The Lagoon TechMy little blog in Cyberspace.

Windows and Linux both have the potential to accomplish the same things (like web hosting). There are differences, but in the long run, it is really a matter of what you need and if possible, want to use. Note: This list does not contain every single similarity between Windows and Linux. Somethings in this list have to do with the operating systems them-self. Other things in this list have to do with the way people make use of them.

Last Updated: 12-04-2015

1) Windows and Linux both can have limited “non-root” (Linux) and “non-administrator” (Windows) system users.

2) Both Windows and Linux can host PHP websites via FastCGI.

3) Both Windows and Linux have anti-virus software (many more anti-virus programs
for Windows, almost nothing for Linux).

Note: Linux can get viruses too, but without running a real-time anti-virus program on your Linux box, how can you have the potential to know that you do not have a virus on your Linux desktop/server?

4) Both Windows and Linux can run several different types of web services (e.g., web server, e-mail, DNS, MySQL, etc.)

5) Both Windows and Linux can run several pieces of hardware out of the
box.

6) Both Windows and Linux can blue-screen (in UNIX and Linux it’s called:  Kernel Panic)

7) Both Windows and Linux make good use of your system resources.

8) Both Windows and Linux can run many days without a reboot.

9) Both Windows and Linux have file-systems that can become corrupted.

10) Both Windows and Linux are used in Professional companies for doing work.

11) Both Windows and Linux have open-source software that runs on them
(e.g., Apache Webserver,  BIND DNS,  SpamAssassin,  Mozilla Firefox,  Mozilla Thunderbird,  Blender,  etc.)

12) Both Windows and Linux can take a while to setup correctly.

For example, downloading and installing updates, making sure that SSH (or if you are using Windows, Remote Desktop) is setup correctly, drivers are installed and working properly, host-name for the computer is set, (if you are running a web-server) making sure that you have a separate user account for each web service you host (for increased security), etc.

(in my opinion, Windows takes less time setting up than Linux, but that may not apply in your situation).

13) Both Windows and Linux have support (Red Hat and SUSE are two for
Linux, and of course Microsoft supports Windows).  Both also have free online support via web forums.

14) Both Windows and Linux can boot quickly.

15) Both Windows and Linux have pretty good security. Windows has Access Control Lists on its NTFS file-system, but Linux uses Read/Write/Execute bits by default instead.

Linux does have the ability to use ACLs, but I have never heard of Linux using ACLs by default.

Access Control Lists basically allow you to fine-grain your file-system security. The Read/Write/Execute bits are very limiting compared to ACLs.

16) Both Windows and Linux can get viruses (Windows is the larger target for malware, but this does not mean that Windows is easier to infect, nor does it mean that you are guaranteed to get malware when using Windows).

17) Both Windows and Linux are stable operating systems.

In my opinion, 99% of crashes on Windows are due to faulty hardware and/or drivers. However both Windows (NT family) and Linux are stable operating systems, when using good stable hardware and good stable drivers.

18) Both Windows and Linux can be secure, if you know what you are doing.

19) Both Windows file-systems and Linux file-systems suffer from hard drive fragmentation.

When you delete files (on any file-system, NTFS, ext4, ext3, etc.), you leave gaps in the file-system. These gaps will be filled with other files, but you will also have files before and after the new file. So when the computer goes to access the data, it has to sift though all of the data to find the bits and pieces it needs to complete the task.

20) Both Windows and Linux can read several file-systems (For Example: there are drivers for Windows that allow you to read EXT3/EXT4 Linux file-systems).

21) Both Windows and Linux run mission-critical applications.

22) Both Windows and Linux can be hacked by malicious Internet users.

23) Both Windows and Linux can be used to host online game matches on the Internet.

24) Both Windows and Linux have plenty of development tools to write software.

25) Both Windows and Linux work on embedded devices. (Windows CE is Microsoft’s OS for embedded devices)

26) Both Windows and Linux can run as a server on low-memory systems. (On Windows, you can use “Server Core” to not only save RAM, but to lower the attack surface of your server)

27) Both Windows and Linux can be used to program micro-chips.

28) Both Windows and Linux are used in industrial manufacturing of products.

29) Both Windows and Linux are used by governments to run and manage utilities.

30) Both Windows and Linux have 32 and 64 bit editions.

31) Both Windows and Linux have the ability to use virtual memory (SWAP).

32) Both Windows and Linux have the ability to run automated tasks set by the user. In Linux, this is called “Cron”.  In Windows, this is called “Task Scheduler”.

33) Both Windows and Linux support Type-1 and Type-2 hypervisors for running virtual machines.  A couple of examples of Type-1 hypervisors would be Hyper-V for Windows and KVM for Linux.

34) Both Windows and Linux have the ability to quickly communicate information between running programs on the computer.  In Linux there is something called “Unix Domain Socket”.  In Windows there is something similar (not exactly 1:1 though) called a “Named Pipe”.

35) Linux has integrated firewalls in its kernel (e.g., ipchains, Netfilter, nftables).  Windows’ own integrated firewall is simply called Windows Firewall.

36) Both Windows and Linux support symmetric multiprocessing.

37) Both Windows and Linux are multitasking operating systems.

38) Both Windows and Linux have Disable Memory Execution support.

39) Windows and Linux both support Address Space Layout Randomization.

40) Linux has Mandatory Access Control kernel security modules such as SELinux, SMACK, TOMOYO Linux, and AppArmor.  Windows supports Mandatory Access Control and already has it built into its kernel.