What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

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Gracehe
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What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by Gracehe »

Linux is an open source system, and developers often develop software on it. For people who don’t know much about it, Windows is so convenient and easy to use, why not develop programs on it? What is the difference between Linux and Windows systems What?
niney
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by niney »

1. Compared to Windows. Linux can see the source code, but Windows cannot. This directly leads to the fact that Linux can tailor the modules required for customization in some cases, which is more beneficial to military and political enterprises. You can modify the kernel code when you encounter problems, but Windows can only patch.

2. The Linux command line is very powerful, open source and highly customizable. This is why Linux is so popular during development. The original intention of open source is not for freedom but for customization. AT&TUNIX has always been copyrighted, but the source code is still available. This is to allow users to modify it as needed. Windows also has a command line, but it is an accessory.

3. Linux is based on the network and was born from the network. In the Linux environment, no one can force everyone to use their own wheels (except for Kernel developers, but many distros also have patches for the kernel), so instead of formulating a practice, Linux allows users to choose the way of life more .
hbelusca
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by hbelusca »

> The Linux command line is very powerful, open source and highly customizable. This is why Linux is so popular during development. The original intention of open source is not for freedom but for customization. AT&TUNIX has always been copyrighted, but the source code is still available. This is to allow users to modify it as needed. Windows also has a command line, but it is an accessory.

What you call the "Linux command line" is actually **just** one of the GNU user-mode utilities. Linux is just a kernel that doesn't care about what you run in user-mode.
You could always make a "Linux distro" with a user-mode that has instead a ReactOS-command-line-like shell instead (but of course ported to linux accordingly). Suddently your "linux command line" would be different.
hbelusca
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by hbelusca »

> so instead of formulating a practice, Linux allows users to choose the way of life more .

It still imposes the way/practices of *Nix to the developers. In other words, using "everything is a file" instead of the more abstract but powerful "everything is an object" of the NT kernel, amongst other things.
PeterLinuxer
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by PeterLinuxer »

One difference between Windwos/ReactOS and Linux (with GNU) is the existing tools. Windows tools tend to be GUI oriented and Linux tools are often command-line tools. Of course there are commandline-tools for Windows and GUI tools for Linux, but there is a tendency.

For a total computer newbie (or someone who wants to just use the computer for his artistic or professional work and don't want to learn a lot about computers) Windows is a bit easier to use. With Ubuntu and other distributions this Windows advantage is shrinking.

For programmers Linux/GNU provides more potencial than Windows IMHO. But this Linux advantage is shrinking, too. Windows has VisualStudio, Python, Powershell and much more now.

This is not the only difference but an important one.

(EDIT: It now seems to me you wanna know why many programmers prefer Linux. Because of the many commandline tools, starting with bash, gcc, ld and continuing with many other tools be it sfdisk/cfdisk, git, Python, Perl, bison/yacc/flex, Scheme, GNU make, etc. It doesn't matter that many of these tools are available for Windows, too. They just integrate nicely in bash.)

Greetings
Peter
ReactOS is in early development phase! And ReactOS is not Linux.
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dizt3mp3r
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by dizt3mp3r »

Is there a chance that Gracehe is a bot? The statements made seem so bleedin' obvious.
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PeterLinuxer
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by PeterLinuxer »

dizt3mp3r wrote: Sun Dec 13, 2020 1:18 am Is there a chance that Gracehe is a bot? The statements made seem so bleedin' obvious.
Yeah, on second sight it looks like that. I've also seen other thread openers here where I suspected they were bots. But I didn't care much because it wasn't complete nonsense nor spam.

Greetings
Peter
ReactOS is in early development phase! And ReactOS is not Linux.
Sarahholland
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by Sarahholland »

There are a few differences. Windows is an operating system you can use. Linux is also an operating system you can use, except you'll feel the need to tell Windows users they should use Linux instead, Mac users they should use Linux instead, and other Linux users they should use your distro instead
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X512
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by X512 »

Windows has stable API and ABI. Applications written for Windows 95 still work on Windows 10. Even Win16 applications can run on Windows 10.

Linux is a mess, it have no stable API and ABI. Important libraries often change API in incompatible way for no good reason. For example GTK 1, 2, 3+ all not compatible. Same with Qt 3, 4+. There are a lot of incompatible independent subsystems that do the same thing: sysV init/systemd/upstart/..., OSS/ALSA, Phonon/GStreamer/PulseAudio/PipeWire, Motif/Qt/GTK, xlib/xcb, X11/Wayland, a lot of incompatible Wayland servers and much more.
nelligan
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by nelligan »

Sarahholland wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 4:20 pm There are a few differences. Windows is an operating system you can use. Linux is also an operating system you can use, except you'll feel the need to tell Windows users they should use Linux instead, Mac users they should use Linux instead, and other Linux users they should use your distro instead
Good one... So then we can say that using Linux is like being vegetarian?
MadWolf
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by MadWolf »

Sarahholland wrote: Thu Apr 22, 2021 4:20 pm There are a few differences. Windows is an operating system you can use. Linux is also an operating system you can use, except you'll feel the need to tell Windows users they should use Linux instead, Mac users they should use Linux instead, and other Linux users they should use your distro instead
do you mean Linux is the kernel of an operating system you can use?.

a Linux distro is made of the kernel plus a lot of small components that can be changed and customized but in windows, you do not get a lot of customization options unless you hack the os
MadWolf
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Re: What is the difference between Linux and Windows?

Post by MadWolf »

X512 wrote: Fri Apr 23, 2021 9:27 pm Windows has stable API and ABI. Applications written for Windows 95 still work on Windows 10. Even Win16 applications can run on Windows 10.

Linux is a mess, it have no stable API and ABI. Important libraries often change API in incompatible way for no good reason. For example GTK 1, 2, 3+ all not compatible. Same with Qt 3, 4+. There are a lot of incompatible independent subsystems that do the same thing: sysV init/systemd/upstart/..., OSS/ALSA, Phonon/GStreamer/PulseAudio/PipeWire, Motif/Qt/GTK, xlib/xcb, X11/Wayland, a lot of incompatible Wayland servers and much more.
OSS/ALSA is an outdated audio system and IMHO is garbage
PulseAudio is or was the default audio system
PipeWire is the new audio system that some Linux distros are switching to
PipeWire: The Linux audio/video bus https://lwn.net/Articles/847412/
X11 is old and outdated and may not be getting updated
Wayland is the successor to X11 but Wayland has some problems for example it does not play nicely with Nvidia GPU
sysV init/systemd/upstart are init systems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Init Most to all Linux distros have switched to Systemd but there are distros that do not use Systemd for example Devuan or Pclinuxos
Qt / GTK you can have more than one version installed

Linux-based operating systems have the problem of dependency hell trying to run software that uses old versions or new versions of frameworks that your Linux distros do not have

for most end users of Linux-based operating systems what I am posting is pointless They get the software from the distros' software repositories and they do not need to think about dependencies unless they install software that is not in the software repositories or build software from source

Linux-based operating systems are popular with developers because setting up a build environment is simpler and most to all software is built using the command line
A lot of the time the commands are
1 mkdir build # Create the build folder
2 cd build # change to the build folder
3 cmake .. # Create the config files
4 make # compile the software
5 make install # install the software

or some variant of the above commands
PeterLinuxer wrote: Sun Dec 13, 2020 7:29 pm
dizt3mp3r wrote: Sun Dec 13, 2020 1:18 am Is there a chance that Gracehe is a bot? The statements made seem so bleedin' obvious.
Yeah, on second sight it looks like that. I've also seen other thread openers here where I suspected they were bots. But I didn't care much because it wasn't complete nonsense nor spam.

Greetings
Peter
I have noticed that too that's why I quote their first message in my reply but this is pointless now as new users can't use the edit button
IMHO If they ask a question but do not reply to the replies then they are more than likely a bot
Last edited by MadWolf on Fri Sep 08, 2023 11:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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