Is the Linux Operating System Older than Windows?
I recently read online someone saying that “Windows did not come out as an OS til 1995”. Is this person correct?
First some background information about Windows.
The first Windows was Windows 1.0 that ran on-top of MS-DOS. It was released on 20 November 1985. The most popular ancient version of Windows people sometimes talk about is Windows 3.1 (released on: April 6, 1992), not realizing that there were versions of Windows before 3.1.
Microsoft has Windows NT (a stable, secure, really well done OS brand still being used by millions today; not MS-DOS based) that initially was released as Windows NT 3.1 on July 27, 1993. Windows NT has *no* MS-DOS underneath it (in other words, the Windows NT line has nothing to do with MS-DOS at all; people just think it does).
Technically Windows as an OS did not come out until 1993, however Windows did exist as an MS-DOS shell way back in 1985…long before Linux. Also, Windows 1.0 is seen as the first official Windows on the market.
Non-Windows NT Operating Systems (MS-DOS based): 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, 98 SE, ME
Windows NT Operating Systems: Windows NT 3.1, Windows NT 3.5, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10
The first Linux came out by Linus Torvalds in 1991 (he uploaded Linux to a FTP server belonging to FUNET).
Linux first came out first as an actual OS in 1991. However Windows NT came out in 1993 (roughly two years after Linux; the guy’s statement about Windows being out as an OS in 1995 was off by two years).
So the answer is: While Linux (1991) is slightly older than Windows NT (1993), it really is not that big of deal since they both are good operating systems to get things done on, and seriously now, who would care anyway? 🙂
Update 10-04-2019:
I recently became aware of someone commenting on my post. This guy – who we will call “Frank” – was asked by a member of an online community to give his opinion about what I wrote.
Frank claimed my “Is Linux older than Windows?” question was “out of scope”, due to Windows having come out in the 1980s (before it became an operating system).
Frank is incorrect. My context when talking about “Windows” is the Windows NT family – released in 1993 – when Windows became an operating system. I made that clear in my post.
I was not comparing the DOS-based Windows (e.g., Windows 98) to Linux, as he misunderstood. It appears he did a “speed reading” of my post, and completely missed my context in the process.
To my surprise, the guy he responded to disagreed with Frank’s stance and instead agreed with mine.
To make it clear to everyone:
- I only mentioned the older, non-NT versions of Windows (e.g., Win98) to give background information to people who may not understand that there is more to Windows than XP (2001) and beyond.
- Windows (as an operating system – Windows NT 3.1) did in fact come out in 1993. The guy repeated the same misinformation about Windows coming out as an OS in 1995 😕. Seriously, this information is easily verified online.
- Unfortunately, several people “up-voted” his comment, even though he gave wrong information about Windows NT and technically misrepresented my article. They obviously did not verify the information he gave, and just assumed he was correct.
Please keep in mind that I do not hate the guy. I just wish he had taken the time to honestly review my post, before trashing it over a misunderstanding of what I wrote.
There was another guy who responded to Frank, telling him he was giving misinformation about Windows. Frank, to my knowledge, never replied back.
Posted in Operating Systems
Response to “101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows” – Part 9
This is a response (Part 9; the last part of this series) 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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80) Linux has bundled Databases such as MySQL and PostgreSQL which are extremely powerful and used in production environments. Customer doesn’t need to purchase expensive databases.
MySQL works wonderfully on Windows.
PostgreSQL is also available for Windows.
81) Linux is been used for super computing clusters, most of top super computers in the World use Linux. Windows just can’t scale to that level.
Actually Windows can and is used in super-computers, but Linux is the preferred OS for super-computing as well as having the most market share (for super-computers).
82) File system scalability: while NTFS file system can scale upto 16TB, XFS on Linux can scale upto 18 million TB! yes that bigger than what you would ever need.
Actually NTFS supports up to 256 Tebibytes in maximum volume size! Remember that with the proper drivers, Windows can read other file-systems. In addition, Windows can read more file-systems than just NTFS out of the box.
83) Processor scalability: Linux can scale to Unlimited processors. It is already running on a single system with 2048 CPUs. Windows can’t even claim to come anywhere near that number.
Linux cannot use “unlimited” CPUs. It has a limit (albeit a high one).
Windows can also scale with many CPUs (of course, licensing restrictions apply).
84) You have commands to check the systems Serial Number and other hardware information. to get serial number type:
dmidecode | grep “Serial Number” | head -n1 | sed -e ‘s/tSerial Number: //g’
or type dmidecode for all hardware info Read More. You can easily use this feature to extract data quickly and even write some scripts to do that.
Windows has a built-in program called “System Information” which will show you the same information.
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Well this is the end of Part 9! Thanks to everyone who has stuck around to read this entire series. It took me quite a while to write it up, but I hope that people will learn not to believe everything they read online about Windows and Linux.
Posted in Internet and Servers, Operating Systems
Response to “101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows” – Part 8
This is a response (Part 8) 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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75) Cool integration between Calendar application and Desktop calendar. For example if you add an appointment into Evolution, it will show up in your Desktop Calendar in Gnome as well when you click on time.
Not a big deal, and not a good reason to switch to Linux.
76) You can have multiple work-spaces, its like having multiple desktops. Instead of having all your applications on one desktop, you can have them sorted on multiple desktop workspaces and easily switch between them. For example you can make one workspace for work, one for music, one for emails, one for browsing and so on. This can be in a grid or linearly organised.
Windows 10 can do multi-desktops.
77) You don’t need to create a Microsoft Live account and remember another stinking password just because you wanted to play Solitare.
Not a big deal, and not a good reason to switch to Linux.
78) Encoding compressed video files is a dream once you get ffmpeg compiled. In windows normally it costs money to get a program to encode video and often the encoded files don’t play on the device.
You can use the free program called Handbrake. This will do what you want.
79) games made natively for Linux run faster than the same game on Windows.
Why would a game compiled for Linux run faster than the same game compiled for Windows?
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Well this is the end of Part 8! Click here for Part 9!
Posted in Internet and Servers, Operating Systems
Response to “101 reasons why Linux is better than Windows” – Part 7
This is a response (Part 7) 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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64) Twitter/Facebook broadcast from the desktop. With Gwibber client, you can view your social network status right from your desktop or update your status to all your accounts without logging onto each of them separately.
Why would this make Linux “better” than Windows?
65) Cut and paste is simpler, just select and middle click on the target window and your data gets pasted. Its far quicker and easier than the way Windows does Cut and Paste. Of-course the Windows CTRL-C/CTRL-V still works on Linux for people who are new to Linux.
Copy and pasting in Linux is not “better” than Windows. It is a matter of user preference.
66) Multiple cut and pastes: Klipper application (default under KDE) maintains a history of your clipboard and you can use it to paste text/etc which you had cut/copied earlier. Gnome users can use Glipper.
Why would this make Linux “better” than Windows?
This could be seen as a security risk, since if a user copied and pasted his password from his digital Rolodex, someone with access to the computer could potentially gain access to the password by looking at the clipboard history.
67) Easy to setup a Media Center like PC. You don’t need to purchase additional software or re-install a different operating system. Read this on how to convert your existing Linux into a Media Center like PC.
A “media center” PC could mean several things. You do not necessarily have to get other software to accomplish your media tasks. It depends upon what you are doing. If you just are wanting to play audio and video, then download the VLC Player.
68) Linux already has a usable 3D Desktop – Compiz. This makes it easy to switch and view multiple desktops simultaneously. It also add a nice eye candy to Linux. If you still believe Linux is only for geeks, this feature will definitely change your mind. This doesn’t require you to purchase expensive graphic cards, it very comfortably works with on board graphic card.
Windows 10 has support for multi-desktops.
69) Graphic view of how much space your data is using. In Konqueror File Manager tool bar, there is an option to get file size view which gives you a graphical view of how much space your directories and the files within are consuming. Or in gnome you can use Disk Usage Analyzer Baobab. This is an excellent way to know where all your disk space has disappeared and makes cleanup easy.
Windows has a built-in graphic view of how much disk space has been used on a device. Just right-click on a drive in Windows Explorer and click on Properties. Also, there is a program for Windows called WinDirStat that will show you disk usage statistics.
70) No annoying messages like Vista keeps telling you that xyz application is trying to access your system. Vista confuses the user, Either the user will always click allow or don’t know what to do.
I think you are talking about the built-in UAC that Microsoft added to Windows Vista (and beyond).
To be fair, UAC can potentially “get in the way” so to speak, but what I suspect many computer users do not know (or at least understand) is that UAC makes it easy to be a system administrator and a limited system user at the same time.
In short, UAC assists a system administrator with his or her job by allowing the administrator to perform administrative tasks while still being secure running under his or her own limited user account by default.
Also, if you click “no” to a UAC prompt, and the program it prevents from running due to you clicking “no” contains malware, then UAC did technically stop the malware from running with administrator privileges in the first place. So anyone who says that UAC is not a security feature is technically incorrect.
71) Easy to dual boot: Linux makes it easy for it to exist with any other operating system. If you install Linux on a system which already has Windows, Linux will not mess your Windows. Windows on the other hand messes up your Linux partition, if it finds one.
This is because Microsoft assumed that only Windows would be put on the computer. You would probably agree that pretty much almost every non-techy computer user out there just has one operating system installed on his or her computer anyway.
If you do need to have both Windows and Linux on the same hard drive, install Windows first, then install Linux. There are guides on the Internet explaining how to do this in detail.
72) Linux Works fine if you multiple partitions, operating systems and devices. Windows gets confused with ‘extraneous’ partitions used by other operating systems and allocate drive letters to them which cannot be freed. If you have, say, 8 partitions in your hard drive, Windows will associate 8 drive letters to these partitions, reducing the number of drive letter you can use. This also limits the number of drive letters you can have to 26. In Linux you don’t have a concept of drive letters, each drive is mounted as /home, /windows.. etc.. thereby not having any limitations.
Windows needs drivers to read other file-systems, such as EXT3/EXT4.
Windows is not limited to just the 26 drive letters. On Windows, you can mount partitions as a folder, or you can access the partitions directly without assigning them a drive letter or folder.
Instructions for mounting a partition as a folder: https://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/11253-mount-drives-partitions-folder.html
Instructions for accessing a partition directly (without assigning a drive letter or folder to a partition): https://superuser.com/questions/465730/access-to-a-disk-drive-using-volume-id-instead-of-a-drive-letter-in-windows
73) Customise your shortcut: On Linux you can associate applications to whatever shortcut you choose. On Windows, you cannot associate your beloved Firefox to key combination Win+F, for instance, because it is already associated to ‘Find’ functionality provided by Windows Explorer which you can’t change.
This is not a real problem. Just use a keyboard shortcut like: Ctrl-Shift-F or something like that. Most Windows users will not even care.
74) Linux is more accessible: Most distributions such as Ubuntu include Orca, which is a screen reader. This can be enabled before installation. With this a visually challenged person can install Linux and also use Linux on his own. In Windows, the accessibility support is limited and not available during installation. It has to be purchased and installed separately costing over US$1000 and the visually challenged person requires an assistant to install Windows and the software before he/she can use.
More than likely, the user that needs accessibility features will already have a computer that has Windows pre-installed for them. Also, Windows does have accessibility features for them to use!
https://www.microsoft.com/enable/products/windows7/
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Well this is the end of Part 7! Click here for Part 8!
Posted in Internet and Servers, Operating Systems