Why Can't LINUX Win Against Windows?

audio, the audio subsystem on linux has sucked for over 10 years,

there are too many choices esd, osd, alsa, openal, dsp , and they dont interoperate

one sound card, one sound drivers

1. Linux can't run Photoshop or any other Adobe software for that matter

2. It doesn't run any PC game I own

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I found that it has many useful features, but that doesn't matter as long as it can't run my day-to-day apps.

Actually Adobe Photoshop CS3 works under linux by using wine.
Same for most games (you might have to buy cedega but since you own windows you are used to buing).

Not saying windows is brilliant but this is a serious anti-windows rant !

Mac OS X is becoming very popular and can almost be seen as a user friendly working version of linux.....due to the fact it works, has programs that work on it and has a nice look and feel but of course its also not open source, or free.

And linux has enough advertising but there we hit the next critical point - 40 different distributions ALL with major differences.
It is a major pain in the arse when you are used to for example SUSE and then move to Debian or Red Hat !
NOTHING is the same - the files are all in different places, the config is different etc AND this is a major problem for the majority of people who just want to use a computer (ie its programs) and not spend hours having search the net how to get something working on a differen distribution to the one that they are used to !

It's unfortunate that this post is littered with ignorance.

First, Linux is spelled L-I-N-U-X, not L-I-N-I-U-X.

Second,

"WINDOWS is a closed operating system. Microsoft is controlling everything. People consider WINDOWS as the BLACK BOX in the computing world. It is not because it will record last minutes of the flight. But, it is because that nobody can know the inside components except the manufacturer."

This whole statement is misleading. Microsoft's products are currently (though not years ago) among the most documented products on the market. There is certainly a high degree of abstraction in the Windows product, but that is, it actually is, a feature. People SHOULDN'T need to know how the kernel is written in order to write a device driver. They SHOULDN'T need to see the source code of Explorer.exe to be able to write a shell extension.

Third,

"Most considered one is that Linux is an open source. This means that LINUX is absolutely free and no one will ask you for any fees."

Ludicrous. Open source vendors ask for fees ALL THE TIME, and it's their right to. Open source is not about free beer. That said, the core Linux kernel is free beer, and there are many more FREE DISTRIBUTIONS of Linux than there are COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTIONS of Linux, but the commercial distributions offer something that most of the free distributions do not: support.

Fourth,

"In addition, anyone can modify and customize LINUX. Today you can find large number of LINUX distributions. This makes LINUX able to run on PCs, MAC computers, cell phones, game platforms, supercomputers, distributed systems, and nearly every computing machine or device."

You are not taking into account that all of these hardware platforms being able to run Linux makes Linux's core featureset pretty limited to the lowest common denominators. Lots of hardware optimizations and hardware drivers go missing because all commercial Linux vendors combined cannot afford to compete with Microsoft's ability to garner driver support and optimizations for the platforms that Windows runs on--and free drivers tend to lack quality, for obvious reasons.

Fifth,

"Many of WINDOWS users did not choose to use WINDOWS operating systems. It is because they do not know much about computers, and maybe because they do not like to change. Anyway, they bought the PCs with WINDOWS operating system installed in them. What to do? Answer is 'nothing'. I woke up, yesterday, today, and tomorrow. I am using WINDOWS. My father, uncle, brother, grandfather, friend, people on the road, in the coffee shop, all of them are using WINDOWS. It is the result of what they call 'MONOPOLY'."

You've seriously confused the term "monopoly". Ubiquity is not monopoly. Everyone in my neighborhood gets their electricity from a company called SBC, but that doesn't make SBC a monopoly; anyone can choose to buy a generator and gasoline if they like. But they choose not to.

I'm quite certain that 99.9% of all consumers who buy a computer make a decision, even if it's a split-second decision, as to what operating system they choose to use. Many of them are choosing Macs. Most of them are choosing Windows. Few of them choose Linux for two reasons: 1) Linux is not available by the hardware vendor (Best Buy, et al), or 2) if Linux is available, they are not certain that the software that they intend to execute will run on Linux. And, they choose not to care.

Monopoly comes into play where Microsoft uses strongarm tactics to keep hardware vendors from installing Linux on the same hardware as part of the same package deal. But that isn't what you said -- you said that the CONSUMER CHOICE of retaining windows is due to monopoly, and that is incorrect; the consumer choice is due to a lack of DESIRE to fight the battle you're fighting right now. As you said, "More clearly, they're happy with it, no need to change." Indeed, consumer satisfaction is not even remotely logically associated with the term "monopoly".

Sixth,

"WINDOWS is targeting PCs, minicomputers, PALM devices, smart phones, some types of supercomputers and maybe more. Importantly, we can say "unlike LINUX, WINDOWS has well known targets to work on". This is because a stand alone company like MICROSOFT must work in well defined plans and there is no time for playing here and there."

Interesting, you listed a LOT of platforms there!! How do you think Microsoft managed to support so many platforms? By wiggling their nose? No, they spend their billions of dollars on the best engineers on the planet to "play with" these platforms, and they're exploring other platforms all the time. You might want to start hanging out at http://research.microsoft.com/

Seven,

"In LINUX you can get the latest version of any application freely from the net....In WINDOWS world everything will cost money."

Hey I've got news for you, buddy. You're only looking at ratios, not quantities. Most Linux software is recompilable on Windows using either Cygwin or MinGW, and meanwhile THERE ARE MORE COMMERCIAL-QUALITY, FREE SOFTWARE PRODUCTS AVAILABLE FOR WINDOWS THAN FOR LINUX.

The software products that do cost money are usually either VERY, VERY high quality products and/or commercial-grade business applications. Software does not grow on trees, we software developers (yes, I am one) have to eat just like everyone else, and it takes a lot of time to build up a software application. We also want to be able to support our software. So we sell our software for a price.

And we would prefer to publish our software, for a price, on a platform that is supported and that is of high enough quality that it actually has a software price of its own, as well. Maybe that would mean Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Maybe that would mean Mac OS Server. But it might mean Windows. So then we start looking at platform-targeting development toolsets. Hmm... Visual Studio versus gcc. Ouch!!

Eight, you mention Windows users preferring the GUI and Linux folks knowing that they have to get into the terminal to get things done. Given the content in this section, you pretty much under-sold Linux and probably should not have mentioned this given your intent to knock Windows. That said, however, you made an ignorant move in your comments, and that was the failure to acknowledge Windows' shiny new PowerShell, which has been around since before Vista as an optional installation and will eventually replace the CMD.exe command shell altogether. Meanwhile, Windows with the UNIX Compatibility options and optional tools installed also has all of Bash and CShell that Linux enjoys. Not to mention Cygwin ...

In other words, whatever made Linux special via its command shell, Windows has, too. You just have to look past the nice GUI to find it.

Nine,

"Compared to WINDOWS, LINUX is far more stable."

You need to be more subjective with your comments like this. Which version of Linux? Which version of Windows? Because last I checked, Windows Server 2008, using it as a workstation, is pretty rock-solid.

"One of my friends believes that WINDOWS is the EXPLORER.EXE."

Wait, did you just say that? How about I say "One of my friends believes that Linux is Nautilus"? Why are you bothering to say such rediculous things?

"It may be a hard thing to believe that LINUX is stable as rock. But at least it is undisputable that a failure in LINUX is rare comparing in compare to the famous BLUE SCREEN from MICROSOFT."

Apparently you have not discovered the joy that is the new partially user-mode video driver support that's in Vista and Windows Server 2008 now. Since the most common cause of blue screens was the video card, blue screens have become quite rare in these new Windows environments.

Ten, Windows Server 2008 is VERY clean of security issues, albeit still in the same league as Mac OS X. But Microsoft publishes security updates via Windows Updates every month. They're faster than most vendors at responding to users who report security holes by patching them with updates. Only the commercial Linux distributions are able to compete as well as Microsoft does at producing timely security fixes while at the same time doing heavy quality assurance testing to be sure that the patched product is not a buggy or broken one.

Eleven, the vulnerability of viruses, trojan horses, and the like are roughly the same across all of the latest operating systems. More viruses target Windows because more computers run Windows, not because Windows is more vulnerable. The very high ratio of Windows users increases the ratio of Windows-using virus writers, and it also increases their decision as to which operating system to target.

That said, earlier version of Windows and Microsoft Office had HUGE holes and vulnerabilities in them, but Microsoft has plugged nearly all of those holes.

Twelve, documentation and community interaction do not define support. SUPPORT IS ACTIVE INVOLVEMENT. Convincing hardware vendors to write device drivers for the platform is platform support. Writing software that targets handicapped people is accessibility support. Writing software SDKs and tools that allow users to produce high quality software quickly and of high quality is developer support. Microsoft's MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) is one of the greatest support infrastructures of any software vendor on the planet. Only Apple comes close with its Xcode and associated tools initiatives.

As I mentioned, Linux has true support in the forms of COMMERCIAL DISTRIBUTIONS, but these commercial distros tend to be very lackluster in what is they can actually accomplish. For instance, only Novell (MonoDevelop), Sun (JDK, NetBeans) and IBM (Eclipse) have made significant notable contributions in developer support for the Linux platform, and yet these contributions are also enjoyed by the Windows platform.

But with regard to simply getting help, I would disagree that Linux has more channels; Linux has more support in IRC, but the Windows crowd has some INCREDIBLE support via NNTP (news://msnews.microsoft.com), user groups, documentation, blogs, and professional consultants.


Last but not least, I want to give Linux a brownie and say that you missed one important thing in favor of Linux, and that is that YOU CAN MAKE IT YOUR OWN. You can make it start up with YOUR logo, you can write YOUR OWN shell, you can redistribute everything you customized about it and give it a product name and sell it for $2,399 if you want. You don't get that with Windows; Windows makes you take it as it is or leave it.

I actually like Linux partly for this reason. Not over OS X or Windows Vista, but I like it, it's a fun OS if you're geeky enough.

A nice summary of the situation. Some misleading points, but mostly a good overview.

You seem a bit behind the times though with the discussion on "installers". You say Windows users just download a program, double click, accept EULA, choose install directory, and it's done.

True.

Then you mention that Linux install programs are much poorer in quality and "have no progress bar".

Well this obviously depends on your distro. With a modern distro such as Ubuntu, installing tens of thousands of free applications is the easiest thing in the world. Just type "sudo apt-get install ". Ten seconds later, it is completely installed and ready to go.

Don't like terminal (ie: "normal users")? Synaptic or the more cut-down "Add/Remove Programs" box let you achieve the same thing with a GUI, and able to browse the entire library. And there's a progress bar :)

As for the packages available: Well it's very rare that there's a piece of free software I hear about which isn't available in the Ubuntu package system. Admittedly it's a bit harder to install software if it's not there.

Basically, you make the Linux installers sound a lot worse than Windows, where in fact in my opinion the Ubuntu/Debian package system is one of the major advantages of Linux over Windows, for both advanced and novice users.

@astro: You can run WINE and emulate Windows to run Adobe Photoshop or any game you can run on Windows.

But that doesn't want to say i support Linux, however. I'm a Windows fanboy, and i will keep on using Windows for the rest of my life.

I tried several Linux distro's and none of them could persuade me to ditch Windows.

@author: Nice article. :)