Ok....I have now read so much about Linux.
Can anyone tell me what the difference between Linux and Windows are?
What are the pros and cons?
I am just curious.. please educate me!
Windows costs money
Linux is free
Windows is controlled by Bill Gates
Linux is controlled by nobody/everybody/somebody...?
Both operating systems will provide very similar services as you would expect from an operating system (networking, printing, system configuration, etc)
There is lots more software available for Windows than Linux
However, you can run a Windows emulator on Linux which will enable you to run most Windows programs on Linux.
(Is there a Linux emulator for Windows? maybe, dunno)
Most PC's are sold with Windows as standard.
Whether one is better than the other will come down to personal opinion and I'd be surprised if you don't get some rants on this thread from both sides (some people have very strong opinions!)
Will hopefully be able to reply next week as I intend installing Linux on my old comp very soon
Beanie I use Windows at work and Linux at home and at work. Linux is a far far better OS than anything that MS ahs brought out. It is more secure, more reliable and less prone to throwing hissy fits. It also costs very little. There is far moreLinux software available than say Mac software but Ade is correct in saying there isnt that much. However no matter what you want to do Linux will ahve at least one application available to do the job.
Linux also costs very little. You can download three install CD's off the net. These CD's will install Linux to your machine and you will immediately have more software on your machine that MS will ever include with a standard windows install. With MS you install Windows and then ahve to add all the bells and whistles. With Linux you have a preinstalled selection of browsers, email clients, office software - including teh excellent MS Office compatible Open Office - multimedia software, graphics manipulation software, programming software, databasing, web server, mail server and the lsit is endless. This all comes free with Linux unlike MS where you would pay thousands of pounds for all of it.
At the end of the day I do believe you need to know what you want to do with Linux. I recommend newbies try out SuSe Linux or Mandrake. They install easily and do everything a newbie needs. If you need more info just shout!
Thank you for the replies!
Next thing.... do I need to be able to do programming to get Linux to work or perform functions?
If so, which programming language do I need to know.
Also...will it slow my system down if I installed it? Will it automatically partition my hd so that I can run XP and Linux eg Mandrake
Beanie you dont need to be a programmer to get Linux to work! It is an OS like Windows, MacOS etc. If you get either SuSe or Mandrake the software will sort out your partitions for you and install as a dual boot system with very little intervention from the user.
Pic....
Then I am definately going to have a serious look at this.... I will have to wait a bit as I have house guests at the mo, who also use my machine, but once they are on the move, I will have a crack at it!
We've just bought the bits and bobs that we needed to create our web serve which I have been told is going to be running Linux.
So its going to be an interesting experiment using windows on the normal pc mozilla as the browser and linux as webserver.
Quote:Originally posted by lols
We've just bought the bits and bobs that we needed to create our web serve which I have been told is going to be running Linux.
So its going to be an interesting experiment using windows on the normal pc mozilla as the browser and linux as webserver.
Lols, I assume you will be using the world renowned Apache web server. What many people do not realise is that Apache powers a larger proportion of the worlds web servers than Microsofts offering IIS. Hope you guys have loads of fun setting your Linux box up and who knows you might eventually join the millions of us who use it as our primary desktop OS!
Quote:Originally posted by picanin
Lols, I assume you will be using the world renowned Apache web server. What many people do not realise is that Apache powers a larger proportion of the worlds web servers than Microsofts offering IIS. Hope you guys have loads of fun setting your Linux box up and who knows you might eventually join the millions of us who use it as our primary desktop OS!
Actually, even Microsoft runs apache (on unix servers) on a lot of its customer facing servers. (like Hotmail, for example)