Re: Microsoft vs Linux

[Dan Hensley <dan hensley att net>]

Danny Ho wrote:

> I aggree with some aspects of M.Vanderford's comment regarding Microsoft
> vs Linux.

That information was FUD from M$'s web site.  It's been dissected and responded to by a lot of people (just look at the LinuxToday archives), because some of it had untrue statements and/or misleading information.

> Just because a product is hyped up by the IT industry doesn't mean it is a
> more "superior" product. For example: - Currently I am using Freebsd as my

That goes for M$ as well.  It's hyped as the Unix-killer, the whole world will soon be running NT, the end-all solution to everything, etc.  But if you look around you see so many shortcomings with their products that in IMHO will never be what it claims to be.

> server. Then as soon as I migrated to Linux Redhat 6.0. Problems started
> to occur with the operating system so after a month I migrated back to
> Freebsd. Clearly Freebsd is "much" more stable than Linux Redhat 5.2 or
> Redhat 6.0.

FreeBSD is considered more stable, but that's because updates are more tightly controlled and I believe they are more conservative on what changes they make.  It's probably more stable for the types of things you're doing with it.

> Unlike LInux which is just Unix and kernels, Freebsd is a "fully" pledge
> operating system.

Linux is the kernel, and GNU provides most of the "standard" utilities that make it useful.

> In regards to the to Linux Redhat 6.0 as a X Windows manager I personally
> believe the Microsoft Windows 98/95 OS is clearly "more professional" than
> Redhat 6.0 X windows manager. Even Windows 95/98 runs betters than GNOME
> or fvwm95. Just because the "hype" claims Microsoft has problems doesn't
> mean s true.

The M$ WM may be more integrated, but it suffers from a lot of design flaws too (just one example is configurability, and I could go on for a long time--don't get me started :-).    Some of these are not easily changed, either.  I'd say the current state of Gnome and at least some of the Window managers come close to matching, if not exceeding, the functionality of M$.  But if you want to see how a good desktop _should_ be, look at OS/2 Workplace Shell.  IMHO it's still the best UI design of anything out there.  M$ could learn a lot from IBM about how to design a good GUI.  But I think Unix/Linux/*BSD to graphics in the end is quite a bit more flexible.  By the way, what exactly is the Redhat 6.0 X Window
manager?  There is no such thing--it could be about anything you choose.

What I think is so exciting about Gnome is its potential.  It has the ability to incorporate all the good features of the other GUIs and (hopefully) leave out the bad.  And it's developing so rapidly that today's shortcomings probably won't be there tomorrow.

> Summary points:-
> Just because the media "hypes" up liunx redhat 6 doesn't mean it is a far
> more "superior" platform.

That's certainly true.  But it's not all hype.  The "hype" about stability certainly isn't just hype.  Linux is more stable than Windows anything.

> Clearly Microsoft OS as a desktop is more professioanl.

What do you mean by "professional"?

> Freebsd is a much more stable and a better platform than Linux.

Again, it depends on what for.  But in general, you're probably right.  I don't have any BSD experience, so I don't know.

Dan