here is, as said by borromini, cooperation of hardware manufacturers. People don't need to provide to Linux, so often don't. However, most software MUST work for Windows in order to be at all acceptable in the market.

But if hardware manufacturers / all developers would provide specifications and let Linux folk write their own stuff (not even requiring the devs to do it), all would be happy. If the devs want to write Linux versions, that would be even more awesome.

Though not 100% applicable, I am reminded of the game Neverwinter Nights. They provide a Linux version of the game, which to this day, is one of the most-recommended games that I see to Linux gamers. There is this whole untapped market, and if developers would reach out to it, they might find a waiting and willing audience.

[cayalee]

some people would say that it is your choice of ubuntu that renders your argument poor
nah seriously, linux for me is mega stable. as you say, windows can be good if you do regular anti virus/spyware and defragging etc, which is fair enough. however i'm a believer in the school of thought that "shit, ive just paid £200 for something, why do i now need to pay more for bits to make it work and spend time and effort keeping it running?!?". from that POV linux/mac/bsd is awesome.
i've not ha the 'pleasure' of windows xp, but agree with your point that win2k is better than previous versions.(although its not really that hard!)
even still, linux for me is a lot more stable than my win2k partition and all its got on is games, netscape, AV and ASW

[SpaceSquad]

I am not even gonna comment on some things posted here....

[winter]

its stable for me at moment, anyway what is it with these os debates, is it me or does any one find these debates to be crap. You know on essays and papers some of ye may of writen you manipulate the argument to your own end.