Linux Operating System

Windows Vs Linux

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 Pre-installation
Windows Linux
• Pre-installed by default on • Pre-installed by default on
almost all new desktop PCs very few new desktop PCs.
January 2010
• Notes
• Microsoft's agreement with
vendors to sell only the
Windows OS is being challenged
in court by French consumer
rights groups

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 Server market share
Windows Linux Note
• 7.3% • 33.8% April 2009

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Top 500 supercomputer operating system
family share
Windows Linux
• 1.0% (absolute 5) • 88.6% (absolute 443), the
14 fastest supercomputers
run Linux

• June 2009

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 Graphical user interface

Windows Linux
• The window manager • A number of
is the desktop environments are
Desktop Window Man available, of which GNOME
ager and KDE are the most widely
on Windows Vista. used. By default, they use as
The desktop their window managers
environment may be Metacity and KWin
respectively, though these can
modified by a variety
be replaced by other window
of third party products
managers such as
such as WindowBlinds
Compiz Fusion

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 Command-line interface

Windows Linux
• The Command Prompt • Linux is strongly integrated
exists to provide direct with the system console.
communication The command line can be
between the user and used to recover the system
the operating system. if the graphics subsystem
fails. A large number of
Unix shells exists. with the
majority being "
Bourne shell compatible"
shells, of which the most
widely used is GNU Bash.
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A command-line interface, typically displayed in a
system console or terminal emulator window, allows users to tell
the computer to perform tasks ranging from the simple (for
example, copying a file) to the complex (compiling and installing
new software).
Shells are powerful but can be confusing to new users. Some
complex tasks are more easily accomplished through shells than
through a GUI, such as piping, or scripting. See also:
Comparison of computer shells.

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 Ease of Install

Windows Linux
• On Windows Server • Varies greatly by
2003 and prior, the distribution. Most
installation is divided distributions intended for
into two stages; the new or intermediate users
first, text-mode; the provide simple graphical
second, graphical.On installers. General purpose
Windows Vista and oriented distributions offer
newer, the installation a live CD or GUI installer (
is single stage, and SuSE, Debian, Pardus,
graphical. Pclinuxos, Mandriva,
Ubuntu, Fedora etc.),
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 Drivers
Windows Linux
• The Windows installation media • Linux kernels in most distributions
usually contains enough drivers include the majority of drivers
to make the OS functional. To this available as modules, hardware is
end, "generic" drivers may be detected and drivers loaded at boot
used to provide basic with usually little or no user
functionality. Drivers for these interaction required.usually the
drivers are included in the kernel
devices can later be upgraded
(open-source), and therefore do not
from the manufacturer. Windows
require additional media or any user
Update may also contain updated interaction. A few hardware
drivers that can be installed after manufactures (Broadcom, Nvidia)
the base OS is in place. have proprietary drivers which
require manual installation.

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 Pre-installed software
Windows Linux
• Some multimedia and home use • All main distributions
software (IE, Media Player, Notepad,
WordPad, Paint…) plus OEM bundled contain numerous
software. Windows Vista Includes IE7, programs: multimedia,
Windows Mail, Windows Media Center,
etc. depending on which edition is graphics, internet, office
purchased. It does not include Office suites, games, system
suites or advanced multimedia software
utilities and alternative
• Microsoft's methods of bundling
software were deemed illegal in the case desktop environments.
United States v. Microsoft Some distributions
specialise in education,
games, or security.

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 Not pre-installed software
• Windows • Linux
• A massive pool of both • A massive pool of free software
proprietary software (including and some proprietary software
shareware and freeware) and covering a wide range of use. A
free software. Programs usually come Microsoft employee wrote in an
with the required libraries and are
internal report in 1998 that "Most
normally installed easily.
of the primary apps that people
• Uninstallation can be of varying
require when they move to Linux
difficulty depending on which of
many installer methods were used,
are already available for
components and registry entries may free.Using free Windows-
be left behind compatibility layers like Wine,
some Windows software can also
be run

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Linux distributions can not lawfully include
MP3 or MPEG-4 file decoders in a majority
of countries, as it would violate the
Patent Cooperation Treaty. There is
nothing preventing a user from installing
these decoders, however the user
assumes all liability for installing said
pieces of software. Media players (such as
Rhythmbox)) for free alternative
audio/video formats are available in Linux,
but these players are unable to decode
patented formats, such as MP3, without
installing additional plugin

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 Partitioning
Windows Linux
• Expanding NTFS partitions is • Most file systems support
possible without problems, resizing partitions without
and on Vista it is possible to losing data. LVM provide
shrink partitions as well. dynamic partitioning. All
Third party tools are Linux distributions have
available that have more bundled partitioning
features than the built-in software such as fdisk or
partitioning tools. gparted

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 File systems
Windows Linux
• Natively supported: NTFS, • Natively supported: ext2, ext3,
FAT, ISO 9660, UDF, and ext4, ReiserFS, FAT, ISO 9660,
UDF, NFS, NTFS (incomplete), JFS,
others; 3rd-party drivers XFS and others; many additional
available for ext2, ext3, filesystems (most notably NTFS
reiserfs, HFS, and others using NTFS-3g, and ZFS) are
• Windows can read and write with available using FUSE.
Ext2 and Ext3 file systems with
third-party drivers such as
FS-driver or ext2fsd; and ReiserFS
through rfstool and related
programs.

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 Boot Loader
Windows Linux
• NTLDR in Windows Server 2003 and • May boot to multiple operating
prior. Graphical configuration tools systems through numerous
are available for both, such as bootloaders such as LILO and
EasyBCD for the Windows Boot GRUB. With these, it is possible to
Manager and MSConfig for NTLDR,
choose among multiple installed
which can chain load multiple non-NT
kernel images at boot time.
environments, including Linux, by
referring to volume boot records Graphical configuration tools for
from those environments saved on GRUB are available including
the Windows partition KGRUBEditor (KDE) and GrubConf (
GNOME). GRUB can also accept
arbitrary, one-time configurations
at boot time via the GRUB prompt

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 Boot Loader
• GRUB and LILO also support booting to non-
Unix operating systems via chain loading; for a
Windows and Linux dual-boot system, it is
often easiest to install Windows first and then
Linux because Linux installers such as
Ubuntu's installer will easily and fully
automatically detect and set up other
operating systems for dual/multiple boot with
Linux.
 Installation
• Linux distributions were said to be difficult for the average user to install.[citation needed]
However, easy-to-use installers were becoming common on the major distributions already
by the beginning of the twenty-first century. The main Linux distributions include graphical
package managers which assist the user in searching for packages and installing them
graphically (e.g., Fedora's PackageKit, and Debian and Ubuntu's Synaptic Package Manager).
When package managers are used the user saves time as there is no need of surfing to web
pages, downloading the appropriate packages, and installing them; the package manager
handles all downloading, installing, resolving of dependencies, and conflict resolution.[42]
• Today, most distributions[citation needed] have simplified the installation and offer a “Live CD
” system allowing users to boot fully functional Linux systems directly from a CD or DVD with
the option of installing them on the hard drive. This enables a user to evaluate a distribution
for either software or hardware compatibility with no permanent modification to their
computer.
• The Windows install process and most general-use Linux distributions use a wizard to guide
users through the install process. Windows often comes pre-installed while a Linux
distribution has to be chosen and installed, but one can argue that the installation of Linux
nowadays is no more difficult than configuration of a pre-installed Windows
Accessibility and usability
Windows Linux
• A study released in 2003 by
Relevantive AG indicates
that “The usability of Linux
as a desktop system was
judged to be nearly equal to
that of Windows XP”

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 Consistency between versions
Windows Linux
• User interaction with • Consistency ranges from high
software is usually to poor between
distributions, versions,
consistent between window managers/desktop
versions, releases, and environments, and
editions. programs. Software is
generally highly user-
customizable, and the user
may keep the customizations
between versions.

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Consistency between applications
Windows Linux
• All Microsoft software • Highly consistent within KDE
follows the same guidelines and GNOME. However the
for GUI, although not all vast amount of additional
software developed for software that comes with a
Windows by third parties distribution is sourced from
follows these GUI elsewhere; i
guidelines. As stated above,
backports tend to follow the
guidelines from the newer
operating system.

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 General stability
Windows Linux
• Windows operating systems • A Linux window manager, a
based on the NT kernel key component of the X
(including all currently Window-based GUI system,
supported versions of desktop can be highly stable
Windows) are technically
much more stable than some
older versions (including
Windows 3.1 and 95/98).
Installing unsigned or beta
drivers can lead to decreased
system stability

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 Downtime
Windows Linux
• Reboots are usually • Linux itself needs to restart
required after system only for kernel updates.[51]
However, a special utility
and driver updates.
can be used to load the new
Microsoft has its kernel and execute it
hotpatching technology, without a hardware reset (
designed to reduce kexec) and hence can stay
downtimes. up for years without a single
hardware reboot, reducing
downtime.

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 Recovery
Windows Linux
• In modern, NT-based versions of • All processes except for init
Windows, programs that crash and processes in D or Z state
may be forcibly ended through
may be terminated from the
the task manager by pressing
CTRL+SHIFT+ESC or command line. If the GUI
CTRL+ALT+DEL. Should this fail, hangs, on most distributions,
other third-party applications can CTRL+ALT+F1 takes the user
also be used. However, if a badly to the terminal, where the
behaving application hangs the process can be killed, and
entire GUI, it is difficult or
the GUI restored
impossible to recover without
restarting the entire computer

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 Hardware emulation and
Virtualization
Windows Linux
• VMware, VirtualBox, • VMware, VirtualBox, Xen,
Parallels, Linux-VServer,
Virtual PC,
OpenVZ, Win4Lin, KVM.
Virtual Server, Hyper-V VirtualBox and QEMU can be
(only available on 64-bit used to run Microsoft
versions of Vista SP2, Windows as guest operating
Windows 7, and system.
• With virtualization you may
Windows Server 2008),
run an operating system
Parallels, QEMU on new within another operating
hardware. system.

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 Security

Windows Linux
• true comparison between Windows
and Linux on the values of the
inherent security of each operating
system is hard to obtain. Windows
runs nearly 90% of desktop
computers in the consumer market,
and is the main operating system of
the vast majority of commercial and
institutional users.This makes
Windows- equipped machines a
larger target for malware, which is
written by coders who desire to
cause as much damage as possible.

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