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In today's editorial, representatives from Linux-Mandrake rebut Bill Gates's recent comments about Linux and Open Source. Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly. Bill Gates recently said three things (in addition to many others) in an interview with "Australian IT"[1]. First, he said that Linux is just hype and cannot compete with Windows on ease-of-use. He also said the Open Source model doesn't offer any great benefit in terms of reliability, and then said the same about security. Even if we can feel a twinge of satisfaction that Microsoft seems to be concerning itself with Linux's existence, his remarks deserve a loud response because they're blatantly false. Much of what Mr. Gates said is commonly referred to as "FUD" (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt [2]). About the so-called "hype"What Mr. Gates calls "hype" is actually a worldwide, grass-roots, fundamental change in how computing is performed. This evolution (revolution) had its modest beginnings in Finland in 1991 and continues to enjoy a phenomenal growth rate. The truth is that thousands of new users are discovering Linux each and every day and finding it a complete replacement for Microsoft Windows. Many of these new users have grown weary of relying on an operating system that is unreliable and has a tendency to crash regularly for no apparent reason. Many of these people are tired of the forced uniformity, tired of having no control and no power to fix the many bugs and shortcomings faced while performing everyday computing tasks, distrustful of waiting for answers that never arrive, exhausted from the endless cycle of paying and paying again for an operating system and applications that always seem to do what they need -- but only in the next release. The truth, according to IDC figures, is that Linux is now the second most widely-used operating system in the world[3]. The truth is also that the most widely-used Web server in the world is Apache[4], which is Free Software. The truth tends to be quite a bit different from Mr. Gates's claim of "some single applications and Web servers". About ease-of-useLinux is still considered to be harder to use than MacOS and Windows. Why is this so? First of all, Linux has inherited a great deal from Unix, which is often seen as a complicated system -- not particularly because it's hard to use, but because it is VERY fully-featured and different in many ways. People discovering Linux are always surprised at the great many things that can be accomplished with Linux, especially the power that lurks behind a seemingly simple shell command line which can be used to read and write email, edit files on remote servers, talk to friends on the other side of the world, listen to MP3s, burn a CD, and compile an application -- all at the same time. Until recently, addressing these ease-of-use issues was difficult because the issue is actually two fold, based on the presumption that security and ease-of-use are mutually exclusive. We don't ever wish for Linux to become unstable as the cost of making it easier to use, just as we never want Linux to become unsafe. People who regularly use Windows are accustomed to system crashes and viruses as a normal daily concern -- this is not the way computing has to be! With Linux, this situation largely doesn't exist because of the fundamental architecture of the system, which consists of independent layers that have specific features and strict permissions. Additionally, normal users have a strict and limited role on a Linux system; it's only the "root" user (administrator) who has the power to expose an entire system to possible danger. With DOS, Windows 95, and Windows 98, users have the ability to do anything to a system. This is a dangerous scenario in these times of widespread Internet access and extensive networking. With Windows NT and Windows 2000, Microsoft introduced some mechanisms that LOOK like Unix features such as authentication, permissions, and others, but they don't remotely come close to the same level of security that Linux provides. Linux-Mandrake, in particular, has always focused on ease-of-use issues and has been working hard on this particular challenge of blending common sense security features while maintaining the same user friendly operating system that has become so popular with Linux users. With a Linux-Mandrake system, you can choose a level of security for the system based on its intended use, while maintaining a very friendly system at the same time. "Ease-of-use" seems to have come to mean graphical interfaces for everything. While it's certainly not true that a nice interface instantly means something is easier to use, it is true that users have come to expect and appreciate slick-looking interfaces to do their work in. This is one area where Linux lagged until KDE[5] and GNOME[6] appeared. Now, Linux is extremely easy to use day-to-day with these great desktop environments. One of the remaining issues we in the Linux community need to address is the refinement and polishing of the wonderful tools we already have at our disposal. For example: It's true that most applications don't use anti-aliased fonts for display purposes, which might cause a user to think, "Well... it doesn't look as good as Windows; I wonder what else it's lacking." Of course, this single point doesn't mean that the application doesn't contain all the features that would make this user extremely happy, but people's perception is their reality, so it is a valid issue to consider. About reliability and security in the Open Source modelReliability and stability have long been major benefits of Linux, and this is proven every day by the thousands of Linux servers that run for months and sometimes even years without as much as a hiccup. Security has also been an important feature of Linux, not only because it is one of the fundamentally most secure operating systems itself, but also because of the way security flaws are handled. When a security issue is discovered, it doesn't take very long for Linux vendors to release an update. Sometimes, a fix can take a week; often, it takes a few days or even a few minutes, depending on the bug. The Open Source model provides an extremely efficient process for handling these types of matters that can't be matched by a proprietary software maker such as Microsoft, which often takes weeks, months, or even years to fix a problem. So how exactly does the Open Source model excel? Even if Microsoft had the best and brightest engineers in the world, we have the power of numbers. When a serious bug is discovered with Linux, hundreds (possibly thousands) of experienced users and developers can spontaneously work to fix the problem because they have access to all the sources. And we, as Linux vendors, quickly receive patches from the community or develop a solution ourselves. This patch is then validated (or not) very quickly, so an update can be released in record time. This extremely efficient process is impossible in the proprietary/closed software model; it's simply the nature of that beast. Once upon a time, there was a young boy and a PC...He couldn't do much because he only had DOS/Windows installed on his computer. He was very saddened to realize that he had to buy additional software to actually do anything with his new pride and joy. But since he had already spent most of his money on the PC, he unfortunately had to copy some proprietary software. This wasn't an ideal solution, because then he couldn't get the documentation for the software. This was extremely unfortunate, because he was very interested in learning programming but couldn't find any information about the libraries that were shipped with the C compiler that a friend had copied for him. Furthermore, the operating system calls that he used were apparently undocumented and there wasn't even an assembler provided with the system. He really couldn't understand why he didn't have the opportunity to create his own software for this computer and operating system that he already paid for. That was 1990. Five years later, this young boy discovered he could run Linux on that 386 -- and it was free! Well... he just had to buy 50 diskettes, and he was with his new OS. This operating system provided several full-featured compilers and all the documentation he needed to enable him to program anything for his computer. It was then that he realized how limiting Windows had been for him all that previous time and how it stifled his personal desire to create. He realized that Linux couldn't even be compared to that other operating system. Linux provided the freedom this young man needed -- the freedom to control the technology at hand and also his own future. Linux provides the opportunity to express one's self through creating code, and empowers the individual, which is where power best belongs. The Future will be Open... or it won't bePeople know about icebergs. They know that unless they're swimming underwater in that sea, they're seeing just a little bit of the iceberg. That's similar to how it is with Linux companies and the Open Source model. Linux companies won't ever be as rich as traditional software companies because they offer much more than proprietary software does, and nearly for free. But this doesn't mean we can't all make a living with Open Source software and live well. Mandrakesoft, Red Hat, SuSE, Turbo Linux... all these companies will tell you that they grew a great deal this year, they also grew the previous year, and they will grow again the next because there are ever increasing numbers of people having their own personal discovery with Linux. These people will buy a Linux pack, then their friends will purchase a pack, as will more and more enterprises, who will also require services and support. These Linux companies and this wonderful community we're all a part of are helping change the way people use software and directly affecting people's lives and how we all work. So, when talking to potential new Linux users, just tell them they can have a full operating system for their PC that contains an office suite, a Web browser, just about everything they could want... for free. This is the first step to entering the Linux world. This will put them on the road to discover for themselves what the "Free" really means in Free Software. With time, they'll also come to know what we already do, the same way your mind evolved between the first day you decided to get Internet access -- no matter whether it was because it was a "fashionable" thing to do or you really wanted to know what it was -- and the day when you first browsed those personal Web pages, to the day of posting your first words in a forum. All readers who switched definitely from Windows to Linux are welcomed to give their feedback about their experience in the Mandrake Forum on http://www.mandrakeforum.com/article.php3?sid=20000918042153. Notes:
Gaël Duval, Co-Founder of Mandrakesoft, and Phil Lavigna offer this essay to be freely improved and redistributed under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.
T-Shirts and Fame!We're eager to find people interested in writing editorials on software-related topics. We're flexible on length, style, and topic, so long as you know what you're talking about and back up your opinions with facts. Anyone who writes an editorial gets a freshmeat t-shirt from ThinkGeek in addition to 15 minutes of fame. If you think you'd like to try your hand at it, let jeff.covey@freshmeat.net know what you'd like to write about.[Comments are disabled]
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Easy ... the new problem in linux Linux is not easy to ue as someone pointed out, becuse its so complex and powerful. I'm not sure howto put this, but the effort to make Linux easier to use, easier for newbies, make Linux look more like wind0ws is actually bringing up new problems. One good example is my n00b experience while configuring a network with my Mandrake distro. The GUI is so simple to use, that I donno what changes were made, or not made, were activated or not activated. Some changes require u to restart X, some this some that blah blah blah. In the end I just reboot the pc. Linux used to be good for these things, reconfigure whatever you need without rebooting. This is really frustrating. I have lots more encounters with these "GUI that look good and easy to use" problem that I can list here. Now I'm just sticking to console like my good old MSDOS days. Wizards are to aid users, not to hide and simplify everything to nothing like M$ ppl are doing. Some users might be stattisfy when the stuffs that they want to do are working, but some still want to know what's happening in the background and have some control over it. The point is, stick back to linux roots. Learn Linux the correct way, or you'll learn nothing at all .... Try asking the new linux desktop newbies to use consol for a day, I'm sure they'll switch back to windows. Being lazy and being a complete idiot is not the same thing, so make sure the ease of use are targetted at lazy people, not idiots who know nothing about computer, but want to use Linux just because everyone says its better than wind0ws. I'm not sure if I made my point here, hope you guys can see it, ;p
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Marathon+ My mother was seeing a hardware technician two years ago. He used Windows out of FUD of anything else, and to get some sense of security since he wasn't very experienced with software modification in general (mostly hardware). He had to reformat our computer's hard drive several times during his stay with us to solve minor windows software/conflict problems, but that's another point. After a reformat, because of the Dell-specific devices attached to our computer, he'd have to put in a marathon 12-36 hour reinstalling session trying to get Windows to recognize and use our hardware correctly. I have formatted the thing once or twice myself, and even with the fresh perspective and learning from his mistakes, I put in 13 hours installing simple things like our modem and sound card as a general rule. Then, I bought Linux. I picked up a Mandrake 7.2 distro at Wal Mart for about $26 after tax (Windows ME is $80), took it home, repartitioned my hard drive (which had already been divided into 3 partitions by the hardware guy and Dell themselves), and installed. I'm in day 3 of using Linux and, although I'm still figuring out how to compile the kernel to use my LT Winmodem and OPL3-SA3 sound board, everything has gone more or less much more smoothly than with windows. I couldn't compile with Windows; their c++ environment costs over $200. Mandrake comes with several. They also gave me MP3 software, CD burners, every IM system I can think of (and some I can't), a full office suite (Office 2000=$300), and about the breeziest hardware support I've seen, for $25. Not $2000, hours of install, and months of tracking down and downloading programs; $25--and about 2 hours. I'm not a hacker. I'm not a sysadmin. I'm not skilled; I type fast, but so does everyone. I can code-a little-in VBasic, thanks to a college course. My expertise is limited to what I've been able to glean from a couple years of windows application exploration-no in-depth OS exploration, even. And Linux is installed and runs and I know the exact location of a webpage that can tell me how to recompile my kernel(to fix my winmodem) in simple newbie-glish with my new free programming environment.
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linux vs microsoft windows i'm a new linux user, and the thing i think people should know about is the deal that when an application has a problem or crashes, it's only that application that you have to concern yourself with, in linux. i got really tired of windows having some kind of page fault or stack dump and negatively affecting the whole system.
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Linux is NOT easy to use I have been using Linux for about two years now, and had some failed
attempts at trying it earlier as a WinNT addict... ^_^
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A comment concerning Operating Systems To those that are biased towards Linux or Windows. Relax. Hardly anyone cares. Linux is not easier to use for the nonpower user. Windows does not do serious computing well. The philosophies are different, Linux is derived from a large system, multiuser model. Windows from the PC. Remember, PC is an acronym for Personal Computer, an individual machine that is meant to be used by one person at a time. A computer is a tool that uses an Operating System. VMS, UNIX, MPE, LINUX, NT, BSD, WINDOWS, or any of a myriad of other past and future operating systems make no difference, as long as the user has very little irritation with it.
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A hype? Actually, I think Bill Gates is not all wrong.. Parts of Linux popularity
is because of a hype. I daily see companies bragging about using Linux, but
they rarely know anything about what Linux is. The fact is, some companies
use Linux simply because "its in", "its the future" and
"its what the modern company need to use". I never said this is
true for all companies, but companies thinking like this is too many to be
ignored as "a small detail". Bill Gates isnt all wrong when he
claims there is a hype around Linux.
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Server OS I just thought it was worth noting here that contrary to popular belief,
Mandrake makes one darn good server.
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Ease of use... Let's do a reality check here! I'm a unix network admin... I cut my internet teeth on SunOS and now cover most flavors (Solaris, AIX, HPUX, BSD, Linux, Etc...). And yes I do Windows as well... Let me tell you about "Ease of use"! Anybody that does this stuff for a living will tell you that setting up a unix box regardless of the flavor is a bitch! All have their glitches and all have their pains! But the same can be said for Windows as well... Securing a Windows box can be daunting! Not to mention that 99% of the viruses floating around in email are aimed right at Windows! From a ease of use standpoint, Linux is by far the easiest unix flavor to setup. Printer setup, network setup, security, and so forth... But the idea that it can take the place of the Windows desktop when the person at the wheel is a 40 something secretary doing word processing all day is nuts at this stage of the game... For the folks that need a "REAL" operating system with all the great power of unix... Linux is a good choice... Stu
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ease of use, security I'm linux lover, i really only use windows because games, like starcraft
(this because my machine isn't to powerful to run starcraft with wine, it
is too slow), but i can look all the world... windows is more ease of use
because everybody has used it, you can tell the same about MacOS, a user
that learn Mac, then will consider it easy than windows, that is, if you
teach to a newbie in computers to use Linux with a nice graphical
interface, it will tell that it is easy... it is different to teach he
administer the system, programming, or another thing. I'm ready to say that
Mandrake is the easiest of the distros, not the better but it is running to
get the nice basic administration software that windows XXXX have.
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Simple, really Look, it's really simple: different users have different requirements. If you're the type that wants to write programs, explore how things work, and don't mind learning how to use tools that are as complex as they are powerful, then Linux is for you. In other words, if you're like the guy who's been running Linux for 5 years and can't even fucking compile Ispell, Linux probably isn't for you. If you want something that will work just well enough to be functional without a required investment of time in installing and configuring tools that will do the job right, shell out the money for Win2K/ME and just pretend you aren't running a shoddily-implemented piece of shit.
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Is NT really that insecure? You said: With Windows NT and Windows 2000, Microsoft introduced some mechanisms that LOOK like Unix features such as authentication, permissions, and others, but they don't remotely come close to the same level of security that Linux provides. I've had a fair bit of NT programming experience and the ACL mechanism NT supports is exceptionally sophisticated. It's way more flexible and powerful than the traditional unix permissions system (this might change with the introduction of posix-ACLs). Of course, NT may not use its own system in the appropriate way, and I did not do enough research into it to determine this one way or the other. However, I would like you know what you have that can back your statement up. IMHO, its one area that Linux really needs work on.
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Ease of Use Gates has no clue what he's talking about. I'd never used linux in my life
until maybe March or April of this year on a Linux server. I got it up and
running on my home PC piece of cake. I re-installed Apache (Mandrake 7.0
ships with version 1.3.9), and it was pretty easy, because it gives
detailed information on how to install it. --
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nt investmen cost billions dolars? Did you read the original article?, i can believe it... Mr gates, go at hell... and take windows with you... You know Linux is better, faster and all the users love it... Everybody hate winbugs... It was the only choice some years ago.. but now linux rules...
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Oh really? Regarding security...
--
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Oh really? Regarding security...
--
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Bills a Doubletalking Freak First let me state that I am an experiences Software Engineer with over 20
years in the industry. I dumped Windows at home in December of last year,
wiping NT and Win2000 off all my partitions {Boy did that feel good}. I
installed Mandrake Distro and was quite impressed. I found it easier to
install than Win2000, and many times more stable than Win2000 on my AMD
K6II Motherboard. Windows suffers from many problems, the least of which is Microsofts
really shitty history of repairing bugs in its software. I have had to deal
with Microsoft support, and in my humble opinion... IT STINKS... I have
found so much information about Linux on the web that I feel that support
for Linux is basically free. I have had problems {trying to get the
Ethernet card to work, my graphics card wasn't fully supported, etc.} but
eventually I would figure out what I needed. I like being able to 'BUILD'
the software which runs on my machine. RPMs are very easy to install and
many commercial apps have their own installers {look at StarOffice from
Sun}. EASE-OF-USE is in the eyes of the beholder. I find LINUX easier to
use than Windows because in windows I need to mouse all over the place to
get things done, in LINUX I can use a command, pipe the output to
something else, and produce a very professional looking document. Bill Gates in a liar... I knew he was lying to the people way back in
1993 and I knew he wanted Microsoft Everywhere. Microsoft has many serious
problems, and they are trying to claim they invent things... The problem
is, they haven't really invented anything... They have stolen much
of what they claim they invented. My wife thinks he should be sent to
jail. I'm very, very happy with Linux and know that it has a bright future. PEACE, Michael Uman Sr. Software Engineer Sonic Solutions
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Let's be real here - okay? /Climb up on soap box
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Ease of use My Father is a farmer in Namibia. He is at least 20 miles away from the nearest internet connection and even further away from the nearest Linux expert. Yet he run's Linux and the Windows partition that is still on the box is just going to waste. He now tells everyone about Linux :) I guess this says something about your average Joe in Computer terms...
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FUD as an answer to FUD This "editorial" is worthless and commits the same crime it's trying to criticise: using FUD and lying with a straight face. Anything to prove the point. It comes nowhere near a balanced opinion which simply proves that a zealot will reamain a zealot no matter what. GNU/Linux easy to use? I use it daily for more than 5 years and somehow haven't noticed that. I run arguably the most popular distribution out there (Redhat 6.2) and I try not to mess ("customize") with it too much in fear that a great punishement will be inflicted upon me. I tried to install Aspell once, supposedly stable version. There's no rpm but I've invested countless hours in reading man pages and administration self-help books so compiling from sources is not that big of a deal (and I'm looking forward to teaching my mother to do it, after all she's much brighter that my wimpy colleagues at the University were when I tried and failed to make them understand make, compiler and link errors or at least make them use Emacs instead of Sun's horrible text editor). So I compiled. And then executed. And got a core dump. Oh well, I'm a professional programmer, I thought, I've spent five years in CS graduate studies and conviced some people to pay me for programming. I'll just fix it. But what gdb is telling me? "executable format not recognized". That's the ease-of-use for ya, I don't have another day to spend installing newer tools from sources to debug one program. Installed Enlightenment 0.16 once. Boy, my machine started crashing like there is no tommorow. I was happy I was able to replace it with sawfish without re-formating everything. And what a programmer has to do when he forgets, say, the syntax of socket() call? He uses man pages, a random collection of randomly useful information that goes a long way in order to not be of any help. After using man I'm having wet dreams about MSDN. I can already picture myself explaining to my mother that she should become root in order to install a new program. That is after I can convince her that "rpm -ihv very-long-name" is something that she should be able to use/understand. The list goes on and on. If you go back to what you have written: Linux is still considered to be harder to use, Unix is often seen as a complicated system etc. you'll see that you're either in a deep denial or desperately trying to cover the ugly truth: GNU/Linux is far from being useful for an average consumer. Please, save your blatant Linux is extremely easy to use lie to your like-minded zealots but do not embarass yourself by expressing such opinions in public. Linux secure? I'm sure you dilligently skip all bugtraq reports, after all one remote exploit a week is not that big of a security risk. Linux can be made reasonably secure, something I hope I did with my machine after some script kiddie got root and installed back door because I was naive enough to left DNS server that came with RedHat 6.2 running. Linux is easy if you have an infinite amount of time to spend learning it and secure if you have lots of money to spend on people who can make it secure. It borders on irony that out of 4 statements that Gates made that you're trying to categorize as FUD and lies, 3 are actually true and one is non-verifiable. Here they go:
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Linux Zealots These linux zealots are starting to really irk me. Can it compete with
windows in ease of use? NO. Should it even try? NO. Ease of use wasn't a
goal of linux until recently, and since then I've seen things go downhill
(ex: Redhat & Debian). There is always a tradeoff. If you make it easy
to use for the average person, then us guru's will start having
problems(example: ever try to manualy install sendmail in debian?).
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BeOS... the true solution! If any of you have ever used BeOS, you will know what I mean when I say "It beats the living shit out of Windows!" I recently set up a small network of three computers useing beos and it's the fastest network i've ever seen before! Sure it's not Open Source, but it's freely downloadble over the internet, and it's file manager "Tracker" is open source and freely avaible. Go and download it at http://free.be.com
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Hard to Use? Not. Okay, if you're incapable of following some basic instructions and learning a new thing, then it's hard to use. Guess what, Windows is NO DIFFERENT. I recently had to migrate an office from DOS to Windows (don't ask why - it was a requirement for their software package) and teaching them to use Windows was just a bear. They were used to DOS and had the hardest time learning a new thing. But then , it's clear that Bill has a very low view of his customers - he's called them all thieves and treats them like they're idiots. My first Linux install years ago was off some Debian diskettes I downloaded. I printed out the instruction sheet and followed everything step by step. First bootup worked perfectly, and by following some instructions on usage I was whizzing through the filesystem in no time trying this or that. It was like being let out of a tiny fishbowl into the grand ocean. My second experiment, and first with X, was a Slackware install off a couple of Zip disks. Breathing and drinking was harder than that. And I got X configured and up and running in no time, just by following some basic simple instructions. Now I use the latest RedHat distro (I had to pick one and stick with it though there may be better choices out there). It all but installs itself while I have a ham on rye and watch the Three Stooges. I yawn, reboot and startx and I'm off and running in less than 45 minutes. It takes that long or longer just to Install a bare-bones Windows without all the apps - Linux installs with a host of apps and it's ready to go with minimal effort from the get-go. Moral of this Story? Ease of use is purely relative. If you have the intellect of a marble and think instructions are something to pack away in a shoebox, then you deserve to be punished with MS Windows. If you are a half-wit or above, can follow some basic instructions and know the difference between a floppy and a CDRom, then Linux is a breaze to install _and_ use. Heck, it was easy before GNOME and KDE. --RANT Additionally, no one with half a sense about them would take Bill Gate's remarks seriously. The entire world knows he's a scammer and has been legally declared untrustworthy. Additionally, listening to him bashing Linux is like listening to the Ford dealership bashing Chevy. It's stupid to take that seriously. I'm in business and I'm not about to tell my customers that my competition is a bunch of really nice and competent guys. Of course he's going to say bad stuff about Linux. We're the enemy in his eyes. We're the Democracy by offering a Choice and Community Participation - He's the Communist Dictator by removing Choice through leverage, oppression and slander. After all, I don't know any Linux user who feels he/she's trapped. Microsoft tends to have a few in power with the masses trapped into their OS whether they like it or not - kinda like Communism. Long Live the Linux Revolution! --/RANT Okay, I feel better. Just another expression of how easy Linux truly is and how Twisted and Evil Microsoft is...
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Security Well I don't know about security... most Unices are very vulnerable to buffer overflows and stack smashing. Every week more vulnerabilities are discovered. I know that NT can have the same problems but hell, who wants to crack an NT box... no shells, where's the fun in that? It's a pity no one has ever used the facilities provided in the x86 to seperate code pages from data and prevent arbitrary data being run as code in the event of a smashed stack...
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2nd most used SERVER OS Your statement, "the truth, according to IDC figures, is that Linux is now the second most widely-used operating system in the world[3]" completely mis-states what your referenced article said. This is server operating systems, not business or consumer operating systems. There's a big difference. I'm as big a Linux fan as anybody (RedHat/Gnome/HelixCode is my flavor), but our community doesn't get any farther by overstating the truth. Steve Hall
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ease of use - windows vs. linux i've been using linux for a couple years now and i love it and hate it (sometimes). i have an hp scanner i can't use cause it's a parallel port scanner. i have an hp printer which i can't print photo quality on. i have a logitech trackball that i can't use the lock button on. but everything else works just fine. of course all this stuff works on windows so whenever i want to do something i can't do under linux i have to switch to windows. now of course i know it's the manufacturers falt for not releasing specs, etc. but here i am. oh yah! let's not forget my sblive! it might work someday as good or better than it does under windows. but i've benn waiting patiently for a year now and some progress is being made, but... not everything bill says is a lie.
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Linux Passes "The Wife Test"! I use linux almost exclusively on my home PC -- there's no linux version of Elmo's Pre-School. (At work I do use it 100%). My wife also uses the machine quite a bit. Apart from the frequest Netscape crashes and freeze-ups (always the latest version), she likes linux more than Windows. "I really like this interface better than Windows," she told me one night while surfing the web. When asked why, she said, "It's more intuitive. It's easier to get around, I guess." (We use KDE, by the way). She really finds the virtual desktop to be a cool feature. I was totally floored. I used to think she just tolerated linux for the sake of her computer geek husband, but it turns out she really likes linux a lot. And it's soooo much easier to secure than Windows. I'm not proud of the fact, but I got my MCSE certification 3 years ago (don't laugh - my employer paid the entire $4500 bill!) And while security is not a focus in the class, learning the guts of NT enlightens one as to how complex a system NT really is. If you lock down the registry or filesystem to the point where it's really secure, you can easily break a lot of things. Any OS which allows applications to dump files in the OS's main system tree is a joke! And while you can secure the host and the network side of things, it takes a lot of meticulous effort. Linux (well, UNIX in general) is so well designed that securing it is a snap for those who know what to do.
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Ease of use What I really like in Linux, is that even if it will become much easier to use in the future, for instance, GUI 'wizards' which will help people to install new hardware, We will always be able to switch to the old-good-console, and do it in the old-good-way. Countrary to this, Windows' GUIs are blocking the user from seeing what REALLY happens in his comp. that really sucks. Anyway, what I said here is more related to Unix vs. Windows than to Linux vs. Windows, tough..
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Gates sucked again Hey mr Gates stop sucking with your windows ! Just get a power of BSD!
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billy boy why dont you just fuck off i think that mr. gates just comes to a point where he has
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Ease of use It's actually a quantifiable term. However, Mr. Gates was probably not
using it in that sense, because he certainly didn't follow up with numbers
or statistics. The funny thing about Linux is that its ease of use depends
on your skill level and the distribution you use. For instance,
Linux-Mandrake rocks for newbies; I recommend it to them regularly.
I am much more comfortable in Debian, however, even though it requires
greater skill to use effectively. --
[»]
Stability: Linux vs. Windows I just like to add some example of differences in stability and security
between Linux and Windows.
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