Linux vs Windows


Recommended Posts

You installed a 3 year old OS and a few day old OS and you're surprised that the few day old OS had less updates?

 

If you're going to do these sorts of tests please prioritize logic first, you'd be more accurate testing Windows 8 as it's been out for less than a year.

 

 

As Linux doesn't have all these security holes.

 

Yeah because half the time the folks in charge are so pigheaded they mark security holes as basic bugs, or flat out ignore them. But what do you expect from people with the attitude of Linus.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linux is generally the same, no matter the GNU/Linux distro, so no cherry picking is necessary. What I meant by historical is that bug reports for Kernel 1.x, 2.x and 3.x are grouped together. This make it look like the Kernel is very buggy, but it's actually not different to the NT kernel, bug wise, however the NT Kernel is never grouped together because, in that list, is separated by Windows versions: XP, Vista, 7, 8.

 

A more accurate way to compare them is to separate the kernel versions by milestones: 2.2, 2.5, 2.8, 3.0, etc. just like Windows does: NT 4.x, NT 5.0, 5.1, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2 etc.

http://www.debian.org/security/

No no, 1+ FOUND security issues a day is nothing.

 

And Debian has by far the strictest security policy of all major distro's out there.

 

 

OT: I suggest you try Mint. Linux is a good OS, can be a proper alternative to Windows. But this can often be dependent on hardware. If you never get random hardware/driver issues there is very little to worry about and it just gets down to, can you get used to the alternatives.

You can always go with Windows 8 later. Or dual-boot.  In the end its all a matter of personal preference. With everything moving to the web, the base OS gets less important anyways.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting thread. I've been a Windows user for about 20 years, but am in the process of switching over to Linux. Why? Sure, I have had some issues with Windows 7 and 8. Of course, no operating system is flawless. Even Linux-based ones. I create full disk images daily, so not that big of a deal. For me, it was more of a philosophical thing.

 

Windows & Macs = Profit is king.

Linux = Community-based. Donations are certainly welcomed, but that's not the overriding concern. Canonical is a possible exception, I am discovering.

 

Anyway, after playing around with Ubuntu and Mint, which like so many distros are based on Debian, http://futurist.se/gldt/, I just decided to simply go with Debian itself. Slackware & Red Hat and their offshoots are beyond my skill level and appear more geared for businesses. Anyway, my needs aren't that great, and I've had no problem finding programs that allow me to get things done. I'm like,  "Do I really need Word or Photoshop?" Honestly, no.

 

Sorry for rambling on here. It's just feels cool to be a part of something, as opposed to being a dollar sign. Use whatever works for your needs. For me, though, Linux just 'feels' right and the transition has been quite liberating. :)

 

PS. I will say this: For what it's worth, I never even considered leaving Windows until Windows 8.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linux, great as a server, but falls way short as a Desktop based system.  I've ran into so many issues with different distros (a lot have been driver related sure, but still).  Linux has never felt as smooth as Windows, at least for me that is.

The linux desktop can be just as smooth, but it heavily depends on:

 

1. The compositor

2. The video driver

 

For example, Intel's linux driver has excellent 3d compositing performance, and excellent 2d performance. Running any composited desktop on intel is very smooth. On my laptop with intel hd4000 graphics, currently running ubuntu with unity I don't feel that its any less smooth than windows/aero on my desktop, and I don't get any video tearing or anything. I've also found intel's linux driver to be very stable and trouble free in general, ever since getting a laptop with intel graphics my linux experience has improved massively over my old laptop that had an ati card.

 

However, with some video drivers on linux, you can get quite poor compositing performance. In my experience the biggest offender here is AMD's catalyst driver. I recently tried linux on my gaming pc for the hell of it, and it has an AMD 6950 (I've no intention of switching away from windows on my gaming pc at this time, at least as long as I have an AMD card :p, although some of the games I play most are now native on linux, such as l4d2), and with the catalyst driver you basically have 2 options: A smooth desktop with tons of video tearing, or a tear-free desktop with tons of lag (because the only way to get tear-free compositing with catalyst, is to use catalyst's very poorly performing "tear-free desktop" option) . But with the OSS AMD driver the desktop is very smooth and tear-free. I also found catalyst had quite poor 2d performance compared to intel's driver. Driver support on linux has come a long way, but unfortunately a few drivers still suck. Intel's OSS driver is very solid, as is Nvidia's proprietary driver. AMD's OSS driver is decent these days too, and is very smooth for desktop usage, but still doesn't have great performance in games.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As ZakO said, it's not surprising Linux Mint 15 doesn't have many updates considering it was released 3 days ago - if anything, it's surprising it has any updates at all! 

 

Mint is based on Ubuntu 13.04 and that was released in April. I had 128 updates at first update. Please learn a bit about the subject before you post nonsense like that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

PS. I will say this: For what it's worth, I never even considered leaving Windows until Windows 8.

 

I work in a Windows shop every day. I still like Windows. I've used Windows 7 since a couple of days when it came out. Still think it's a great OS. But I've realized that I use mainly open source or free software at home. Since that is the case I thought that I might as well switch to Linux. The main kicker for me was when I finally learned how to rip DVDs properly (and easily) in Linux. I have a huge DVD collection that I have been working on converting to MP4. 

 

I think Windows 8 is a joke and I would never spend another second installing it on any of my stuff. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I look forward to seeing your review. :)

 

Sorry, I hate Windows 8. Just my personal preference. But, yes, Windows 7 is quite old. A lot more updates.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Mint is based on Ubuntu 13.04 and that was released in April. I had 128 updates at first update. Please learn a bit about the subject before you post nonsense like that. 

Then you're still comparing a three month old release with a nearly four year old one and the point still stands. It's a silly comparison and there's nothing to draw from it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Then you're still comparing a three month old release with a nearly four year old one and the point still stands. It's a silly comparison and there's nothing to draw from it.

I could have installed Mint 13 which is based on Ubuntu LTS 12.04 and I would have seen many more updates, but it wouldn't have have taken nearly as long as Windows to install them. Windows has/had a big problem with updates in Windows 7 taking so long to install, at least on the machines I've installed Windows 7 on. Still, this was just my experience installing the two systems side by side. Anyone that doesn't like it or doesn't agree with me is free to do their own experiment and post their results. :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, yeah, because Windows has to do upgrade 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, wherein Linux, can skip from nothing to 5. There is less to update, too. As Linux doesn't have all these security holes.

 

When less than 1% people on earth use Linux as their primary OS, no one will bother to look for 'security holes'. Saying, as its definitive that their are no security holes in linux is foolish.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When less than 1% people on earth use Linux as their primary OS, no one will bother to look for 'security holes'. Saying, as its definitive that their are no security holes in linux is foolish.

 

Well, it's only going to get more popular. A lot of people on here are moving away from Windows. I guess security holes was the wrong word. Think I meant vulnerability. With 1% using Linux, they are not much a target as Windows, or even OSX is.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I work in a Windows shop every day. I still like Windows. I've used Windows 7 since a couple of days when it came out. Still think it's a great OS. But I've realized that I use mainly open source or free software at home. Since that is the case I thought that I might as well switch to Linux. The main kicker for me was when I finally learned how to rip DVDs properly (and easily) in Linux. I have a huge DVD collection that I have been working on converting to MP4. 

 

I think Windows 8 is a joke and I would never spend another second installing it on any of my stuff. 

A lot of people are unable to realize that you can like both.. :)

 

I've used Ubuntu since 5.05, and really loved seeing it grow into what it is now. 

 

 

3vakjj.jpg

When less than 1% people on earth use Linux as their primary OS, no one will bother to look for 'security holes'. Saying, as its definitive that their are no security holes in linux is foolish.

Considering the majority of the internet runs off Linux, there are TONS of hackers looking for security holes. Some you hear about and some you don't because the hacker doesn't want to release his method and wants to do harm(steal info, add to botnet, ect)

Source:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/03/01/march-2013-web-server-survey.html

 

If it is Apache, 99.9% it is running on Linux

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Personally, when I need to install Windows 7, the first thing I make sure I do is get a Windows 7 ISO image with SP1 already integrated, this reduces a significant amount of updating you will have to do, although post SP1 updates are quite a lot, on a reasonably fast 1 MB connection shared, I was able to update 90% of the OS within 1 hour. I do the same with apps like Office, you can easily get Office 2007 with SP3 integrated or Office 2010 with SP1, which further reduces the amount of restarts and checking Windows Update.

 

As someone noted, you can't compare a 4 year old OS with a 1 month old Linux distro. Also, your focus on having to manually do the updates is the problem. You can just let Automatic Updates handle the update process for you while you go do something else like install your apps. You don't have to stop doing what you want to do just to update the computer. If you don't want to be disturbed, just set Windows Update to download updates but just when to install them. So you can choose to install when shutting down the computer.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Linux does tend to apply updates much faster than windows in my experience though, mainly because can do it "all in one go" and it doesn't have. Updating a windows install that needs 100+ updates, you will need to reboot and check for updates multiple times to finish the whole process (I recently fresh installed win7 on my desktop, with a non sp1 disk, I had to reboot like 4 times and check for updates afterwards every-time too before it actually installed everything). A linux install, even a very old one, the package manager installs all the updates at once and only one reboot is required. I've never seen a linux distro that I've had to reboot multiple times and check for updates multiple times regardless of the age of install...

 

I would agree that since win7 is many years old now, a fresh install taking a while to update is expected and comparing it to a new linux distro is not fair, but I do think having to reboot and keep checking for updates to actually finish the entire process is pretty silly, it would be nice if windows updates could just install all updates at once.

 

As Mr. Dee mentioned on my machine I do always set windows to download updates but not install them, this way windows update never "bothers" me while I'm trying to use the computer. The only issue I have with windows update these days is the speed.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Considering the majority of the internet runs off Linux, there are TONS of hackers looking for security holes. Some you hear about and some you don't because the hacker doesn't want to release his method and wants to do harm(steal info, add to botnet, ect)

Source:

http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2013/03/01/march-2013-web-server-survey.html

 

If it is Apache, 99.9% it is running on Linux

 

Think he means on the desktop side, not the server end.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...Linux Mint 15 has been out for 3 days, Windows 7 has been out for 3 years (nearly 4 years), it's obviously going to have significantly more updates to install. It's also going to depend on your connection and computer speed, a fresh Windows 7 install + updates hasn't ever taken anywhere near 4 hours for me (90 minutes max).

 

Windows 8 would be a slightly fairer comparison, around 20 minutes to install + 10 minutes to install a few updates. 

 

 

This is probably the most important part in this whole thread. comparing a t3 year old OS to a just released rolling release.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, it's only going to get more popular. A lot of people on here are moving away from Windows. I guess security holes was the wrong word. Think I meant vulnerability. With 1% using Linux, they are not much a target as Windows, or even OSX is.

 

More popular? Where? I still see Macs and PCs with Windows sold at stores and online. I still only see Windows and Mac apps sold at stores and online. I still only see third party companies support OSX and Windows. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

Well, yeah, because Windows has to do upgrade 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, wherein Linux, can skip from nothing to 5. There is less to update, too. As Linux doesn't have all these security holes.

 

Wrong. At least in the case of Ubuntu. You have to upgrade through each release. If you go from 10.04 to 12.04 for example, big mess. I'm just gonna post this here and say /thread.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Think he means on the desktop side, not the server end.

Right.. but Linux is Linux for the most part.. And it is one of the most used servers on the planet.. Hackers get more out getting exploits for linux than they do Windows depending on motive.. He post sounded like no one cares about linux but no one uses it on the end user side. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wrong. At least in the case of Ubuntu. You have to upgrade through each release. If you go from 10.04 to 12.04 for example, big mess. I'm just gonna post this here and say /thread.

 

I am not talking about version upgrades. I am talking about software upgrades withn the same version.

 

More popular? Where? I still see Macs and PCs with Windows sold at stores and online. I still only see Windows and Mac apps sold at stores and online. I still only see third party companies support OSX and Windows. 

 

I never said it's out in stores/online yet.  This is still self proceived. Third parties may not fully support Linux, but they do have open-source people working on it left and right. And it is pretty darn close to the big boys.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm just gonna post this here and say /thread.

This article is 7 years old and many things it claims are outdated, like multi-user/permissions management on Windows. Its discussion about usability ("user-friendliness") is ill-informed and a trite attempt at defending bad user interfaces ("coders don't use Word, hence Word isn't for professionals" - what?). I wish people would stop referring to it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Wrong. At least in the case of Ubuntu. You have to upgrade through each release. If you go from 10.04 to 12.04 for example, big mess. I'm just gonna post this here and say /thread.

it was a decent read but

claiming that Linux is completely immune to malware and such.

That closed source developers don't use their own products. (Ye I'm sure MS internally uses Open/Libre Office, Amazon Cloud and every desktop in the company comes with Ubuntu)

Comparing Vi and MS Words for coders...

And the last part kinda made up for that :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

There's only one simple reason I always refer to that article and that is, they are not the same. And comparing them as if they were is just plain stupid. It's like comparing flying a helicopter as opposed to driving somewhere. They both get you to your destination but not in the same way.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This topic is now closed to further replies.