Windows or Linux?

Yesterday I got dragged into a “Windows versus Linux” discussion, because on my Facebook profile I had made a quiz, and one of the questions was “What OS do I use?”. My sister in law got that one wrong, and exlaimed “Stupid Linux!”. Of course I responded with “Linux isn’t stupid!” and off we went. My girlfriend and other sister-in-law got dragged in it too, and it got very heated (but still enjoyable). Let’s introduce the participants. My girlfriend runs a rather old Dell Inspiron which dual boots Windows XP Pro and Ubuntu Jaunty. She uses Windows for MS Office and the fun MSN Messenger games. For photo editing she uses the GIMP. Sister One has a newer laptop which came with Vista, promptly got infected by some nasty virusses which deleted half of her system files, and now her father has installed XP Pro on it. Sister Two uses Windows exclusively, and I believe her and her boyfriend’s computers run Vista and XP. And of course, me. The arguments pro Windows were: It’s more familiar, it looks better, it runs software like The Sims and MS Office, and Linux is for nerds. The arguments pro Linux were: It’s safer, it looks better, there’s more choice, and it’s free. Now, many of these arguments are bogus. Looks don’t matter much in discussions like these, both operating systems run software the other one doesn’t (I don’t care about the Sims, but I do want Openbox), and I’m not a nerd.

I prefer Linux. IMHO, Linux is as good as Windows, if not better than, in nearly all aspects except games. For ordinary users, Linux may seems a bit odd at first sight, especially the terminal. But for CS students and geeks, Linux is definitely more attractive than Windows.

i think i am used to windows that's why i choose windows. i am not familiar in using linux.

i prefer windows because it will be more n more user friendly when compared to linux and in order to operate linux you should be aware of it but the case is not same with windows

I suggest Windows because there are a lot of softwares that is compatible with Windows. I know Linux and I used that before in my laptop but I changed it into Windows because I cannot download softwares. I cannot find good softwares that I can use with Linux. I had a bad experience with Linux. Windows is good, most people uses Windows.

Depends on what you're planning to do. More and more Linux distributions are enhanced to become user-friendly, and depending on what you're planning to use the computer for [browsing, typing etc etc], there are a lot of Linux alternatives that could step in nicely without having you miss a beat. Support for Linux though, is a bit of a sketchier detail, as there are not too many forums [compared to the number of forums for Windows support, anyway] that could assist you with your issues.

Windows has more users than linux.Because most of the users are used to the way that windows works,they often find linux hard to use.In fact,linux is also a very good os.It is even better than windows in some aspects.It is safer and free.