Why I Prefer Linux To Windows

If you're a typical computer user, you don't know what an “operating system” is. That's okay. A computer is a tool. You don't need to know the mathematics and physics involved in using a hammer to get benefit from it. But there is a lot that people don't know about computers that can (and does) hurt them. I'm going to share with you some of my reasons for avoiding Microsoft Windows whenever I can. Please don't expect me to bash anyone in this post. I'm going to avoid pettiness, and state only facts. (By the way, if you don't know what an operating system is, you can think of it as the software that coordinates all the hardware and allows the user to interact with the computer and run programs. Without an operating system, a computer is useless. Windows, Linux, and BSD are all examples of operating systems.)

To give you some idea what I know about computers, I'll give you a bit of background. I started off with DOS-2.1 and have used DOS 3.0, 5.0, 6.0, 6.1, 6.2, and 6.22. I have used MS-Windows 3.1, 95, 98, 98SE, 2000, XP Home, and XP Pro. I have worked as a computer repair technician for a college, as well as an independent company who had me performing a variety of on-site duties for various companies who contracted with us. I have experience building computers from parts, installing and configuring operating systems and a variety of software, and diagnosing and repairing a variety of types of computer problems, including performing virus, trojan, malware, spyware and adware detection, repair and removal duties. I have also taught college classes on using computers and software, as well as acting in an advisory capacity to students studying Visual Basic programming. This is not to speak of my eight years using Linux, nor my two and a half years using FreeBSD. In other words, I am not a gray bearded guru with computers, but I am what I would consider a fairly advanced user. I know what I am talking about in a number of directions when it comes to this subject, but of course there are those who make my knowledge look paltry.

There has always been a mutual dislike going on between me and Windows. Windows and I do not see eye to eye about what "stability", "security", "speed" and "reliability" are. Windows 3.1 was fairly well behaved, but everything after it has been progressively more difficult to get along with. I tried to skip Windows 95 entirely, but was not fully successful. Windows 98/SE seemed like a good system, although it was very fragile, with a maximum time between crashes (TBC) of 3.5 days. Windows 2000 and the other NT-based Windows operating systems have been a serious improvement, although they too have been challenging.

Microsoft wants you to believe that Windows is designed for ease of use and usefulness, but I believe that Windows is designed solely for the purpose of generating revenue for Microsoft at any cost. If you ever used Windows 3.1, you remember that there was no "system registry". Instead, there were a series of localized "initialization files" which performed a similar function. These files held the settings for the program they referenced. But Microsoft did away with localized .ini files because they made it too easy to copy software. All you had to do was copy the directory in which a program was stored. The Windows registry, introduced with Windows 95, was ostensibly an improvement on this system because it was centralized. It kept the disk from becoming cluttered with small files, supposedly. There are technical reasons why a single file is better than a dozen or so smaller files, and these technical reasons were quite valid when hard disks had capacities measured in tens and hundreds of megabytes. (There are also some compelling reasons why such consolidation is a very bad idea. All your eggs in one basket and such.) But the real reasons behind the creation of the Windows Registry were that Microsoft wanted to increase their control of the end user, both for their own benefit, and for the benefit of a variety of companies who produced software for the Windows operating system. If you really think about it, the registry makes no sense to have otherwise.

It works like this. If you install a program in Windows 95 or later, you cannot copy the directory of the installation, put it on another computer and expect it to work, for two reasons. First, Windows encourages the installation files to be spread all over the place, and second, the registry is the only place these files' locations are recorded. Copying the directory (or folder, if you like) where a program has been installed only copies some of the files that the program needs. It also does not copy the registry entries that tell the program where to look for the remaining files. The result is that the program refuses to run, and you are prevented from copying the software after it has been installed. (Norton SystemWorks used to have a function for using the registry to defeat this and allow you to copy programs anyway, but that has long since been lost to "progress" and "upgrades".) I will not debate the good or bad of this, as I am both a consumer and copyright holder myself, and I can see both sides.

Getting back to my point, the second purpose of the Windows registry is to store things where the end user (you) cannot see them. Things like program settings, information about your computer, you, and of course, whether or not your copy of Windows or whatever else is "legal" or "genuine". The registry allows the companies who produce the software to force you to do their will by basically coralling you like cattle, which is a pretty accurate description of how the bigger software companies view their customers.

But that can of worms aside, the registry has a third and most nefarious... what shall I call it? Purpose? Trait? To understand this "trait", you must understand that the registry is a giant and very complex database. And if you know anything about databases, you know that the more complex they are, the more easily they become disorganized and corrupted. What happens when a registry becomes disorganized? Windows slows down. A lot. And what happens when it becomes corrupted? Windows will attempt to repair the problem automatically by substituting a backup of a recent registry snapshot... but this can fail in two ways. If the backup is also corrupt, it can render your computer unbootable. If it's not, it can disconnect some of the software you have installed since the registry backup was made - and then you can't run it, or easily deinstall it. What a mess.

I almost forgot about another problem you will doubtless have experienced with the Windows registry. A database of information is only as good as the people who add and remove information. When a program is installed, it adds information to the registry that allows the program to run, as well as other things. When you deinstall that software, the deinstaller is supposed to delete the data that the installer added. But every program is produced by different programmers, teams of programmers, and/or companies. And some of them - many of the ones produced by companies - do a damned poor job cleaning up after themselves in the registry. What happens when the database is full of pieces of information that are irrelevant? It causes Windows to slow down, and also causes instability. In other words, freezes, lockups and crashes.

The whole point of telling you about the Windows registry was to illustrate that Windows is designed for maximum revenue generation, not maximum security, stability, or functionality. It is designed to force you to spend as much money as possible. You spend money to license your copy. (You thought you owned it? Think again. You only paid for a license to have the right to use it. And try reading that end user license agreement of questionable legality that they force you to agree to before you use it, once in a while, too.) You spend money to buy all sorts of "anti" software (anti-virus, anti-spyware, anti-adware, anti-malware, ad nauseum) to patch holes in security that were left there on purpose (so that you would have to spend more money). You spend money on virtually every piece of software you use. And guess what? You spend money on keeping your copy of Windows from committing suicide, too. Registry cleaners and defragmenters and compactors. Disk defragmenters. Optimizers. And all the "anti-ware". But in the end, a copy of Windows will always fail within a year or two no matter what you do, if you actually use it. This is by design, and is that way to force users to spend more money on new copies of the same software, or to force an upgrade.

With all my knowledge of Windows - and admittedly, I neither know everything there is to know, nor do I remember everything I knew when Windows was my only choice - I could never keep a copy of Windows running for more than a year before I had to either reinstall because the disk was scrambled, or because Windows committed suicide regardless of my best efforts. Why? Because I use it. I work on it. I want it to do something, something more than surfing the web, or playing music or movies, or file sharing, or the typical stuff. I make my living on it. I don't play on it. No games, no file sharing, no music, no movies, no porn, no web surfing that is not absolutely necessary. I use it for work and only work. I have all the anti-ware running. I keep it up to date. I run the scans, and the repairs and the defrags. And still it inevitably dies within a year no matter what I do. (And usually takes all my data with it, to boot.) I can say that I have lost two businesses and more than $4,000.00 worth of software because of this wonderful trait of Windows. (You can only restore backups that aren't corrupt, you know. I have had wonderful "luck" with Windows based backup software.) As for how much money I have lost in productivity over the years because of time spent keeping Windows alive, repairing it, anti-everything it, defragmenting the hard disk, and re-installing it, I can safely estimate a conservative figure of over $12,000. For a small business like mine, that's not chump change.

Enter Linux. I started exploring Linux in 1999, and have been using it to some degree ever since. Back then it was unsuited to use on the desktop, so I set it up to be an option, along side Windows, whenever I started my computer. A few years back, it had matured to the point of being a viable replacement for Windows in virtually every direction. I only use Windows now for one program, Adobe Audition, which won't run under Linux even through a translation program such as WINE. For everything else - including web surfing, tax preparation, writing, graphics creation, manipulation and editing, watching movies, listening to music, and more, I use PCLinuxOS.

Linux is not Windows. It was built from the ground up based on very different thinking. Windows is and always has been aimed at making money for a corporation. Linux is and always has been aimed at producing a UNIX-like operating system that does what needs to be done, well, for free. The motivation behind these two operating systems is almost a total contrast. Linux is designed to be a secure, stable, multi-user, multi-tasking network-enabled operating system. Windows, by contrast was originally designed to be a single user, pseudo-multi-tasking operating that almost completely ignored security and had no real built in networking support. (Networking, multi-user and true multi-tasking abilities were bolted on later.) Whereas Windows was designed originally as a graphical covering for the old DOS command line interface (CLI) which was bolted on in Windows 95 and later versions, Linux was designed to be modular. You can have a graphical point and click user interface, or you can turn it off completely, or you can access the command line (where you type commands) from within the graphical user interface (GUI). It makes sense to turn off the GUI when you're running a server, because the GUI wastes processor power and memory. Windows cannot do that. It makes sense to use a GUI where the user does not know how to use the CLI. Linux gives you the option. Windows does not. Therein lies the fundamental difference, which can be summed up like this:

Windows is about controlling you and making money at any expense. Linux is about giving you the freedom to do as you please, and make the choices that are right for you - including how much you pay for it. You can get a complete, fully functional copy of Linux - which you can outright own - and all the software, for free, if you want. Or, you can purchase various flavors of Linux and/or technical support, if that suits your needs better. Linux is about freedom and choice.

When comparing Linux and Windows, both have their areas of strength and weakness. Windows is currently a better solution for many tasks, if only because no suitable equivalent software exists for Linux in certain directions. Linux blows the doors off Windows (pun intended) in many other directions. Let's take a look at how they compare.

Most people use Windows, and they have been told a thousand and one times that "Windows is easy to use". The fact is, anything you are familiar with, is going to seem to be easier to use than something you are not familiar with, regardless of the actual "ease of use". Complicating matters, Linux is open source, so anyone who knows enough can put together a Linux distribution based on the specific goal they have in mind. (That's why there are hundreds of Linux distributions.) Some of these distributions, therefore, will be highly technical and advanced, and would only reasonably be able to be comsidered "easy to use" if you were a Linux guru, while others have been focused on easy transitioning from Windows and ease of use. For this comparison, I will be comparing apples to apples. I'll compare PCLinuxOS to Windows, since PCLinuxOS is designed to be easy to use for people new to Linux, and especially Windows users. (I strongly disagree that Ubuntu is good for new users.)

The test: If you take a typical windows user who has never used Linux before, will they be able to use PCLinuxOS without difficulty? If it is easy to use, the answer should be "yes". I have performed this test on a number of people. Not counting myself, there was my mother, my grandfather, my uncle, my girlfriend, my roommate, and a friend of my roommate. The average level of computer knowledge for these people: Very low to nothing.

Here's what happened. My roommate's friend never knew she wasn't using Windows. My girlfriend decided she liked Linux better than Windows almost immediately, and quit using Windows completely. So did my roommate. My mother doesn't understand enough about computers to see any difference except that Linux works for her with much less hassle than Windows did. My grandfather found Linux much easier to use, but was too old to be able to remember how to use either one from day to day, and stopped using his computer at all because of this. My uncle was so frightened of "something different" that he spent $4,000.00 to buy a new computer with Windows and MS-Office. He doesn't really know how to use Windows either, but he feels more comfortable with it because it's more familiar, and because he's been told that it is easier to use a lot.

From my own perspective, PCLinuxOS is much easier to use. Installing software is a matter of clicking on an icon, entering the administrator password, selecting what I want to install from a searchable list and then clicking "apply". Uninstalling it is just as simple. This same software, known as "Synaptic", allows me to handle updates for the installed software and the operating system in the same way. I click "reload" and then "mark all updates" and then "apply". Since PCLinuxOS is released on a "rolling release" schedule, I keep my system upgraded from version to version doing nothing more than updates. In other words, I can install PCLinuxOS 2007, install all the updates, and have PCLinuxOS 2008 installed. Not all Linux distributions can do this, however.

If you have supported hardware, setup in PCLinuxOS is ridiculously simple, if not automatic. To set up my Epson R1800 13 x 19 inch printer, I simply plug it in, turn it on, and then from the control center, I open the "Printer Setup" utility. It automatically scans for available printers, and if it finds one, it downloads any software and drivers that are necessary (automatically), installs them, and then asks me if I want to configure the printer manually, or if I want it configured automatically. Clicking "Yes" for automatic makes the system pause for a few seconds, before it's done.

Lack of frustration with viruses, trojan horses, spyware and other malware also contributes to ease of use by removing the need to hassle with installing, updating and running that software.

Speaking of software, Linux software is in many cases actually easier to use than Windows equivalents. Good examples of this include OpenOffice, K3B for burning CDs and DVDs, and Amarok for playing and managing music collections.

Both Windows and PCLinuxOS are very easy to use in many ways, but after seeing my own experiences and hearing from all of these people (with the exception of my uncle) that PCLinuxOS is easier and more fun to use, I am going to have to give the point to Linux on this one.

Windows costs $99 and up (to more than $300) for a single desktop computer license. Linux can be had for between $0 and about $100, and in virtually all cases, you outright own your copy. 1 point, Linux.

Windows cannot legally be installed on more than a single computer, unless you purchase a license to do so. Linux can be freely installed on an unlimited number of computers, whether or not you purchased your copy. 1 point, Linux.

Windows cannot legally be copied and/or given away and/or sold. With the exception of some version of Linux that you pay for, you can legally copy, give away and even sell your copies of Linux. 1 point, Linux.

Windows supports tens of thousands of software programs. Linux supports tens of thousands of software programs. Draw.

Windows is supposedly the standard on over 90% of the desktop computers in the world. Linux is... well... we can't know. These statistics include the fact that almost all computers come with Windows pre-installed, whether or not they are replaced with Linux or used alongside Linux after purchase, and all copies of Windows that are sold in boxes, even if they are returned. It also includes all pirated copies. (Windows likes to phone home a lot and tell Microsoft what's going on.) Linux, on the other hand, is for the most part downloaded for free and nobody tracks what is done with these copies, how many duplicates are made, or how many computers they are installed on. Supposedly, Linux only powers about 1% of desktops. I believe that this figure is closer to between 3% and 7% of desktops worldwide, but nobody can really know for sure. Since Windows obviously has the majority, this point goes to Windows.

Linux has a server market share that is reported to be greater than that of Windows. This makes sense, since Linux was designed to be a networking operating system from day one. Specific and current numbers are elusive, but reports range from about 32% to over 60% for Linux. However, some websites claim 60% and more of the server market for Windows, since 2006. I was under the impression that Linux had the majority of the market share, but I can find no definitive source that is unbiased. Since past experience with Windows reporting leads me to be skeptical of the veracity and impartiality of the numbers I see, I cannot award a point in either direction because I don't feel as if I have a definitive and unbiased source of information.

Windows is capable of being made very secure, if you know how. Linux is also capable of being made very secure, if you know how. But Linux is more secure by design and default, and is easier to secure in many cases. Point goes to Linux.

There are tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of known Windows viruses. Linux has less than 100 known viruses, and of those, none are to be found "in the wild" - meaning you can't be infected with any of them. Point to Linux.

There are thousands or possibly tens of thousands of Trojan Hose programs for Windows, versus dozens to hundreds for Linux. It is easy to infect a Wiondows computer with a Trojan Horse. Infecting a Linux computer with a Trojan Horse is much more difficult, and it is even more difficult to damage your system with one. Point goes to Linux. (If you'd like to know what a Trojan Horse is, it's a program that does something malicious while leading you to believe it is safe or does something else.)

There are thousands or even tens of thousands of known spyware programs for Windows. There is no known spyware for Linux. Point goes to Linux.

Windows requires periodic disk defragmentation to keep performance up. Both the FAT32 and NT file systems cause files to become fragmented quickly, badly, and unnecessarily. NTFS fragements on purpose in many instances, even though it supposedly has the technology to avoid this built in. If you ever use JKDefrag (the best of the free defraggers for Windows), you'll often see Windows write files that have a trail of fragments that resemble dashes with spaces between them. This is evidence that the NTFS filesystem does not use a technology called "extents", which is where the file system reserves a block of contiguous space for the file when it does not know how much will be written yet. NTFS supposedly has extents, but obviously does not use them if it does. This is also interesting on two more points. First, when NTFS was released, there was a big fanfare about how it "resists fragmentation" and "doesn't need defragmenting". The truth is, every file system Microsoft ever touched fragments horribly and unnecessarily. And this brings me to the second point, which is that the Windows defragmenter since Windows 2000 has been more and more manipulated to show the files on the disk in such a way that it is difficult to see the fragmentation. In Windows 95 and 98, this was easy and obvious. No longer. Microsoft has something to hide.

In real life usage, my Windows XP disk fragments so badly that it needs to be defragmented once a week and sometimes less, or the system responsiveness suffers.

Linux filesystems are much more intelligently written. The default file system, EXT3, fragments significantly less than NTFS or FAT32, and what fragmentation does occur, does not usually impact system performance except under the heaviest loads (think busy server) or fullest disks. Other file systems available for Linux fragment even less. In fact, so much less that only one of them even has a defragmenter - and that file system, oddly enough (it's XFS, by the way, which was developed by SGI to do their movies on), resists fragmentation more than any of the others available for Linux!

Windows has no other file systems available, and does not store files in an intelligent manner, which causes it to fragment ridiculously and quickly. I cannot think of any reason for this, besides forcing you to buy defragmentation software, and making someone money. Point goes to Linux.

Windows has a central registry database that becomes disorganized, degraded and corrupt over time, which causes slowdowns, freezes, lockups and crashes. Repairing and optimizing the Windows registry is, in my experience, both dangerous and often does little to improve performance or stability. Linux does not have a registry at all, and so does not suffer the ill effects of having one. Point goes to Linux.

Windows phones home to Microsoft to report various information about your computer, your copy of Windows, and your activities. You agreed to this invasion of your privacy when you clicked OK during first boot, when the End User License Agreement was displayed. Most flavors of Linux do not use an End User License Agreement at all, and when they do, the vast majority of them only make you aware of the GNU Public License, which states that you can use, modify, share and even sell Linux, if you distribute any changes you make under the same license. One point for Linux.

Windows is "closed source", meaning only Microsoft can make changes and improvements. Linux is "Open Source", meaning anyone can see, learn from, fix, build upon and/or improve Linux if they know how. (Linux itself is only the core of the system, and the changes that are made are tightly controlled by a team of people who keep the changes safe for everyone else.) This means that bugs in Linux get attention faster and tend to be fixed within hours or days, compared to weeks, months, years or never for bugs in Windows. One point for Linux.

Windows Vista (and to a lesser extend, Windows XP) attempts to restrict your ability to use audio and video media you legally purchased through Digital Rights Management, which assumes you stole it until it "verifies" your license to use it. If no such license is found, it may degrade the quality of your media, or prevent you from accessing it altogether. Linux does not do this. One point for Linux.

Windows has a standard way to install software and deinstall it, which makes it easy to install almost anything you can find that is supposed to run on Windows. Different Linux distributions use different software installers and software setup package formats, including .tgz, .deb, .rpm, .bin, and others. This makes it more difficult to install some of the Linux programs you may find on the Internet if they are not intended for use with the specific distribution of Linux you use. And while some distributions have very easy installers and deinstallers, many do not. Point goes to Windows.

Windows has no single repository of software. You must go to the store, or find your software online. This opens you up to both being overcharged and being tricked into installing software that includes viruses, Trojan Horses, and even spyware. Linux tends more toward having software repositories, where you can select from thousands or even tens of thousands of freely available programs for your distribution in a single place, which are often packaged by the team that puts out the distribution, thus making such software very easy to find and install, and safe for use. Point goes to Linux.

Windows XP comes in two flavors (Home and Pro) and Windows Vista comes in at least five (Home Basic, Home Premium, Media Center Edition, Business Edition, and Ultimate). Confusing and unnecessary. Linux comes in hundreds of "distributions" (Red Hat, Slackware, Debian, Gentoo, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, Mandriva, Mepis, SuSE, and hundreds of others). Very confusing and unnecessary. One point for Windows.

Windows has almost all the major games being written for it. Linux has very few major games being targeted at it, but the list is growing. One point for Windows.

Windows requires drivers to be installed after install, if you install it. Linux usually comes with all the drivers already built in. This saves hours of configuration after setup. One point for Linux.

Windows takes at least 45 minutes to install in most cases. Linux takes between 2 minutes (yes, you read that right!) and 45 minutes to install, depending on the distribution you choose, how much software you install along with it, and the speed of your computer. One point for Linux.

Windows comes with almost no useful software pre-installed if you install Windows yourself, and what most pre-installed computers come with is clutter and limited trial ware. Linux gives you access to thousands of programs during installation, and typically has dozens of useful full version free programs already included. One point for Linux.

Windows software is typically expensive for even the most basic programs. Windows is moving towards a "software as a service" design, where you pay rent on the software you use, instead of just paying for it once. Linux doesn't even charge for 99% of the software you have available for use. 1 point for Linux.

Most specialized niche software is written for Windows, and cannot be used under Linux. 1 point for Windows.

Because Windows has been around for longer than Linux, major productivity programs available under Windows are often older, and thus more mature and feature rich than equivalent programs available on Linux. One point for Windows.

Peripherals and some specialized components, such as 3-D video cards, printers, scanners, and other such things always have Windows drivers. Many of these same peripherals do not have Linux drivers, or have poor Linux drivers, because the company that makes them keeps the specifications secret (so no freelance Linux programmers can write a driver) and often Linux is considered too small a market to write device drivers for. (For instance, nVidia, Epson and HP devices often have good Linux drivers; ATi, Canon and Lexmark, often do not - yet.) While Linux supports thousands of peripherals, it does not have the cooperation of all the peripheral manufacturers. One point for Windows.

Windows supports hardware through drivers, and has a wide range of supported hardware. This is more true of Windows XP than Windows Vista. Linux supports a vast array of hardware also. It is very likely that Linux supports more hardware than Windows Vista. In either case, Linux hands down supports more hardware "out of the box". 1 point for Linux

Windows productivity software (Such as MS-Office) uses "closed formats" designed to force you to use Windows or other Microsoft products to read the files you create with them. File formats change from version to version, and often even the different versions of the same program cannot reliably read files created by other versions of that software. (MS-Word is a good example of this.) Linux productivity software uses open formats, which allow you to use other programs to read them, and protect you from situations in which you cannot access your own data because there is no longer any software available to read it with. One point for Linux.

Windows can play all multimedia formats, once the right software has been installed. Linux can play all multimedia formats, once the proper software has been installed. Draw.

Windows chat messengers often have built in multimedia capabilities, such as video. Linux chat software usually does not. One point for Windows.

Windows only has one GUI. Linux has one GUI , but because the system is modular, there are various "desktop environments" available that allow you to make the GUI behave in virtually any way you want, and look any way you want. The same installation of Linux can be made to resemble Windows 9x, XP, Vista, Mac-OS, Linux, NeXT, or other options. Since there are positive aspects of each, I call this a draw.

Windows has only one desktop by default, and while you can get software that gives you multiple desktops at once, it is implemented as an afterthought, and in a clumsy way. Linux desktop environments use multiple desktops by default, and do so in an elegant, useful and optimized fashion. One point for Linux.

Linux and its GUI and Desktop Environments are vastly more configurable than Windows - if that is your desire. One point for Linux.

Windows requires much higher computer specifications to run than Linux does. For instance, Vista requires an absolute minimum of 512 megabytes of RAM to even install, and double that to run even fairly well. There are current, useful, modern desktop Linux distributions that can run in as little as 32 megabytes of RAM, possibly less. One point for Linux.

Linux typically runs noticeably faster on the same hardware, and in some cases, even on older hardware, than Windows does. One point for Linux.

Windows Vista requires vastly more video RAM and processing power than Linux does to allow you to use 3D visual effects. (Aero Versus Compiz, etc.) Windows XP has no 3D capability. You can have full smooth 3D graphical eye candy using Linux, on computers that won't even boot Vista, or don't have enough power to install it at all. Since it is available as a software add-on, it can be added to even older Linux installations. One point for Linux.

Many Linux distributions offer "Live CDs" or "Live DVDs", which allow you to boot the computer from a CD and have a fully functional copy of Linux self-configure itself to your hardware and then run fully functional, with all software installed. This allows you to test drive Linux distributions without potentially damaging your current setup, diagnose problems, perform off-line backups and virus scans, recover data from damaged hard disks, have a familiar, consistent and portable operating environment, and even perform repairs to the installed operating system. You don't have to install from it, but you can if you want to. Windows has no such thing. One point for Linux.

Linux Live CDs and DVDs very often make it easy to create customized "re-masters". You can deinstall the software you don't want, install the software you do want, and then create a custom Live CD with a few clicks of a mouse on most distributions. Windows does not have LiveCDs, with the possible exception of Bart's PE, but that's sort of a partial approximation. One point for Linux.

Windows assumes that it is the only operating system on your computer and tends to destroy other operating systems or make them unbootable when it is installed. Linux distributions notice other operating systems, and ask you whether you want to remove them, install it along side them, or handle the situation in some other way. One point for Linux.

There is software for programming, watching movies, listening to music, making MP3s and DVDs, burning CDs and DVDs, surfing the web, audio recording and manipulation, games, web serving, ftp, graphics creation and manipulation, desktop publishing, writing, spreadsheets, databases, presentation software, file sharing, and much more for Windows. There are programs to do all this under Linux, too. Draw.

Memory and resource management determine how efficiently the operating system is using it's RAM and other resources. Poor management leads to a slower response time and possibly even other problems, such as instability. Under Windows, I have consistently noticed that the same amount of RAM and swap space produces significantly less speed and stability under a similar load when compared to Linux. For instance, under Windows, the entire system begins to feel sluggish if I try to run more than five or six programs at once. Under Linux, I can start and run several times as many programs. (I once had over a hundred running to see how far I could push my luck, and the system did not slow down appreciably. Other times, I have noticed slowdown after loading twenty or so programs under Linux.) The fact is, Linux uses memory and other resources more efficiently than Windows does. It uses less RAM, less swap, and in many cases less CPU time. You can do more at once with Linux because Linux manages its memory and resources so much more efficiently. In many cases, you can literally keep piling on the work load until you run out of RAM and virtual memory before there is a problem. This point goes to Linux.

Let's stop there and tally our results, shall we? The score: Linux gets 32 points, Windows gets 11 points. This is counting a draw as one point for both, and does not attempt to give more than one point per topic, regardless of the "value" of the topic being considered. Some of these will be showstoppers for people considering Linux, and some will be showstoppers for people considering (or using) Windows. My interest was not to show the value of one or the other via my point system, but to show how many topics Windows is beaten on by Linux. Naturally, this will not show which one is best for your particular needs.

I believe that Linux is not only ready for most desktop and business desktop users, it is a better choice (by far) than Windows in many areas. I do not suggest that you go out and dump Windows, though. If Linux interests you, get yourself a copy of one of the Live CD or Live DVD versions (I am strongly partial to PCLinuxOS, but some other good choices include Mepis, SuSE, Mandriva and Knoppix. I happen to strongly dislike the Ubuntu distribution, but many people enjoy it and its derivatives a lot - including Linux Mint, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, and others.) Enjoy exploring these live CDs. Read some of the forums associated with the distribution you are exploring. Don't expect it to be exactly like Windows, although some of these flavors - such as PCLinuxOS - are designed to be familiar enough to "just use" without learning much at all about Linux. (That's part of why I suggest PCLinuxOS.)

If, after a period of time exploring a particular flavor, you decide you like it, consider installing it as a dual boot with your current version of Windows. That way, you can have and use both. Or, you can use one in a virtual machine, so that you can have both running at the same time. If you have Windows Vista, and you decide to dual boot, make sure you do your research online beforehand. Others have gone before you - their experiences can save you from problems they encountered. I suggest using Linux in a Virtual Machine before you attempt to dual boot. Virtual Box (http://www.virtualbox.org) is an excellent, easy to set up and use option, and it's free for most uses. I run my business on it from within Linux. Virtual Box can run on Windows or Linux.

I advocate the use of Linux, but I understand that it has its drawbacks and flaws, just as Windows does. It's not right for everyone. I suggest you look at it, play with it, consider it, and give yourself a chance to get to know it. If you like it, use it. If not, then you got an education, and there was no harm done. These are the main reasons I use and prefer Linux. I hope you've enjoyed my exploration and comparison. In the end, you always should use what works best for you and your specific needs.