Presentation On---

WINDOWS vs LINUX
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ByAniket Bhalerao

Lecturer (EC) TCET, Indore

Windows
All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft .

Linux
The various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris, etc. ). The flavors of Linux are referred to as distributions (often shortened to "distros"). They differ in the add-on software provided, GUI, install process, price, documentation and technical support. Linux GUI is optional. Speed, efficiency and reliability are all increased by running a server instance of Linux without a GUI.

Windows has two main lines. The older flavors are referred to as "Win9x" and consist of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me.

Windows GUI is an integral component of the OS. Server versions of Windows can not run a server instance of windows without a GUI.

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Windows
No detached nature of the GUI.

Linux
The detached nature of the Linux GUI makes remote control and remote administration of a Linux computer simpler and more natural than a Windows computer. . Command Interpreter is called Shell

Command Interpreter is called DOS prompt. Windows has single command interpreter.

Linux, like all versions of Unix, supports multiple command interpreters, but it usually uses one called BASH (Bourne Again Shell). Others are the Korn shell, the Bourne shell, ash and the C shell.

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Windows
Windows is expensive.

Linux
For desktop or home use, Linux is very cheap or free, For server use, Linux is very cheap compared to Windows. In contrast, once you have purchased Linux, you can run it on any number of computers for no additional charge.

Microsoft allows a single copy of Windows to be used on only one computer. Starting with Windows XP, they use software to enforce this rule (Windows Product Activation at first, later Genuine Windows). Moving from Windows XP to Vista requires more complexity, more hardware horsepower and learning a new interface. Plus, it's expensive both for the hardware and the software.

In contrast these latest Linux based computers machines have a simplified user interface and require the same or less hardware horsepower than Windows XP. And they are much cheaper, both for hardware and software reasons.

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Windows
There are three ways to install Windows XP: a clean install, an upgrade install and a repair install. Then, there is a "recovery" install, which is not an install in the true sense of the word but rather the restoration of a disk image backup.

Linux
Different distributions of Linux have their own installation programs.

Installing Windows on a machine with an existing OS is not difficult. To run Windows, it has to first be installed to your hard disk.

Installing Linux on a machine with an existing OS (that you want to preserve) is difficult. One thing that Linux can do that Windows can not, is run from a CD..

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Windows
More application software available. There are two problems with the preinstalled application software on Windows computers. First, much of it is junk. So much, that a new term "crapware" is being used to describe it. The PC vendors make money by installing this software that many people consider worse than useless. Second, important software is often missing or old. For example, the Adobe Acrobat reader, may not pre-installed by the PC vendor.

Linux
Less application software available. No such problems in LINUX.

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Windows
The installation of applications under Windows, while not standardized, is generally consistent and generally pretty easy. Spyware is the worst problem affecting Windows based computers. In addition to running an anti-virus program constantly, Windows users also need an anti-Spyware program constantly running in the background to protect them. Windows has similar file-related privileges but only when using the NTFS file system. The earlier FAT and FAT32 file systems had no file level security.

Linux
Installing software under Linux varies with each distribution and has not been nearly as simple, easy or obvious as Windows. Problem of Spyware relatively less (or I should say LEAST).

Files in Linux are always owned by a specific user and group.

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Windows
Good HARDWARE support. Hello! Sorry there.. WINDOWS cannot run on very old personal computers.

Linux
HARDWARE support not pretty good. Because of its ability to run without a GUI, and thus need less hardware horsepower than Windows, Linux can run on very old personal computers such as 486 based machines.

WINDOWS lagged behind in clustering.

Linux now has become so technically powerful that it lays claim to a prestigious title--it runs more of the world's top supercomputers than any other operating system.

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Windows
Windows is designed to be used by one person at a time. Databases running under Windows allow concurrent access by multiple users, but the Operating System itself is designed to deal with a single human being at a time.

Linux
Linux, like all Unix variants, is designed to handle multiple concurrent users.

Networking.

They both use TCP/IP.

Windows must be installed to and boot from a primary partition.

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Windows
Windows must boot from the first hard disk.

Linux
Linux can boot from any hard disk in the computer.

NOTE: A swap file (a.k.a. page file) is used by the Operating System when the demands on RAM exceed the available capacity. Windows uses a hidden file for its swap file. By default, this file resides in the same partition as the OS, although you can put it in another partition, after Windows is installed.

In Windows XP, the swap file resides initially on the C disk as a file called pagefile.sys.

Linux likes to use a dedicated partition for its swap file, however advanced users can opt to implement the swap file as a file in the same partition as the OS

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Windows
Windows uses FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and/or NTFS with NTFS almost always being the best choice. The FATx file systems are older and have assorted limitations on file and partition size that make them problematical in the current environment.

Linux
Linux also has a number of its own native file systems. The default file system for Linux used to be ext2, now it is typically ext3.

NTFS is journaled.

Linux supports several journaled file systems: "ext3", "reiserfs" and "jfs".

File systems can be either journaled or not. Non-journaled systems are subject to problems when stopped abruptly. All the FAT variants and ext2 are non-journaled. After a crash, they should be examined by their respective health check utilities (Scan Disk or Check Disk or fsck). In contrast, when a journaled file system is stopped abruptly, recovery is automatic at the next reboot.

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Windows
Windows separates directories with a back slash. Windows file names are not case sensitive.

Linux
Linux uses a normal forward slash.

Linux file names are.

Windows file systems all suffer from fragmentation, which results in a file being scattered all over the hard disk. Windows uses a volume-based file hierarchy, Windows uses letters of the alphabet to represent different devices and different hard disk partitions. Under Windows, you need to know what volume (C:, D:,...) a file resides on to select it, the file's physical location is part of it's name.

Linux file systems are much less prone to this.

Linux uses a unified scheme. In Linux all directories are attached to the root directory, which is identified by a forward-slash, "/".

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Windows
Support the concept of hidden files.

Linux
Support the concept of hidden files. In Linux "dir" is a different command than "DIR".

When entering commands in a DOS/command window under any version of Windows, "dir" is the same as "DIR".

Most of the printers are supported. Windows allows programs to store user information (files and settings) anywhere. This makes it impossibly hard to backup user data files and settings and to switch to a new computer.

Linux does not support as many printers as Windows. In contrast, Linux stores all user data in the home directory making it much easier to migrate from an old computer to a new one. If home directories are segregated in their own partition, you can even upgrade from one version of Linux to another without having to migrate user 1414 data and settings.

Windows
Windows and Microsoft Update only do a handful of Microsoft applications.

Linux
With Linux, the OS updater application handles software from other companies too. Huge plus for Linux.

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