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by jterry 1 view

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I know I have asked this question before but now I would like to phrase it a little differently. I have asked the Linux poeple to explain to me what are the advantages of Linux over Windows? Would there be a large learning curve to teach my users? Would it really be less costly? All I ever heard before is how evil Microsoft is and how bad Windows is. I have heard about Windows crashing all the time and how susceptible it is to Viruses. I keep my systems up to date with patches and updates and have not personally experienced these problems with windows. I have seen these problems while working on my users and friends home PC's only because they have not been educated in how to perform upkeep on their PC's (Until I taught them). One of the biggest problems I see for Linux is there aren't enough IT poeple qualified to administer Linux. Until you convert them you aren't going to succeed in supplanting Windows as the number one OS. Can anyone tell me the advantages of Linux without an attack on Windows?

16 replies

by faradhi

What do you wish to do with your desktops?

What software do you want to run?

Are there any industry specific applications you want to run? If so, Do they run on linux?

If you have to look that hard for a reason to move, they maybe the question should be why move.

by deadly ernest

M$ Windows is hard but here is one attempt.

Why I'm switching to Linux and advising people to do so as well, in a general relationship to all most other Operating Systems.

1. Much cheaper - purchase price is much cheaper, many applications too, and the minimum hardware is less than needed for other Operating Systems. Also extended hardware life.

2. Lower support costs for most distributions and users.

3. Higher compatiblity with applications for earlier versions.

4. Easier cross operating system compatibility.

5. With most ditribution you have a wide range of installation variations - the same operating system can be used for your servers as for your desktops. Simplifying your support knowledge base.

6. Much easier to to minimise and installation to suit the specific need. You can select to have an option or not have it on.

7. When you install an upgrade, patch, or new applications - you rarely have to reboot the system to allow it to work. You need only stop and restart the service that uses it or it uses.

8. Out of the box installation usually has security items turned ON and not OFF.

And I have managed to avoid the specific advantages that relate to Windows - hard as it was.

----------------

There is a difference in how things are laid out in Linux to Windows, but it is on par with the level of layout between Win 98 and Win XP.

Typical difference of costs - I just bought SimplyMEPIS cost A$20.00 this has the operating system, most hardware drivers, a firewall, burner software, sound ripping software, OpenOffice, and many other applications. Some months back I bought Win XP Pro and some applications for a client (their list) Win XP A$250, MS Office $200, Nero $105, Client also bought Nortons Personal Firewall. Just on the OS and Office listing I saved A$430 by going Linux.

--------------------

I have recently been looking at this very issue of change or not for moron level users and have posted some findings in other threads in this Forum, you may wish to look at them. Mind you, I know Linux is better, but still use some Windows simply due to inertia and not having got motivated enough to change everything over yet - I'm still considering accepting the membership application to the Australian Procrastinators Association I was sent in 1973.

Linux vs Windows
https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-11185-0.html?forumID=90&threadID=188884&start=0

Review of some Linux installations
https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5208-11185-0.html?forumID=90&threadID=194760&start=0

by jterry

I have a spare PC at home and when I gather enough information I'm going to attempt to install Linux on it to try it out. I think from your other posting I'd like to try Ubuntu 5.1. I have been trying to defend Windows for quite awhile and if I don't at least try Linux I don't have that much of an argument.

by deadly ernest

Warning IT Histrory lesson alert.

The modern PC industry owes a lot to Bill Gates, he was in the right place at the right time and took a stance that, while totally different to the rest of the industry, encouraged and allowed the rapid growth of the industry to the average person.

When IBM released their Micro-computer (yeah that's what PCs used to be called) and Bill provided PC-DOS, on licence, IBM allowed everyone to use their millions of dollars of research to build computers based on the IBM design - thus the term IBM clone refering to those computers. At that time everyone else in the micor-computer industry felt that the market was small, some universities, research labs, some big businesses, and a few government departments - just a bit bigger than the main frame market. They based their cost recovery on only selling tens of thousands of units. IBM were thinking in the hundreds of thousands of unit, while Bill was thinking 100 million units.

MS-DOS, MS Word, and MS Excel when first released were under A$100 each, while their competitors were in the thousands of dollars each range. Add in the IBM clones and you could put a computer on your desk using MS software for around A$5,000 while the others were around $25,000. Whammy the readily affordable business and home computer industry was up and running.

All the versions of DOS were reasonably good and tightly codes as was the early Windows. However, Bill has always been more of a marketing guy than a coder and his idol (mentioned at at conference in the 1980's) was Thomas Edison. Like Edison, Bill is a marketing shark very agressive and very much into wanting a monopoly. Thus he established marketing systems like Edison. (Look up the AC / DC wars for an idea of his behaviour and attitudes).

With Win 95 Bill integrated much of that agressive and monopolistic marketing style with the coding process, that has accelerated along the way. And you have what Windows is today, a locked down, agressively aging (built in obsolescence), bloated piece of software with too much crap in it.

He gets away with it because by the time the rest of the industry woke up to the new realities of computing Bill had much of the market sown up. However, Win XP and Win Vista have pushed along the wrong directions and are pushing people away from MS, and that means the market is starting to truly diversify some more now.

The industry and the world owes a lot to what Bill did at the start, but he has overshadowed that with his shark marketing methods over the last decade.

----------

On another note if you want a Linux for people who have trouble learning something different to Win 95 or Win 98 then you may want to look at Linspire - it used to be called Lindows as it's original aim was to look so like Windows people couldn't tell the difference, but have the benefits of a LInux OS.

by jaqui

;)

1) The financial outlay to get linux is far less than for windows, ranging from completely free outside of data transfer costs, to as much as 500 us. [ some distros have business specific versions with commercial software included, these do cost more then the "community" boxed sets do. ]

2 a) for the end users, KDE is so similar to windows there is almost no learning curve, Gnome is very similar to Macos, these are the two biggest desktop environments.

2 b) The support staff do have a learning curve. The best way to get this covered, get a few systems and create a linux only test network for them to break and fix.

3) the only time you need to reboot linux is when you change the kernel, you can upgrade everything else without having to reboot the system. you can patch eveything else without having to reboot the system

The real, long term benefits of linux, the vastly extended hardware life, the dismal lack of malware ;) that affects linux systems, the long term stability of linux is far better than windows.

The drawbacks to linux are often overlooked, or misunderstood. Yes, there are drawbacks.
they range from the six month to one year delay in having drivers for a lot of hardware, to the lack of support for Microsoft's wmv [ version 9 or newer specifically ] format video files.

If you do a lot of cad work, then linux is probably not going to be a good os option. Maya, Softimage XSI do run on linux, so the cam / cgi option is there.

If you do cad, and are willing to lock in to using very specific hardware, there are a few commercial cad systems available. they do tend to be highly specilaised into what they can do, such as design a ship or a building, not both like the windows only autocad. [ These very expensive cad options for linux actually cost more than autocad, and are available for windows and macos as well ]

I have been 100% linux for years, I have not missed windows in the slightest.

by jterry

Deadly Ernest just told me about Lindows. What do you think about that OS? Or what would you recommend for a beginner with Linux?

by jaqui

they lost the court case with microsoft, they are now called linspire.

and a recent version on a cover disc was not impressive to a friend with far less linux knowledge than I have, so I can't recommend it.

The best option, though it does take time and a few blank cds, is to use distrowatch.com to check out the sites for as many distros as you want, then grab the free livecd version from those that catch your interest and test them. Pick the one you like the best.

I personally would recommend going with one of the multi cd distros, since the single cd distros have all left me very unsatisfied.

for a calculated recommendation of distros, from a very limited list of those available:

http://www.zegeniestudios.net/ldc/index.php

the linux distribution chooser. It does not include a very large number of available distros, but it does cover the range of distro types very well with those it includes.
[ last time I checked, there are over 400 different distributions available, the ldc would be far more complex than it is if they tried to include all of them ]

I can give valid reasons why not to use any distro, and why to use it. The problem with picking a distro is that it is very much a personal preference, what I like or dislike about a distro is not likely to match your own criteria.

A few of the major distros, and my reasons for not liking them:

Debian: two stage install, defaults to GNOME, bad requirements for some available packages.
[ never use KDE on Debian, unless you weant useless garbage installed because of Debian's added requires ]
Debian is solid, stable and has the largest available software repositories.

Red Hat, Enterprise and Fedora:
simple graphic install. defaults to GNOME.
is one of the least standards compliant distros available.

Mandriva: defaults to KDE, simple graphic install, another not very standards compliant distro.

Suse: simple graphic install, defaults to KDE, probably one of the more standards compliant distros in more than just package manager used [ rpm ], was not impressed with a few of the choices made by Novell with it.

Slackware, not for those new to linux.
original distro, not one distro is older than Slack, very different install than all other distros excepting debian, which is based on the slak install style.
defaults to cli.

Ubuntu/Edubuntu/Kubuntu:
these three are debian based, but are so different from debian that they have nothing more than package manager in common. graphic install from the single cd. [ not an option in my book, but currently the most popular ]

Xandros, graphic install, single cd, just was not impressed with much in the way of options with this.

Vector, very similar to Xandros, had two issues that would really hurt newbies. Slack based, which is very different from the majority of distros.

by Former member

Knoppix is a good place to get your feet wet. It is a live CD Distro, so you can boot up on just bout any system to get a 'feel' for Linux with no commitment. The software is all preconfigured to run, so no tweaking is necessary. There is a DVD version, which I have not taken the time to get, that has loads of stuff.

CENTOS is another personal favorite. It is essentially Red-Hat's enterprise product, repackaged (legally) for free distribtion. the benefit there is you get the stability of a for-cost, enterprise distribution, without the cost. I have been very happy with both the stability and general useability of it.

by onbliss

Hey, the discussions have been informative and sort of clean. And it is refreshing to read something of this nature. Hope it continues to be the same with out trolling, flaming and condescending/childish attitude.

Thanks Deadly Ernest and Jaqui for setting a good and high example. Hopefully many others will join and share more information.

As a developer I do not understand the work of maintainingg Systems and Networks. My pain familiarity is around the applications that I build. When it is Web development, I worry that my UI gets rendered correctly in all the popular browsers. I have been a MS Windows based programmer all my life.

One thing I can not understand is when you say the Windows server market is diminishing. I know it is. But as a .net consultant, "how much?" is the question. I have been getting contracts/projects without much of a problem. Infact I have been even able to turn down contracts. So in my [b]limited[/b] sphere, I do not get a chance to see the [b]far future[/b].

Sometimes, I do feel Windows software is bloated, but for most part I have been happy to program for it, and in it. I hate the bloated VS 2005 :-), hey but it has some other nice stuff.

I would love to learn LINUX, MySQL, Php and the other technologies, things that will enable me to earn my bread and butter.

So, I am looking for some perspective from a software development point of view, in addition to the original intention of jterry.

by deadly ernest

growth rates. The last time I checked the stats on servers (some time back) ir was obvious then that the percentage of Linux servers was growing while the percentage of other OS servers was shrinking, Windows was the hardest hit. At the time many people said that this showed Windows was on a down turn.

What many people missed, or refused to mention, was that the absolute number of Windows servers had grown, in the each of the years surveyed. The reality at the time was that the number of servers in existence had grown by about 30% over the period, mostly Linux servers - mostly apache, mail , and AV servers.

In effect, the industry had a growth of 25% of the total industry and that was all Linux. There was another 5% growth of the total industry spread amongst the other OSs. Thus Windows has been loosing market share while still growing in absolute numbers.

I expect that this will change over the next few years when people start to look at the various server variants of Vista. However, the other specialised servers, eg Exchange, should slide by without being so badly affected.

So you job should be safe for a little while but you could enhance your abilities by looking at the other options and learning them, if you get time.

I don't do any Linux development, but a few people I know, that do, tell me that they can set up Linux servers (mostly Apache, AV or Sendmail) in less than 20% of the time for the Windows equivalents - and they have less maintenance. They also say that writing client apps in Perl, PHP, and a few others (sorry I forgot the languages) is easier for Linux than Windows. Next time I see them I'll try to get them to post something, but they are lazy buggers.

by jaqui

perl, php as you mentioned, python, ruby tcl, bash, tcsh, csh [ last tree shell scripting for the shells ] javascript, java, c, c++, lisp....

basically, every single language with the notable exception of visual basic.
[ it's available, but not commonly used. ]

by Former member

Some companies have been able to save significant dollars by switching to Linux. Most of them, that I have seen objective papers on are those that were Windows/Unix Shops. The greatest part of savings came from replacing expensive Unix systems. Their staff was unix knowldgeable, so no retraining, and no need to support Windows in addition to *nix.

A purely windows shop... the results there seem more mixed. If you don't have apps that are tightly integrated to windows proprietary procedures, or in-house, custom windows apps, and you can identify linux based replacements, then you may be able to come ahead financially.

User training generally doesn't factor in, unless you have an office full of windows power users who actually use their power. Most users have to be retrained on package upgrades anyway, retraing to linux (for the most part) is not significantly greater for them. Most of the useability features in windows have been adopted into Linux GUIS (or in some cases, the other way round), so it really isn't as bad as you might think.

But you do have to test it for YOUR particular environment. I worked in one environment that considered it. They had one proprietary web-app, that couldn't run on Linux without extensive retooling. The cost to do so pushed ROI out for roughly 5-10 years. Not justifiable. Next year could change that though, so it is worthwhile to keep your options open.

by jaqui

I would love to see such a thing.

If the paper saw MS is cheaper, MS funded the research.

If it says Linux is cheaper, then a distro funded the research.

There has not yet been a paper that was not funded by a biased party, until there is, every such paper is nothing more than an advertising campaign.

Other than that, I can't argue any of the points in your post. :)

by w2ktechman

I had to say something because I am new to linux (just a few months into it). And I will say, there is a learning curve. Mostly in setting up the system and troubleshooting. I didnt originally listen to the advice and I was on as root when making changes, oops. Had to rebuild a few times. Finally I learned never to do that. make changes in a different user account, if it gets messed up, create a different account.
Anyway, I have been using SUSE 9.3 and 10 for about 4 months. Mostly using Windows (still cant do some things in Linux regarding work). Since I am licensed in XP at home, no changes there yet. But I have been slowly learning more and more about Linux.
Give it a try, instead of re-posting often, just find some spare HW and give it a try. Everyone learns at a different level, for different things. Nobody can answer all of your questions for you, at some point you just need to get your feet wet. I delayed for several years, and now I wish I had been using it for the last several years.
HOWEVER,
It is not for everyone, especially people who are already high maintenance (except the spyware/malware magnets, you know who they are). They should be forced into Linux just for causing so many problems... lol
I hope this helps.

by w2ktechman

I had to say something because I am new to linux (just a few months into it). And I will say, there is a learning curve. Mostly in setting up the system and troubleshooting. I didnt originally listen to the advice and I was on as root when making changes, oops. Had to rebuild a few times. Finally I learned never to do that. make changes in a different user account, if it gets messed up, create a different account.
Anyway, I have been using SUSE 9.3 and 10 for about 4 months. Mostly using Windows (still cant do some things in Linux regarding work). Since I am licensed in XP at home, no changes there yet. But I have been slowly learning more and more about Linux.
Give it a try, instead of re-posting often, just find some spare HW and give it a try. Everyone learns at a different level, for different things. Nobody can answer all of your questions for you, at some point you just need to get your feet wet. I delayed for several years, and now I wish I had been using it for the last several years.
HOWEVER,
It is not for everyone, especially people who are already high maintenance (except the spyware/malware magnets, you know who they are). They should be forced into Linux just for causing so many problems... lol
I hope this helps.

by pgm554

Novell is releasing a desktop of SUSE Linux for $50 bucks that includes Open Office ,Free updates for a year and Free tech support for the same.
Novell is a big name player in the market ,so if I were going to switch ,Novell would be my first choice.

Let's face it, XP Pro and Office2K3 can only be installed on one machine and with M$ becoming more and more anal with WGA,Linux from a player like Novell seems like a winner.

The only reason I am using XP is because I make money off of fixing the bugs, and knowing it inside and out, has made me quite a few bucks over the years.

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