Presented by :

Debdutta Sinha (CSE/2008/039)

Sandipan Das (CSE/2008/049)
 Long gone are the days when people used to sit in
front of black screens with white text messages and
when a handful of commands had to be memorized by
everyone…

Computer operating systems have evolved greatly

during the last two decades and today we have the ease
of having Graphical User Interfaces (GUIs) at our
disposal doing all the tedious command executions in
the background…
One common fact between Windows and Linux is
that they are both popular Operating Systems and
there’s no bad blood here.

An Operating System is a software

consisting of tools to manage a computer’s
resources and provides an environment for
executing programs.
 Microsoft’s Windows was first introduced in
1983 as a GUI for DOS. Since then, its interface,
responsiveness and functionality have been improved
significantly. Today it has offerings for both the
Computer and Mobile Device market.
It is characterized by its
•Unique File systems (NTFS and FAT)
•Hybrid kernel
•Standalone GUI
•Registry to store settings
 Linux is an UNIX-like operating system. It is
Command Line Interface (CLI) based. The development
of the X Window System, a GUI shell that runs on top of
the Linux CLI, was due to the Free Software Foundation
(FSF) software foundation for their GNU project. It is
characterized by
•Journalling File systems (EXT2, EXT3)
•Monolithic kernel
•Bloat-free computing
•Simplified system configuration
 Linux was never made to compete with
Windows whereas Windows was originally coded to
compete with Macintosh.
It is the Linux community backed by the GNU
project that stood up to have a completely free and
open source alternative to commercial software like
Windows but with its evolution its fans soon started
drawing hatred towards the offerings of commercial
software companies.
 A direct comparison of Windows and Linux has
always been a controversial and heavily debatable
topic. Based on usage patterns, the main points of
comparison are • Recovery
•Interface • Target Audience
•File structure
•Networking
•Platform
•Integration
•Security
 WINDOWS LINUX
• Has a standalone GUI • Uses a GUI shell that runs
on top of the CLI
• Almost any operation can
• Not all operations are
be done via the Terminal
possible through the
Command Prompt
• A choice between several
Desktop Environments like
• No choice of Desktop GNOME, KDE, XFCE,
Environment LXDE, etc.
 WINDOWS LINUX
• File systems use storage • File systems use storage
table based approach tree based approach
• Fragmentation often occurs • No or minimal
• Files and directories are fragmentation
treated separately • Directories are treated as
• Virtual memory is special files
allocated in a file on disk • Virtual memory is allocated
• Doesn’t offer encryption in a separate partition
natively (except for NTFS) • Offers encryption natively
 WINDOWS LINUX
• Doesn’t have built-in • Has built-in support for
support for many protocols most protocols
• Windows clients cannot • Linux clients can access
access files or folders in a Windows servers using
Linux server protocols like NetBIOS
(Samba)
• Network configuration is • Network configuration
fairly straightforward and may not appear simple to
easy for newbies many but has several
advanced features
 WINDOWS LINUX
• Shared libraries for • Shared libraries are
programs called Dynamic available throughout the
Link Libraries (DLLs) are system (static approach)
present in their respective
installation folders
• Development tools are
• Development tools are
focused towards cross-
mainly focused towards
platform applications
Windows
• Uses OpenGL for 3D

• Uses DirectX for 3D

 WINDOWS LINUX
• Device drivers are provided • Some vendors contribute
by Microsoft or written by to free or provide
the hardware manufacturer proprietary drivers and the
rest are coded by the
kernel developers so any
• Requires a reboot after developer can fix bugs.
driver installations or • Reboot is necessary only
updates after a kernel update
• Hardware is not shown as a • Hardware is shown as
part of the file system files in file system
 WINDOWS LINUX
• As of 2009 well over 2
million Malware programs
target Windows
• Being closed-source, only
Microsoft employees can
fix problems
• File system permissions
are minimalist and often
bypassable
 WINDOWS LINUX
• Windows NT and • Since the GUI runs
subsequent versions are separately, the device
technically more stable drivers are loaded in the
kernel itself and a result it
• Recovery is possible almost never crashes
through the Recovery • Recovery is possible using
Console or using Safe Chroot found in Live
Mode CDs
 There are a few departments in which has
Windows no competition. Two of them being Gaming
and Workstation software.
There have been numerous attempts to overcome
these shortcomings using emulators like WINE which
aim to run Windows applications natively on Linux.
Although Windows dominates the PC OS market
with a 91% overall share, Linux has and always will be
the overwhelming favourite for supercomputers,
hobbyists, geeks and network analysts.
 The choice of OS clearly depends on our usage
scenarios. The GNU project’s objectives are noble
enough to award it the win but at the same time
Windows’ market share is overwhelming.

So we consider leaving it to you…

(No more controversies this time)
 CREDITS
• Wikipedia
• Google
• Linux Journal
• LINUX For You
• MSDN
• Linus Torvalds‘ blog