Response to “101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows” – Part 6
This is a response (Part 6) to the web blog entitled “101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows”(http://cityblogger.com/archives/2007/01/24/101-reasons-why-linux-is-better-than-windows/)”. The author tries to discredit Windows by giving many reasons why Linux is “better”.
I will do my best to show how this is not the case. Operating systems are just tools. If you try to make one OS look “better” than another, you could possibly lead people into the wrong direction. Please note that the author has not written all 101 reasons on his blog. It appears he stopped writing it a while back. I will respond to everything he has currently written.
Direct quotes from the author are in red and my responses are in black. Please note that I mean no disrespect to the author in anything I say.
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53) You are in total control. You don’t have applications that suddenly and start updating without your permission!
Applications that start updating on their own is not the fault of the operating system. For any well-thought out software program, there will be a auto-updating setting that you can turn on and off.
54) While both Linux and Windows have a GUI, Windows has only one default GUI. Linux is all about choice and has a option to use different type of GUIs or Window Managers as they are know as in Linux. Users can choose from something that looks like their favorite Operating System or they can choose something that’s simple and fast. Popular ones are Gnome and KDE.
This is fine for people who like to tinker with their operating system, but really now…most people are not going to want to choose a GUI to use. They just want something that works. Since Windows’ GUI (and even MacOS X’s GUI) works for many people, they are not going to switch any time soon.
I have used GNOME, Unity, KDE, and Xfce. They are alright, but I really do prefer the Windows GUI over them.
55) Most Linux distributions come bundled with whole lot of applications such as Office Suite, Photo Editing, etc. You not only get the OS for free but you also don’t have to pay for the applications. Yes many of these open source applications such as OpenOffice.org also run on Windows but you need to find, download and install them where as there are available in most Linux distros by default.
With all due respect, this is a ridiculous reason for choosing Linux. Just Google several open source software programs (that work on Windows) such as:
- VLC Player
- Gimp (a Photoshop-like image editor)
- Blender (a 3D modeling and animation software)
- Open Office
- Mozilla Thunderbird
- Mozilla Firefox
- Inkscape
- MPlayer
- LibreOffice
- Audacity (a free audio editor)
- GnuCash (financial-accounting software)
- Notepad++ (a very powerful text editor)
- 7-Zip (a very good file compressor)
- VirtualBox (a virtual machine hypervisor)
Also, most of the open source software used by Linux desktop users are not installed by default. They have to be installed by the user.
56) Expanding on the previous point, many Linux distributions bundle thousands of applications (Upto 22,000 depending on which one you choose) where as Windows doesn’t bundle basic applications such a decent text editor, oh yeah there is Notepad if you consider that decent 🙂 . Point is on Windows spend the time in finding them, downloading them, installing them and then trying them out or just get them along with your Linux CD/DVD.
I just install Notepad++. This really is not a problem.
A lot of open source software are easy to find on the Internet for Windows. Also, just because a Linux distribution bundles software, does not mean that all the software bundles will necessarily have regular updates in the repository. In some cases, you might have to manually download and install the software anyway, if the repository does not contain the updated version of the software that you need.
57) Appstore included: Ubuntu today has a built in App store where you can download 1000′s of applications with a single click.
This really is not a good reason for choosing Linux over Windows. Also, this would mainly apply to Linux desktop users. Linux server users would probably make little if any use of this.
58) Linux bundles OpenOffice.org as the office suite which has built in capabilities to write documents as PDFs and Presentations as Flash. Windows requires purchasing/downloading additional software.
OpenOffice is available for Windows as well.
59) Mozilla Firefox browser bundled with Linux has excellent features such as blocking of unwanted ads/pop up and supports tab browsing which makes it easy to open another browser windows. Read the 101 things that the Mozilla browser can do that IE cannot.
Pop-up blocking and tab browsing can be done with Mozilla Firefox on Windows. I have used Firefox for years with almost no issues. You do not have to use Internet Explorer as your default browser on Windows if you do not want to.
60) Faster Browsing: Browsing is not only better but faster too! The networking on Linux is faster and the browser has an option to block all the unwanted ads/pop up, there by saving on bandwidth considerably. Read this to block all the ads.
Faster browsing on Linux? Faster networking on Linux?
Where are your technical arguments for those claims? Source?
61) No automatic updates: Windows Vista it setup to automatically update your system by default. In Linux it will alert you for an update but you have to choice to click and apply the update. You can setup to automatic update if you like. So you can update when you like and not when your operating system decides to update.
False! Windows Vista does not choose auto-updating by default. The user can modify the auto-updating setting when first installing Windows Vista (you can modify this setting later on in the operating system, after the install is complete).
If you really have installed Windows Vista before, I am not sure how you would have missed this dialog box.
62) Linux has games too! there are some really nice games which many of the Linux distributions bundle. You may not have all the games in the world but you definitely have a huge collection of free games. Here is a list of top 100 games.
Really, any serious gamer would either use Windows or a game console (I have friends who use both Windows and game consoles to play games). Linux just is not a good OS to build games for (many distributions doing their own thing, not great video support, most of the world using other operating systems, etc.)
I am not trying to knock Linux for use with games, but honestly I would just use Windows (or a gaming console) to game. Using Linux for all your gaming will probably not produce satisfactory results. However that is your choice.
63) Empathy/Kopete popular IM clients on Linux are single clients that can connect to all the protocols – Facbook Chat, Google Talk, Yahoo, MSN, Jabber, ICQ, AOL and more.
This really is not a good reason to switch to Linux. You can use instant messenger on your smartphone anyway, so it really does not matter.
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Well this is the end of Part 6! Click here for Part 7!
Posted in Internet and Servers, Operating Systems