Now your in my territory
.
Let's start a war here.
It's taken as read by most that Windows GUI interfaces are an unnecessarily complicated way of operating servers but you folks who are constantly trying to make your PC's better by running these numerous varieties of Unix/Linux are like people who think that their cars would run better with square wheels.
Not quite, as a matter of fact I would say that Windows up until recently has been running with square wheel. Now they are more like oblongs.
You unashamedly boast about having managed to run an application on Ubuntu almost as well as it runs on Windows. Wow, what an achievement. Do you also make your ice cream by shaking the ingredients around in a jar with some ice in it instead of buying it at the corner store?
This is a strawman - we are talking about applications meant to run
exclusively on windows, for which there is no viable alternative. There are many applications that are Linux made which are superior to their counterparts, to name a few service style ones:
Postfix vs Microsoft SMTP
Apache vs IIS
Bind VS MS DNS
Router vs MS Router
And some application level ones:
Setting up networking in a Linux desktop is vastly easier than on Windows.
The installation for most distros is light years ahead of Windows.
Version control is light years ahead of Windows (rpm/apt - nothing of this kind exist on Windows)
Development on Linux is much simpler than on Windows.
Some practical ones:
Linux documentation is superior to the Windows ones.
It actually reports errors to you and doesnt instead fill you with useless hex.
Tell us about how Linux systems are more secure from security threats. Maybe that's because all the hacker terrorists belong to the Linux religion and are carrying out a religious jihad against my heroes at Microsoft.
Where do I begin? :).
Windows has firstly some fundamental flaws: It was initially built as a single user operating system without networking. A huge amount of applications were built for Win9x which had to work in XP etc. This ultimately equates to the fact that these applications expect to write to Program Files or dont work. Because of this everyone has to basically run as the admin. This is one gaping attack vector which almost exclusively causes the huge number of viruses seen in Windows.
A file should not be labelled executable because its file extension is "exe". A file should be executable only if the system explicitly made it so. The same applies for .bat, .vbs, scr or anything normally associated with a virus.
It is not possible to get your updates for all your applictions (adobe etc) in one place. This means you need to run multiple systems to monitor for updates.
There is no Mandatory Access Control available in Windows desktops.
Delegation of access is next to impossible. Either gave users total control (administrator) or give them nothing (user).
A number of services run by default which increase the chance of being attacked.
The logging in Windows is horrid. If you do get attacked its probably not logged let alone alerted to you. Coupled with the fact you cant log to a remote machine.
There is no way to monitor access to files/directories and keep logs of it. Linux has support using kernel auditing.
You cant store passwords for user accounts in SHA, MD5 or friends.
These are some other advantages that Linux has over Windows:
The networking on it is vastly superior. Supporting tunnelling, quality of service, advanced routing and a large number of different network protocols. Windows has no proper traffic control, and routing is basic.
Hardware on Linux is actually very good these days and tends to work out of the box. Linux designs drivers based on chipsets - not boards. In nearly all cases you can boot into a Linux and it will find all your devices and work as you would expect. This gets less and less likely the case for Windows as their release of o/s gets older and older.
Linux supplies many more virtualization options out of the box than Windows. You can only do windows virtualization if you buy server 2008.
IIS (the webserver for windows) is nowhere near as flexible as Apache. It doesnt use .htaccess files or have the equivalent for a start. Creating websites requires the administrator which limits your ability to run shared hosting. SSL certfications cant be imported plain text, which means if you export the SSL cert from within the MS datastore for certs and forget the password, your screwed.
The storage capabilities of Linux are much better than Windows. Not only does it support 10 times more filesystems than Windows out of the box, but you can create volume groups, writable snapshots, raid arrays using a myriad of different devices from USB, Iscsi, or a file. On the other hand windows out of the box comes with no proper raid at all, iscsi isnt easy to get going, shadow copies dont let you write to them, your limited to about 5 filesystems.
Installing new software on linux is a doddle. Its all centrally located / tested to work. During installation the application knows where it needs to go and how to be configured. On Windows one must hunt for new software on the internet. Then download the installer, go through all the next>next>next options and then install it. Version control on Windows is nowhere near the level of Linux so wierd problems caused by missing/incorrect dlls are almost impossible to fix.
Linux actually tells you whats going on. Errors are self explanatory and your not far away from documentation if you need it. Theres also tonnes of support on the internet. You can also debug applictions with the likes of strace. Unlike in Windows where you'd have to be a windows programmer to work out what the error means (if it reports it at all that is). An error situation on Windows is uninformative and often requries to "restart" or "reinstall" applications or even the entire operating system!
There is no way to limit users or programs in Windows from using up all the resources. Linux has ulimits and cgroups that do just this.
Windows cant run "headless" properly.
Windows doesnt supply a fork() system call because it cannot properly handle file concurrency.
Windows needs rebooting at least every month because its incapable of applying updates at runtime.
There are built in hard limits to the amount of memory / processors / users allowed at once on Windows. This is deliberately to make you pay more for the exact same product.
Linux works on older hardware. Vista works on monster machines in a mediocre fashion.
Tuning windows requires cryptic modifications to the registry (which only exists due to problems with file concurrency in the first place!). Tuning linux is much easier.
Because of all the remote access options and capabilities, a Linux person can run about 4 times as many servers at once than Windows person.
Some questions for you?
Why should you need anti virus software to run an operating system? If the O/S was correctly designed viruses should not be a problem (see every other version of Unix or Unix-Like operating systems).
Do you run as administrator (or one with administrator access)?
If somebody has a file open, why shouldnt you be able to write to it? (See every other operating system).
Why should a server need to run with a GUI when there is probably no monitor plugged in? Its just wasting resources.
Justify why you should have to reinstall the operating system because of a problem other than disk corruption/failure. If you install the o/s and have it running for 10 years. There should be 10 years of an uninterrupted O/S on there. Having to reinstall every 18 months denotes a critical flaw in the operating system.
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