Which is better Linux or windows?

i think linux is better then windows.because its open source and more secure

I don't have these operating sistem but I have Maccintosh! I just love it! Therefore betwen linux and windows I prefer to choose Linux because my friends have and he said that it's the best! Thanks very much for starting these nice discussion!

for any common man, free source is a boon and hence linux is best...

Let me provide some key points between Windows & linux. Windows - its friendly to any newbie/user & doesn't require more knowledge to run operating system and error handling options are not so complicated. - it supports games and othr features - but reduced securities. Linux it is division of labour and kernel. shell interacts with the user and kernel is the core of the operating system and it consists of a organized file system.and its very good to use and nowaday its famous and red hat certification and you can become a network administrator and earn more money. it provides more security than any other operating system. and there are some commands which the only administrator can perform it and other normal user cant use it. those are the previlage only provided to admin. thx. good day.

For me it's windows coz that is where I'm used to. I think it depends on the user also but Linux on the other hand is an open source software so it's good.

i think windows is best

well I am using Windows XP right now and i think it is best

windows for users and linux for webservers

i know use windows so windows is my favorite

i use windows but both are good both are good in their own way.Microsoft Windows and Linux are two major competing computer operating systems. Windows is the most prominent proprietary (shared source) operating system (about 89.2% of the desktop market share), and Linux is the most prominent free software and open source operating system (about 3.3% of the desktop market share).There are several factors that may make it difficult to compare Windows and Linux. There are many Linux distributions, each with a wide range of functionality. Windows and Linux sell at different prices based on their editions, distributors, and OEM products, making it difficult to compare pricing. Linux vendors charge mainly for technical support, but the actual OS is almost always freely available, whereas Microsoft charges for both the sale to limited usage rights to the Windows operating system as well as technical

Windows, becouse it is easy ti use, and more peple use it.

I saw both and used Linux very little. But my favourite is Windows, probably due to habit.

Microsoft a standard one

Linux is great for developers. As it provides them with a chance to enhance it.Windows on the other hand is great for the common computer user.So it depends on the way you look at it.Linux provides greater opportunites while Windows is just greater overall

Flavors: (revised Jan.2004) Both Windows and Linux come in many flavors. All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris). Windows has two main lines: "Win9x", which consists of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me, and "NT class" which consists of Windows NT, 2000 and XP. Windows actually started, in the old days, with version 3.x which pre-dated Windows 95 by a few years. The flavors of Linux are referred to as distributions (often shortened to "distros"). All the Linux distributions released around the same time frame will use the same kernel (the guts of the Operating System). They differ in the add-on software provided, GUI, install process, price, documentation and technical support. Both Linux and Windows come in desktop and server editions. There may be too many distributions of Linux, it's possible that this is hurting Linux in the marketplace. It could be that the lack of a Linux distro from a major computer company is also hurting it in the marketplace. Perhaps this will change with Novell's purchase of SuSE. IBM is a big Linux backer but does not have their own branded distribution. Linux is customizable in a way that Windows is not. There are many special purpose versions of Linux above and beyond the full blown distributions described above. For example, NASLite is a version of Linux that runs off a single floppy disk and converts an old computer into a file server. This ultra small edition of Linux is capable of networking, file sharing and being a web server. Graphical User Interface(updated June 20, 2005) Both Linux and Windows provide a GUI and a command line interface. The Windows GUI has changed from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (drastically) to Windows 2000 (slightly) to Windows XP (fairly large) and is slated to change again with the next version of Windows, the one that will replace XP. Windows XP has a themes feature that offers some customization of the look and feel of the GUI. Linux typically provides two GUIs, KDE and Gnome. See a screen shot of Lycoris and Lindows in action from the Wal-Mart web site. The lynucs.org web site has examples of many substantially different Linux GUIs. Of the major Linux distributions, Lindows has made their user interface look more like Windows than the others. Here is a screen shot of Linux made to look like Windows XP. Then too, there is XPde for Linux which really makes Linux look like Windows. Quoting their web site "It's a desktop environment (XPde) and a window manager (XPwm) for Linux. It tries to make easier for Windows XP users to use a Linux box." Mark Minasi makes the point (Windows and .NET magazine, March 2000) that the Linux GUI is optional while the Windows GUI is an integral component of the OS. He says that speed, efficiency and reliability are all increased by running a server instance of Linux without a GUI, something that server versions of Windows can not do. In the same article he points out that 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. Is the flexibility of the Linux GUI a good thing? Yes and No. While advanced users can customize things to their liking, it makes things harder on new users for whom every Linux computer they encounter may look and act differently. Text Mode InterfaceThis is also known as a command interpreter. Windows users sometimes call it a DOS prompt. Linux users refer to it as a shell. Each version of Windows has a single command interpreter, but the different flavors of Windows have different interpreters. In general, the command interpreters in the Windows 9x series are very similar to each other and the NT class versions of Windows (NT, 2000, XP) also have similar command interpreters. There are however differences between a Windows 9x command interpreter and one in an NT class flavor of Windows. 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 (pun, no doubt, intended). CostFor desktop or home use, Linux is very cheap or free, Windows is expensive. For server use, Linux is very cheap compared to Windows. 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). In contrast, once you have purchased Linux, you can run it on any number of computers for no additional charge. As of January 2005, the upgrade edition of Windows XP Home Edition sells for about $100, XP Professional is about $200. The "full" version of XP Home is about $200, the full version of XP Professional is $300. Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition with 10 Client licenses is about $1,100. Because they save $100 or so on the cost of Windows, Wal-Mart can sell a Linux based computer for $200 (without a monitor) whereas their cheapest Windows XP computer is $300 (as of January 2005). The irony here is that Windows rose to dominance, way back when, in large part by undercutting the competition (Macs) on cost. Now Linux may do the same thing to Windows. You can buy a Linux book and get the operating system included with the book for free. You can also download Linux for free from each of the Linux vendors (assuming your Internet connection is fast enough for a 600 MB file and you have a CD burner) or from www.linuxiso.org. Both these options however, come without technical support. All versions of the Ubuntu distribution are free. You can purchase assorted distributions of Linux in a box with a CD and manuals and technical support for around $40 to $80 (some distributions may be less, others may be more). Regular updates and ongoing support range from $35 a year for a desktop version of Linux to $1,500 for a high-end server version. August 2004 Red Hat started selling a desktop oriented version of Linux for under $6 per user per year. After the initial cost (or lack thereof) of obtaining software, there is the ongoing cost of its care and feeding. In October 2002, ComputerWorld magazine quoted the chief technology architect at Merrill Lynch & Co. in New York as saying that "the cost of running Linux is typically a tenth of the cost of Unix and Microsoft alternatives." The head technician at oil company Amerada Hess manages 400 Linux servers by himself. He was quoted as saying "It takes fewer people to manage the Linux machines than Windows machines." Microsoft commissioned a study that (no surprise) found it cheaper to maintain Windows than Linux. However, one of the authors of the study accused Microsoft of stacking the deck by selecting scenarios that are more expensive to maintain on Linux. I don't know if there will ever be an objective measure of the ongoing care and feeding costs for Linux vs. Windows. If there were however, it would have to consider: Dealing with bugs in the operating system Dealing with bugs in application software Dealing with viruses, worms, Spyware, etc.(big advantage to Linux here) Dealing with software upgrades to new versions (both the OS and applications) Getting the Operating SystemNothing need be said about getting Windows. As for Linux, you have to look around to buy a new computer with it pre-installed. The major PC vendors sell Linux based machines only as servers, not to consumers. In August 2004 HP said it would be an exception to this rule and will soon offer a business notebook computer, the Compaq nx5000, with SUSE Linux pre-installed. A low end model was expected to sell for $1,140 -- about $60 less than a comparable model running Windows XP. HP was also scheduled to sell Linux PCs for consumers in Asia as of June 2004. Wal-Mart sells new PCs with Linux pre-installed. In fact, if you need a new computer, the cheapest ones, bar none, sell for $200 at Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart sells different Linux distributions: Lycoris, Lindows and SuSE. In March 2004, they started selling Sun Microsystems' version of Linux, the Sun Java Desktop, starting at $298. In December 2004, Wal-Mart started selling a $498 laptop computer running Linspire. As of November 2005, MicroCenter sells Linux desktops starting at $250. Lindows (now Linspire) maintains a web page listing vendors that sell computers with Lindows pre-installed. Emperor Linux loads Linux distributions on new laptops from Dell, IBM, Sony and others. Pogo Linux sells custom-built desktops loaded with both Linux and Windows. Their main customers are universities and government agencies. A handful of companies sell notebooks with Lindows/Linspire pre-installed. If you are up to installing Linux yourself, you can buy a new computer without any operating system from Dell or Wal-Mart, perfect for installing your favorite flavor of Linux. Dell sells their PowerEdge servers without an OS, Wal-Mart sells some of their Microtel computers without an OS. November 2005. You can buy a 3GB MicroDrive (1 inch hard disk) with Ubuntu Linux. The drive plugs into a USB port and is fully powered by the USB port. As of mid-November 2005, it sold for $132. See Taking Linux On The Road With Ubuntu at Toms Hardware. November 10, 2005 And what about installing Windows and Linux? Installing Windows from scratch is much easier than installing Linux from scratch, in my opinion. If nothing else, installing Windows is always the same whereas the different distributions of Linux have their own installation programs (these may even change with different versions of the same distribution). You can't read an article on this however, without it saying how installing Linux is getting easier all the time. Installing Linux on a computer without an OS is much easier than installing it on a machine with