You have all heard and accepted that Linux is better than Windows. But here are my personal experiences with the underlying reasons:
Ⅰ. Reliability
Linux is based on Unix, which has proven itself to be reliable. Anyone who is tired of random program crashes, data loss, and BSODs (and intelligently so) should switch now. As Scott Granneman worded it here, “to mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.”
Ⅱ. Performance
Linux’s superior performance is irrefutable. The Linux Kernel does not eat every chunk of RAM it can find. It does not latch onto every byte of HDD space it can find. It does not arbitrarily and unnecessarily decide to hog the CPU at random intervals. It also does not make dents in its users’ patience.
Ⅲ. Filesystems
ext, Reiser, and other *nix (Unix-like) filesystem formats are faster and more reliable that Microsoft “solutions”. Examine any non-Microsoft-sponsored (the EU recently fined Microsoft for falsifying a Windows‐versus‐Linux marketing campaign) benchmarks to understand me. The Microsoft-built NTFS and FAT filesystem formats also support limited filename characters: why the hell are these characters not supported?
/ \ : * ? > < | ”
Ⅳ. Security
Harmful software for Windows is abundant—but that is not necessarily Microsoft’s fault. The absence of decent built-in security software for Windows is Microsoft’s fault. The security holes that are present on a Windows setup with default configuration are appalling. NTFS’s security abilities are very limited (executable permissions based on filename extensions⁈), Windows Firewall is notorious, and Windows Defender is the only feature left (which is admittedly mediocre). Users who choose Microsoft Outlook are demanding loss of data.
Ⅴ. Cost
Windows Vista Home Basic costs an average of 90USD (I struggled to find this info on Microsoft’s website—the beloved standard technique of exciting potential customers before they see the outrageous price); almost all Linux distributions (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, Gentoo, Knoppix, openSUSE, Puppy Linux, CentOS, etc) are completely free. Little more needs mentioning.
Ⅵ. Applications
Is Windows Notepad good? Microsoft loves to keep users unaware of alternatives; before I tried Linux six years ago I would have agreed. Windows has Paint, Notepad, Calculator, Wordpad, Internet Explorer, and other utterly useless software. Linux has the Gimp, gEdit, Geany, Vim, Gnome Calculator, Pidgin, Firefox, Rhythmbox, EasyTag, VLC, Rose Garden, Blender 3D, Deluge, Scribus, Swfdec, Revelation, Planner, and thousands more—all on the installation disc and all optional. If you need something else, download it from the distribution’s repository for free without even opening a web browser. The tools that manage your installed software (Yum, RPM, and others) can update all of your software automatically.
Ⅶ. Arrogance
Windows has a habit of insisting it understands its users’ wishes more than its users do. “Are you sure?” “There is a problem with your configuration.” Software should never think it knows what the user wants. As part of its arrogance, it deliberately limits changeable settings.
Ⅷ. Bootloading
Windows Vista shipped with my Dell laptop. I was initially tempted to remove it but didn’t: now Grub is handling both OSs—I boot to Windows for a few games that don’t work under Wine and boot to Linux for everything else. Fedora’s installer, Anaconda, handles the partitioning and bootloader installation automatically.
Ⅸ. Evilness
Microsoft is evil. Their EEE philosophy is entirely anticompetitive—Republicans often support corporations’ market control because they “earned it”, but Microsoft’s proficiency in stealing ideas is anticompetitive, illegal, and wrong. They close their source code and attempt to bind users to their products. As a company, their goal is to receive money from you; as a collaboration of non-profit organisations, Linux is there to make an OS.
Tags: comparison, linux, os, windows