What is the differences between Windows and Linux?

Answer 1

Both Linux and Windows provide a GUI and a command line interface. The Windows GUI has changed from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (drastically) to Windows 2000 (slightly) to Windows XP (fairly large) and is slated to change again with the next version of Windows, the one that will replace XP. Windows XP has a themes feature that offers some customization of the look and feel of the GUI.

Linux typically provides two GUIs, KDE and Gnome. See a screen shot of Lycoris and Lindows in action from the Wal-Mart web site. The lynucs.org web site has examples of many substantially different Linux GUIs. Of the major Linux distributions, Lindows has made their user interface look more like Windows than the others. Here is a screen shot of Linux made to look like Windows XP. Then too, there is XPde for Linux which really makes Linux look like Windows. Quoting their web site "It's a desktop environment (XPde) and a window manager (XPwm) for Linux. It tries to make easier for Windows XP users to use a Linux box."

Mark Minasi makes the point (Windows and .NET magazine, March 2000) that the Linux GUI is optional while the Windows GUI is an integral component of the OS. He says that speed, efficiency and reliability are all increased by running a server instance of Linux without a GUI, something that server versions of Windows can not do. In the same article he points out that the detached nature of the Linux GUI makes remote control and remote administration of a Linux computer simpler and more natural than a Windows computer.

Is the flexibility of the Linux GUI a good thing? Yes and No. While advanced users can customize things to their liking, it makes things harder on new users for whom every Linux computer they encounter may look and act differently.
Text Mode Interface
This is also known as a command interpreter. Windows users sometimes call it a DOS prompt. Linux users refer to it as a shell. Each version of Windows has a single command interpreter, but the different flavors of Windows have different interpreters. In general, the command interpreters in the Windows 9x series are very similar to each other and the NT class versions of Windows (NT, 2000, XP) also have similar command interpreters. There are however differences between a Windows 9x command interpreter and one in an NT class flavor of Windows. Linux, like all versions of Unix, supports multiple command interpreters, but it usually uses one called BASH (Bourne Again Shell). Others are the Korn shell, the Bourne shell, ash and the C shell (pun, no doubt, intended).

Cost
For desktop or home use, Linux is very cheap or free, Windows is expensive. For server use, Linux is very cheap compared to Windows. Microsoft allows a single copy of Windows to be used on only one computer. Starting with Windows XP, they use software to enforce this rule (Windows Product Activation at first, later Genuine Windows). In contrast, once you have purchased Linux, you can run it on any number of computers for no additional charge.

As of January 2005, the upgrade edition of Windows XP Home Edition sells for about $100, XP Professional is about $200. The "full" version of XP Home is about $200, the full version of XP Professional is $300. Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition with 10 Client licenses is about $1,100. Because they save $100 or so on the cost of Windows, Wal-Mart can sell a Linux based computer for $200 (without a monitor) whereas their cheapest Windows XP computer is $300 (as of January 2005).

The irony here is that Windows rose to dominance, way back when, in large part by undercutting the competition (Macs) on cost. Now Linux may do the same thing to Windows.

You can buy a Linux book and get the operating system included with the book for free. You can also download Linux for free from each of the Linux vendors (assuming your Internet connection is fast enough for a 600 MB file and you have a CD burner) or from www.linuxiso.org. Both these options however, come without technical support. All versions of the Ubuntu distribution are free.

You can purchase assorted distributions of Linux in a box with a CD and manuals and technical support for around $40 to $80 (some distributions may be less, others may be more). Regular updates and ongoing support range from $35 a year for a desktop version of Linux to $1,500 for a high-end server version. August 2004 Red Hat started selling a desktop oriented version of Linux for under $6 per user per year.

After the initial cost (or lack thereof) of obtaining software, there is the ongoing cost of its care and feeding. In October 2002, ComputerWorld magazine quoted the chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York as saying that "the cost of running Linux is typically a tenth of the cost of Unix and Microsoft alternatives." The head technician at oil company Amerada Hess manages 400 Linux servers by himself. He was quoted as saying "It takes fewer people to manage the Linux machines than Windows machines." Microsoft commissioned a study that (no surprise) found it cheaper to maintain Windows than Linux. However, one of the authors of the study accused Microsoft of stacking the deck by selecting scenarios that are more expensive to maintain on Linux.

I don't know if there will ever be an objective measure of the ongoing care and feeding costs for Linux vs. Windows. If there were however, it would have to consider:

* Dealing with bugs in the operating system
* Dealing with bugs in application software
* Dealing with viruses, worms, Spyware, etc.(big advantage to Linux here)
* Dealing with software upgrades to new versions (both the OS and applications)

Getting the Operating System
Nothing need be said about getting Windows. As for Linux, you have to look around to buy a new computer with it pre-installed. The major PC vendors sell Linux based machines only as servers, not to consumers.

In August 2004 HP said it would be an exception to this rule and will soon offer a business notebook computer, the Compaq nx5000, with SUSE Linux pre-installed. A low end model was expected to sell for $1,140 -- about $60 less than a comparable model running Windows XP. HP was also scheduled to sell Linux PCs for consumers in Asia as of June 2004.

Wal-Mart sells new PCs with Linux pre-installed. In fact, if you need a new computer, the cheapest ones, bar none, sell for $200 at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart sells different Linux distributions: Lycoris, Lindows and SuSE. In March 2004, they started selling Sun Microsystems' version of Linux, the Sun Java Desktop, starting at $298. In December 2004, Wal-Mart started selling a $498 laptop computer running Linspire. As of November 2005, MicroCenter sells Linux desktops starting at $250.

Lindows (now Linspire) maintains a web page listing vendors that sell computers with Lindows pre-installed. Emperor Linux loads Linux distributions on new laptops from Dell, IBM, Sony and others. Pogo Linux sells custom-built desktops loaded with both Linux and Windows. Their main customers are universities and government agencies. A handful of companies sell notebooks with Lindows/Linspire pre-installed.

If you are up to installing Linux yourself, you can buy a new computer without any operating system from Dell or Wal-Mart, perfect for installing your favorite flavor of Linux. Dell sells their PowerEdge servers without an OS, Wal-Mart sells some of their Microtel computers without an OS.

November 2005. You can buy a 3GB MicroDrive (1 inch hard disk) with Ubuntu Linux. The drive plugs into a USB port and is fully powered by the USB port. As of mid-November 2005, it sold for $132. See Taking Linux On The Road With Ubuntu at Toms Hardware. November 10, 2005

And what about installing Windows and Linux? Installing Windows from scratch is much easier than installing Linux from scratch, in my opinion. If nothing else, installing Windows is always the same whereas the different distributions of Linux have their own installation programs (these may even change with different versions of the same distribution). You can't read an article on this however, without it saying how installing Linux is getting easier all the time.

Installing Linux on a computer without an OS is much easier than installing it on a machine with an existing OS that you want to preserve. The later should only be attempted by experts, it is all too easy to lose the pre-existing OS and setting up a dual-boot environment is tricky. In his Linux book, Mark Minasi said that installing Linux on a desktop computer was more likely to be successful than on a laptop computer.

Part of the difficulty in installing Linux is terminology and documentation. The install process is designed by Linux people for Linux people. A Windows-only person is likely to encounter terminology and concepts they are unfamiliar with. With Red Hat Linux 8, the booklet on how to install the OS is over a hundred pages.

October 2005 saw a new development that made buying a computer with Linux pre-installed or installing Linux yourself, unnecessary and undesirable. This new development is also preferable to the next topic, running Linux from a CD. I'm speaking of the VMware Player. This free software from VMware lets you run a virtual machine created by someone else. As of October 28, 2005 you could freely download pre-built virtual machines for three distros: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Novell Linux Desktop and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Virtual machines let you run multiple operating systems on one computer at the same time. You can't beat it.
Running from CD
One thing that Linux can do that Windows can not, is run from a CD. To run Windows, it has to first be installed to your hard disk. That said, if Windows is broken to the point that it can't start up, there is a free program called Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) that can run a few Windows programs from a bootable CD. However, this is not from Microsoft and it can only run a handful of programs that have been set up ahead of time for use with BartPE. BartPE fills an important need, but creating the CD is not trivial and it only works with Windows XP and 2003. The main point stands, in and of itself, Windows can not run from a CD.

Normally Linux also runs from a hard disk, but there are quite a few versions of Linux that run completely from a CD without having to be installed to a hard disk (the term for this is a "Live" CD). This is a great way for Windows users to experience Linux for the first time. Among the Linux distros that have a CD-only version are Knoppix, Gnoppix (based upon Ubuntu, has been referred to as Knoppix with GNOME ), SuSE (called Live-Eval), Linspire (formerly Lindows) and Slackware. The version of Linspire that runs from a CD used to be called Lindows CD, then it was called Lindows Live and now it is called Linspire Live. It's available for download, but only with BitTorrent (see Lindows offers software for free over P2P from CNET News.com, January 2004). I tried SuSE Live Eval version 9 in October 2003 and had some gripes. The SUSE LINUX Professional 9.3 Live version (as of August 2005) runs off a DVD rather than a CD - the ISO file is 1.5GB. FreeBSD, a version of Unix (rather than Linux), also has LiveCD to run it from a bootable CD.

The CD based versions of Linux differ in their use of the hard disk. Some, such as Lindows, do not write anything at all to your hard disk, making it the safest and easiest way to experience Linux. The downside of this is speed (CDs are much slower than hard disks) and continuity (being able to save data between uses). Other versions, such as SuSE, do use your hard disk (SuSE creates over 200 MB worth of files). What you give up in safety, you gain in speed. For reviews of Linux distributions that run from a CD see A Taste of Linux by Jim Lynch at ExtremeTech January 23, 2004 and A Taste of Linux, Part Two By Jim Lynch March 5, 2004.

In addition to kicking the tires, a CD based version of Linux can also be used to insure your hardware is supported by Linux and possibly to recover files. If Windows is not able to boot up and there are files you need on your computer, booting Linux from a CD may offer the opportunity to copy files off the computer. This is problematic however with the NTFS file system. I found that the CD based versions of Lindows and SuSE could not read files stored in an NTFS partition. I am told that Knoppix can.

And you're not limited to CDs. A number of Linux distros can run from a thumb drive (a.k.a flash drive, USB drive). See A Handy Tip From a Reader on Flash Drives (June 30, 2006) where the two distros mentioned are 50MB and 70MB.

Application software: There is more application software available for Windows.

Obtaining application software: If you buy a copy of Windows on a CD-ROM, you get no application software with it. If you buy a copy of Linux on a CD-ROM (or two or three) it typically comes with gobs of free application software. A new computer with Windows pre-installed may have additional application software, this is up to the PC vendor. I have seen a new Sharp laptop machine that came with no software other than Windows itself. In contrast, Sony VAIOs, for example, come with a lot of software. Often however, necessary software, such as the Adobe Acrobat reader, is not pre-installed by the PC vendor. Each Linux distribution comes in multiple flavors, the more expensive versions come with more application software.

Application software installation: The installation of applications under Windows, while not standardized, is generally consistent. Installing software under Linux varies with each distribution and is not nearly as simple, easy or obvious as Windows. Lindows lets users install software in a manner somewhat like Windows update - applications are downloaded and automatically installed. They charge for this service however. The May 20, 2004 issue of the Langa list newsletter had an interesting take on the difficulty installing software under Linux. In a July 4, 2004 review of Linux in the Washington Post (Linux, Still an Awkward Alternative), Rob Pegoraro called application software installation "Linux's biggest embarrassment" and I have no doubt that he is correct.

Viruses and Spyware: (Updated March 2005) There are many types of malicious software programs. The most common types are referred to as Viruses and Spyware. Spyware has become a generic term, much like "Xerox machine" (which is taken to mean any copying machine, not just those made by the Xerox corporation). The term "Spyware" now refers to a whole host of malicious software such as worms, Trojans, dialers, keystroke loggers, browser hijackers and, of course, actual Spyware. The vast majority of all malicious software (of all types) runs on Windows. I don't know the actual percentages, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was 98% or so.

Spyware on Windows has become such a problem that Microsoft purchased an anti-Spyware software company and released their product as the Microsoft Anti-Spyware program in early 2005. As this is written the product is still in beta form, but Microsoft has stated that it will be free even when complete. In my opinion, Spyware is the worst problem effecting Windows based computers. In addition to running an anti-virus program constantly, Windows users also need an anti-Spyware program constantly running in the background to protect them.

Users and Passwords: (updated August 2005) Both Linux and Windows 2000/XP require a userid and password and boot time. That said, Windows XP allows the omission of the password (a very bad idea), I'm not sure if Linux does. All can be configured to either ask for the userid/password at startup time or defaults can be set instead. In Windows 2000 it is very easy to set a default userid/password, in Windows XP the method varies between the Home and Pro versions - in one it is straightforward, in the other it's a pain. I've been told that in Linux the KDM and GDM login managers support automatic login.

A new Windows XP machine used by a home user is likely to not ask for a userid/password at start-up. However, this depends on the number of users defined to Windows. When you create a new user in XP the default is not to require a password (user friendly triumphs over security - the Microsoft way). Windows 98, never mind.

Windows XP, 2000 and Linux all support different types or classes of users. Windows XP Home Edition supports Administrator class users that have full and total access to the system and restricted users that, among other restrictions, can't install software. Windows XP Pro and Windows 2000 support additional levels of users.

Both Linux and Windows can group users into groups (finally, something well named) and assign privileges to the group rather than to each individual user. Windows XP and 2000 come with some pre-defined user groups (such as Power Users), I don't think Linux does (but I'm not sure). In XP and 2000 user "Administrator" is a member of the Administrators group.

Linux privileges are basically whether you can read, modify or execute a file. Files in Linux are always owned by a specific user and group. Windows has similar file-related privileges but only when using the NTFS file system. The earlier FAT and FAT32 file systems had no file level security.

I'm told that Windows NTFS permissions are a bit more functional than those in Linux, but that Linux distributions are starting to use extended Access Control Lists as a part of the file system, bringing them more on par with NTFS. (I won't swear by this)

Very often Windows users use an Administrator class userid which gives viruses total access to their system (see Why you should not run your computer as an administrator from Microsoft). This obviates the security rules discussed above. In contrast, Linux users often run as regular non-root users which not only means better security it also means that, if they get a virus, the operating system greatly restricts what the virus can do.

I have tried a couple times to set up a Windows XP computer for use by a family, creating Administrator class userids for the parents and restricted userids for children. Both cases failed because there were too many programs that did not function correctly when run by a restricted Windows user (more details here). While Linux has supported the concept of root and restricted users from the get-go, this is a relatively new thing to Windows. It will be a long time before all Windows software is designed to be used by a restricted user. Until then, viruses and malware will have free reign on Windows machines. Certainly software written for Windows 95, 98 and Me expects total system access and may not work when run from a restricted userid.

See also Linux vs. Windows: Which Is More Secure? from eWeek March 30, 2004 and
Windows v Linux security: the real facts by John Lettice October 22, 2004 in The Register
Security Report: Windows vs Linux by Nicholas Petreley October 22, 2004

Bugs: All software has and will have bugs (programming mistakes). Linux has a reputation for fewer bugs than Windows, but it certainly has its fair share. This is a difficult thing to judge and finding an impartial source on this subject is also difficult. Fred Langa wrote an interesting article on whether Linux or Windows has fewer bugs in Information Week magazine January 27, 2003. The article also addressed whether known bugs are fixed faster with Linux or Windows. In brief, he felt that bugs used to be fixed faster in Linux, but that things have slowed down. See this article too Security research suggests Linux has fewer flaws December 13, 2004 from CNET News.com.

In March 28, 2003, Microsoft decreed that it will not issue a Windows NT4 bug fix for a security problem that effects Windows 2000, XP and NT4. They would prefer customers to move off of NT4, thus making Microsoft more money. It is their ball, their bat and their field. This is not true with an open source operating system such as Linux. No one can decree that a bug will not be fixed in a specific version of Linux.

The difference in OS development methodologies may explain why Linux is considered more stable. Windows is developed by faceless programmers whose mistakes are hidden from the outside world because Microsoft does not publish the underlying code for Windows. They consider it a trade secret. In contrast, Linux is developed by hundreds of programmers all over the world. They publish the source code for the operating system and any interested programmer, anywhere in the world can review it. Besides the wide audience for peer review, there is likely to be pride of ownership on the part of the developers of Linux that can not exist with Windows. The official term is "egoboo" which refers to the rush a programmer gets from public recognition, especially for something done for free. Bruce Perens (Business Week magazine, March 3, 2003 issue) commented on why open source software works well:

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Answer 2

in simple answer windows is a GUI application and Linux is command base application even Linux can have GUI based but some of the application wont work on GUI so we have to come back to command applications

Answer 3

My god there are many to note. Fundamentally linux is free software and windows is proprietary.

You'll find a good discussion about this here:

http://www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html

Answer 4

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