Ok, i wrote this essay for my english class, the introduction is more of an Introduction to Linux history because my teacher does not know what linux is.

Any Useful comments etc that you may have please let me know. I know that im pretty much bashing Windows and microsoft on the essay but that is what its supposed to be doing.

Thank you.

Not bad.

My only question (out of curiosity) is - what does this have to do with English? My recollections of English are that it is about analysing novels, plays, films, etc - not Linux...

--Ian

As the English major I am, please excuse any excessive pickiness (I'm a former English teacher -- I used to grade this stuff for a living)... Therefore, there aren't any comments from me about the actual Linux history itself, just about grammar suggestions.
The language is too informal. By that I mean statements like "loads of". Make it more formal sounding.
The introduction has waaaaaaaaaay too much detail and is too long; it's really only supposed to describe what your essay is going to be about and have around eight sentences at the maximum. Here's a little helper link on writing good introductions: http://www.gmu.edu/departments/writi.../introcon.html
I don't know what grade you're in, but in high school English you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever use first person -- "I," "you," "we," "me," or "us."
Another VERY important detail in high school is the inclusion of a thesis statement. Where's yours?
You have several basic grammar errors in there. Look a little closer and you will see them.
Why are you capitalizing "operating system"?
The first sentence of every paragraph, called the topic sentence, needs to be directly linked to the thesis statement -- for example, with a thesis statement of "all fish are blue" (I'm in a hurry here) a topic sentence could be "the fact that all fish are blue is shown in the research conducted by John Doe in 1980."
As a last note, don't spend the time explaining the difference between a "hacker" and a "cracker"; it really doesn't matter to your teacher and it WILL just get them confused.

I've got some comments for you: I know your English teacher probably doesn't know the difference, but isn't Linux a kernel and not an operating system? I'm going off memory here, but I believe in his book Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary he said something like he created the Minix clone because he was too poor to afford Unix. Though, I do also remember him being quite critical of Minix. I can guarantee that if your English teacher didn't know what a distribution was before this sentence, she (or he) probably won't afterwards either. A little bit of an exaggeration, isn't it? After all, people who are into PC gaming or professional graphic design are probably better off with Windows or Mac OS X. Don't make value judgments (better/worse)--speak factually--what can Linux do that Windows can't and vice versa. The word hacker may scare your English teacher into thinking you're actually a cracker. This whole paragraph seems to go against your "casual computer usage" argument earlier. It really reinforces the idea that Linux distros are only hobby or "geek" OSes.

Good example. Maybe go into a bit more detail about how exactly you'd install an XP theme versus the steps it would take to install a theme in, say, Gnome. Again--try to avoid words like "better" or "worse." Be specific about what Linux can do. Don't forget that the GPL allows for people to charge money for open source software.

Overall, I think you need to seem a little less biased (you make your case for Linux stronger by recognizing the strengths of Windows--your English teacher will be far more impressed if you allow for counterarguments) and also have a little more direction--from paragraph to paragraph, I'm not sure where you're headed. You should be able to sum up the point of each paragraph in a phrase. Look at those phrases in order and see if they make sense in that order.

Lastly, slow down. You do explain a few things, but a lot of your essay is still in "geek speak." As a former English teacher myself, I can attest to my colleagues' confusion when anything computer-related comes up. Literary terms--no sweat; technological terms--lots of sweat!

P.S. Your English teacher may not take too kindly to plagiarism either: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/debia...k/ch01_02.html If you're lifting stuff from other sources, use quotation marks where appropriate and always use citations.

Thanks!

This really helps.
I am going to take your advice, implement it to my essay, and turn it in later today. BTW: I am a senior in High School. The reason i made the Linux Vs. Windows Essay is because the topic the essay was supposed to be written in, is open ended so i could write it in whatever interests me and of course, this interests me.

Thanks again.

My two cents. I understand this for your English class, but in a few short years you’ll be communicating in the business world. You’ll be trying to help the boss decide whether to put Windows or Linux on the new PCs for the office. I may be harsh, but reading this from a technical manager’s perspective I feel cheated.

You end your introduction with the following:

“By now most people would be thinking, “If Linux is so great, why haven’t I heard of it before and why does everyone use Windows?”…Well, I hope this essay answers these questions.”

Actually, no, I’m thinking neither of these. I’m thinking, “I thought this paper was going to compare and contrast Linux and Windows? I’m not interested in the history of Linux. Is it’s history even germane?”

Your last sentence, actually grabbed my attention.

“What started as a small project in 1991 has started a revolution that will ultimately find its way in everyone’s computer.”

Now I’m interested, but I want to know why and how. You better tell me. You left me hanging and I feel that I wasted my time.

The term “hacker” has such negative connotations in general society that I would avoid it unless you explain it. Since this isn’t an essay on “hackers vs. crackers”, probably just avoid it.

Your paragraphs are too long. You’ve got three or four paragraphs worth of information packed into each of them. It’s difficult to read even if I’m not a busy manager just skimming the document. It’ll find it’s way to my circular file before I even finish reading the third sentence.

“$1000.00 dollars” is redundant. There’s a lot of jargon. For example, “many flavors available to the user.” What am I at the ice cream parlor? Microsoft offers a home, business, and educational version of Windows for the desktop and a separate version for servers. Linux offers literally hundreds of options and this is better because ____________________.

Ultimately, you’ve convinced me that Linux is an operating system for computer geeks, programmers, and super users. If I were a casual computer user or a business computer user, I’d stick with Windows. If my last name were Gates, I’d close my eyes and go back to sleep, secure in the knowledge that Linux represents no real competition.

Revised Essay

I'm going to give my own opinions. They are not expert advice, just opinions. I am NOT trying to make you feel bad. I'm trying to be helpful. Don't feel obligated to take all of my advice.

Now in high school and most of college, essay papers have a length requirement which encourages students to pad it out with extra information. So I understand that you probably need to take your time explaining things in order to use 1000 words, or 3 pages, or whatever. However, in the real world you want your documents to be as informative as possible while also being as short as possible. Most people stop reading pretty quickly when they get bored.

That's an awful lot for one sentence, and "more and more" or something similar like "lots and lots" are not good. You could try something like "Lately, there is growing controversy" or "Over the past few (years/months) controversy has increased".

The comma between both and desktop is unnecessary.

Also keep in mind that this mostly affects technical people. Most of the people I know still have never heard of Linux. You may want to mention that, although it's not very important.

I would leave out 'super corporations' when you describe Microsoft, because it indicates that you have at least a little bias. I have a bias against Microsoft, I'm sure most people here have a bias, but you want to appear unbiased when you present your point of view to your teacher.

Using quotes around terms like "normal" is bad form. You might want to say normal home computer user or non-technical computer user.

Since you use the term 'kernel' here, you probably want to explain what it is here. Leaving it to be defined down below could confuse the reader, especially a non-technical one.
You might want to explain what a kernel is briefly with something like "Linux is the kernel, or core, of an operating system of the same name." Or "The central part of an operating system is called the kernel. The Linux kernel is also named Linux."

Mentioning the C computer language isn't really necessary. It's interesting, but it's not really on topic with the rest of the paper.

You may also want to explain that AT&T and Bell Labs were the same company or use Bell Labs in both places. (Unless I'm wrong, and they were two seperate companies.)


'Thus' is not commonly used.

It might help to explain that Richard Stallman created the FSF and GNU organizations in order to create free alternatives to Unix. You don't make that explicit anywhere.

That's a big sentence and should probably be broken apart.

This sentence should also be broken apart and clarified.

You definitely should not use "clever marketing strategy". It reveals a bias and also does not give any real information as to how MS-DOS became so popular. You might want to say 'through superior marketing' or 'through licensing agreements with manufacturers' or something similar. "clever" often means dishonest and tricky, and while Microsoft has definitely been dishonest and tricky, you can't make the accusation in a paper without some evidence.

You may want to explain that KDE and GNOME offer themes, control panels, a start menu, clock, and all of the other features people expect when using Macs or Windows plus a host of extra features.

Several of the sentences in there should be broken apart.

Explaining how to run some Windows programs in Linux may be overkill. I'm sure the explanation would confuse most English teachers past the third word in the sentence.

And like other people already said, don't use the word 'hacker'. Outside of Linux and Unix enthusiasts, it just means a person that steals information.

It's your paper, you write it how you like. But I think that 'contrary to popular belief' is way off base. There is no popular belief about Linux, most people don't know anything about it.

You should explain how application management is better, or leave it out. A non-technical person doesn't know anything about scripting, standardized scripting, or permissions. You need to explain what they are or leave them out too.

Windows Batch files can do a lot. They aren't as good as Bash, but they have a comprehensive set of features. And between the open source Cygwin and Microsoft's own Unix Tools for Windows toolkit, you can use a lot of Unix's good features in Windows. And it's all just as free as Linux (except for the initial Microsoft operating system license).

And of course, if there's something you want that Windows doesn't have you can always write your own software for Windows. So 'even with third-party tools installed' is especially incorrect.

You're assuming that your reader knows what a DLL is, how adware gets installed, and the difference between Administrator and regular accounts. You're going to have to be more specific with your explanations.

You need to explain how Linux installation is easy. Maybe describe that a (Suse, for example) installation takes a selection of language, time zone, and that's all on most machines. (I'm guessing, I haven't installed anything in a while so I don't know what is involved.)

cmd.exe has command recall, command piping, auto-complete, if statements, for loops, file globbing, recursive file deletion... it's not as good as Bash, but it's not a joke either.

More importantly, calling cmd.exe mediocre reveals more bias on your part.

Why the quotes around "Linux will no longer be a hackers toy"?

One last point. Linux will (hopefully) become more popular in the desktop because you can do all of the things people do in Windows: burn CDs, surf the web, download and watch video clips, play computer games (although not Windows-only games), use spreadsheets, edit photos, manage their finances, send instant messages, send email, write term papers, even open and edit files from Microsoft Office, etc... etc... You and I know that Linux can do all of those things, but your teacher does not. It may help for you to explicitly mention you can do almost anything on Linux that you can do on Windows.

Good luck.

Thank you!

I have now revised the paper one last time, and submited it to my teacher. I also told her that i had posted it in the internet ( she was both surprised and happy i took it to this level ) to get some advice in how to better it.


Thanks again for all and i hope that the essay may also help some people in some way.