In sales there is a thing called the Benjamin Franklin close. It is used by old-school salesmen for customers who for some reason can't seem to make a decision and perhaps need one made for them... It goes like this:

Salesman tells customer... "Mr. Customer you know what Ben Franklin used to do when he was faced with a tough decision? Hed take out a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle, write For on the left top and Against on the right top..." Of course, the salesman would always come up with more answers on the "for" column. :-) I will try to be a bit more objective...

Now, I don't presume to make up your mind for you but take a look at a simple comparison:

Linux Pros: Most stable OS possibly on the planet (uptimes go for months on end), Most secure network (viruses almost never affect email or Apache web server), Costs next to nothing (30$ for a Personal Distro, 70$ for a Professional), Most configurable, Apps are generally freeware including compilers and such (programmers take note!), Windows document files are usually easily manipulated with 3rd party and homogenous software, Users are generally very knowledgeable and are all over IRC rooms and message boards everywhere, The new user by learning this OS will generally become far more computer literate than the rest of the world

Linux Cons: Most games are not available, Can be user-unfriendly for a new linux user and at times for vets (guys admit it!), Although a distro may have some support numbers- real person on the phone support is non-existant--also some linux-users on IRC will not take the time to help someone learn very basic tasks, Ability to execute Windows programs is extremely limited(WINE really doesn't work so well), A great deal of peripherals such as modems are not supported(regardless of the reason)

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Windows Pros: Almost all known software and hardware are supported (basically anything you see at MediaPlay or CompUSA can be used on a Winbox), The largest selection of games are supported, Almost any service you may use will be supported such as your ISP (whether or not they help you can be another matter),

Windows Cons: Very unstable due to the fact that kernel's memory is way too often invaded by another program (this should not happen near as many times as it does), the 2000 Server's IIS security is perhaps the most vulnerable known to man and hacker (patches do not come soon enough--often M$ will pretend that a leak or hole does not exist before it's too late--also Microsoft likes to have every service turned on by default), Extremely expensive (Windows 2000 Pro $250 and up per seat, cmon guys), Configurability is limited due to closed source programming (although, i dont believe a company should be made to reveal their source if they choose not to), Windows users and professionals tend to learn very little of their trade compared to Unix pros (thats not a slight at all, just a simple fact--Solaris Certs will get you farther than an MCSE anyday)

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This is a brief comparison. Feel free to add more that come to mind whether your persuasion is for Linux or Microsoft. For the reasons above it is only a matter of time before Linux becomes the number 1 OS in the world. It's just a matter of making Linux more user-friendly and more hardware supportive and, to be honest not much else. The software, I know for a fact, will take care of itself. Look around... it already has to a very big degree.

Agree mostly but Windows XP does manage memory better. I wouldn't recommend any LESS than 256MB for windows xp and 128MB minimum for windows 2000.

How can you say that there is no support for linux? i mean you guys want linux to be free right? then we gotta work with what we have becuase linux companies dont have money to pay for service tech's since they are busy developing new Distro's which i dont want to distrub.

And windows games on llinux is real now. Winex has emerged, even though it is not that stable and buggy, but it's getting there, you'll see soon with the development pace the things will improve.

Neo, is wineX able to emulate Direct3D libraries and games? or is it only ogl?

Therion12 wrote:

"Agree mostly but Windows XP does manage memory better. I wouldn't recommend any LESS than 256MB for windows xp and 128MB minimum for windows 2000."

Windows XP does indeed manage memory better than Win98 and ME, however, the kernel's memory area protection leaves much to be desired. After a new install of XP at my school on a computer we still had the kernel memory faults still occuring at least once every other day. In my opinion that is still unacceptable except to the home user who MUST use M$...

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"How can you say that there is no support for linux? i mean you guys want linux to be free right? then we gotta work with what we have
becuase linux companies dont have money to pay for service tech's since they are busy developing new Distro's which i dont want to distrub."

I never said there is no support for linux. There is plenty of it for the resourceful user that wants to LOOK for it on IRC channels and newsgroups. Now, whether or not companies like SUSE or Red Hat have money or not for support staffing I think it would be in that company's best interest to find the money, especially SuSE. I totally believe Linux will exist in the same manner in which it always has, but if Linux is to become a contender in the desktop market it will have to add the feel-good things like phone support. This is a cool fact i found: Only 10-15% of all computer users know how or are willing to do an OS install (I apologize for not remembering the source). Getting 10-15% (at best) of an industry market share is not enough to dominate or probably even seriously compete. I think thats something to think about.

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Neo77777 wrote:

"And windows games on linux is real now. Winex has emerged, even though it is not that stable and buggy, but it's getting there, you'll
see soon with the development pace the things will improve."

Is it really "real"? Some games, yes, their time has come... still you have the disclaimer you brought "not that stable and buggy" means its not there yet. I have no doubt that it will be. I just wanted to point out a few areas where it needed work. I did not mean that it wouldnt happen. I just wanted to point out pros and cons to Linux and Microsoft's products. Everything, product, service or concept has its strengths and weaknesses. Linux advocates would be foolish to think that Linux had no weaknesses at all.

Well, I agree with what you are saying generally.

However, there are very few pieces of hardware that are not supported under Linux... at least that I have seen. And with the exception of games, there are good and alternatives to the programs M$ offers. And even game support is getting better.

However, sometimes it is not the product, but rather the producer. Microsoft has got way to big a head, and needs to be deflated. They are slowly taking peoples rights away with their licensing, and they charge too much for their software.

Dont get me wrong... if I could delete Windows I would, but I still like to play games every once-in-a-while.

One thing that worries me, are commercial Linux distros taking the wrong turn?

A lot of you guys have stated that Windows charges to much for their software... uh... take a look at the pricetag on
win$@#%^ XP Home Ed.

Now compare this to what Red Hat is charging for RH 7.2 Pro (and what's with the dichotomy? Last I checked the ISOs were still free... and 80% of the software on the discs)

Admitedly XP Pro is a $100 more and RH home $120 less, but it's not like RH Pro comes with a copy of Oracle or anything. And where did this dichotomy of Home and Professional come from? Last I checked the RH license was still GPL and you could turn Home into Pro with half an hour of broadband downloading RPMs.

Sorry, I'm venting a little bitterness. Recently our MCSE genius systems department begged for a an MS exchange server and were turned down on the grounds of budget instead of being dragged out into the street and beaten with a copy of the Sendmail manual like I had hoped.

What was I on about?

Cheers,

Finegan

PS

I remember now:

Linux Con, imitating proprietary software packaging schemes. It just feels silly to download the ISO of something, burn it, use it, and not be breaking the law when some other joker shells $160+. I paid for Redhat once. It cost about $28. What's that? $2 for the CDs, $14 for the thin little manual and $12 for the stickers?

MS Con, selling you a license that will only work on 1 machine (until you swap out two or more pieces of hardware, then it just won't work) and calling it a security feature.

good take finegan...

i realize after using mandrake8.1 and even the redhat 7.2 that a lot more ancient and odd hardware i have is now supported:

an als4000 sound card
a lynksis (piece of junk still) ethernet card
a lucent winmodem
even a alcatel speedtouch usb adsl modem(though it is quirky at times)

still there's a lot of work to get it to desktop specs (i know, yu say, whatever that may be). but, i have to admit it is fun to stay up all night until you get something working; be it samba or even an x configuration on some strange chipsets...

To me, the whole thing boils down to the fact that I just don't like to do what everyone else does. I like to be different. I also don't like things shoved down my throat.

If I buy a windoze computer, it will have AOL all over the desktop or MSN, aol discs, aol special offer literature, and will just basically be pre-loaded with a bunch of crap I don't want. Then, even if I get rid of some of it, after the first piece of software I install (Quicken or something) all the aol icons will be all over my desktop again and a bunch of others. I complained once (Gateway i think) and said I didn't want all such & such crap on a new computer. They just say that "we can't sell computers without all that stuff pre-loaded"). They say I have to accept it, so I say forget it. It's just the principle of the thing.

Just my rant for the day.

Actually, here's something I just remembered ranting about to a friend one day:



Windows Pro- When you first get it up and running, everything works.



Linux Con- When you first get it up and running, something, probably several things, will not work.



Windows Con- After a while, something breaks, usually for no good reason. You just turn it on one day and the MBR is trashed, or the sound is gone, or the AOL upgrade makes your computer freeze, but only when playing network Quake. Then, finally after hours of exhasperating calls to 'Tech support', you break down, back everything of importance up, and re-install the whole OS.

Linux Pro- After you spend 2 months fiddling with the tulip module source code, or playing with network drivers, or piddling with AGP DRI kernel configs, everything works... and stays that way... for years. And when you're done, you've learned a ton of stuff, and haven't done the Windows equivalent: voodoo, waving a dead chicken at it, doing the rain dance.

Cheers,

Finegan

I'd just like to say that (at least in my area), i'm seeing more and more Linux commercials as a business solution. I think IBM is going diehard with it the most. I love the "Infra Structures" basketball team with player names like firewall, middleware and of course Linux. LOL I think that Linux is really coming into it's own now and is a huge PRO for the community with such major backing of these large companies. It'll get people off thier butts to write some serious software I predict...
Lin Pro: I once heard that noone had/has ever written a virus that will actually do any harm to a Linux sys. So we can say:

if [linux='virusfree']
then 'buy $linux'
echo -n "Smart man..."
else [win='virusridden']
then 'kiss yer $win machine goodbye'
echo "Your machine is infested with the win %ver
virus....
fi
Yeah, very geeky I know, and improper code to boot. LOL

Sorry for posting such a while after the original msg, but I had to mention...
You say that Linux only has to have better support for hardware (even though it's often the hardware supporting Linux - MS just takes drivers and certifies them much of the time) and to become more user-friendly, and really that is the main factor slowing its adoption. An operating system, at the end of the day, is an abstraction devised for any person to be able to use the functionality of hardware. The more friendly the abstraction is, and the more hardware it supports, the more effective it will be. Look at Windows - it supports everything really, and it's very popular. There's no point saying these things because it's are obvious.

Essentially Linux has been developing as a tool rather than a mass-use OS and this must change, although I'm happy as things are. Without a centrally-organised effort (like MS) it is hard but true to say that the development of Linux as an OS of choice will be a long road.

Anyway I almost always use Linux and love it, and the fact that the majority of windows users have become complacent to learn how things work doesn't help the rise of Tux!

This may have been a strange post, but I think I said it right!
Alim

ps - NT has excellent kernel protection generally, it's only the 9x OSs that suck the big one.

Well, after posting a month after the last one, I sat here for 20 mins reading every post, and I came to a conclusion that even capitalism will fail.

Everything started out in the late 19th - early 20th century with all the mom and pop stores selling what they wanted, and everyone had their own market. Then the trusts came in, busted up all competition, and destroyed the true capitalism.

Now we have to deal with this in the OS wars; why? because not too long ago, M$ decided they were going to screw everyone over with MS-DOS, and a couple bad decisions here and there by productivity-hungry companies, made the M$ name well known. The name spread; as their products developed, people recognized the name and spent their hard-earned money on a piece of crap software program that was supposed to make complex computers "easier to use." A wise man once said "The day m$ makes something that doesn't suck is the day they start making vacuums."

Now that many companies own half the world, (::cough:: AOL, M$) the ultimate fear I have is that M$ and AOL will soon put their heads together and try to merge. Yes, I realize that i should bite my tongue, but hey....you can't prevent the inevitable. Because they buy the smaller companies up, then raise the prices because "they can", there is no competition at all, creating a total monopoly, and the US government is too bought out to deal with the issues.

Me? I'm one for the little guy (AMD machine, Mandy 8.1, few other less known things), and if we were to eliminate software buying, like it was never meant to be, Linux is the greatest choice. Im sticking with it, and screw M$. Once i get UT and soon Return to Castle Wolfenstein working on linux, bye bye win2k.

icy.

ive been working with linux for 3 weeks, and I am already a hardcore advocate...how about that for open source? and i dont even program! ::sigh::

The original post states linux cost next to nothing - well it cost me zero. I don't even have a disk drive nor do I need one. Just find an old piece of crap computer and I'm ready to rock. Problems, yes, but no taking it in for repair. Lots of help out there. Or wipe it out and start over. When I'm old, I might end up poor, but with linux, I'll always have a computer. Now I don't know about windoze as I have never used it.

You know what the number-one reason I've heard for buying Windows home computers is, instead of a Mac or Linux?

"Well, it's what we use at work."

It's not a cop-out on the home purchaser's part, it just makes sense. If you use Windows at work 40 hours a week, of course you're going to feel more comfortable with a Windows box at home, even knowing that it crashes much more often than Linux and is much more insecure. Old saying: "The devil you know is preferable to the devil you don't know."

I think as more people use Linux at work, they will also choose it for their home computers. IBM's focus on getting businesses to migrate to Linux is going to help a lot of home computer shoppers make up their minds!