Everyone is jumping on the Open Source Software bandwagon, allegedly, particularly regarding Linux vs Windows (Capcom version anyone ?).
Now this is “a good thing”, however unfortunately a lot of what is being written is extremely confusing whether arguing for or against, so I thought i’d add my 5pence worth to the debate.
1) As usual the hottest discussions appear to be over the word FREE, now if you have visited my sites before you will know that when we talk of FREE we mean
“FREE as in FREEDOM not FREE as in BEER“, Doh!
So I hope that’s cleared up in a line what others are using a whole blog for.
2) Next it would appear to be that Linux is a better Windows, well that’s just plain silly, Linux is different to Windows, i’ve been guilty in the past of telling people that Linux is just like Windows nowadays, but this is just not true. They are different in the same way Internet Explorer and Firefox are different and yet both of those are Web Browsers. Linux and Windows are different and yet both are Operating Systems. And in the same way Firefox is a better browser than Internet Explorer, Linux is a better Operating System than Windows 🙂
3) Legality. – There is a website out there somewhere that purports to support Linux but is in fact somebody’s page of rants (If I say check the Proof page which leads to a 404 Not Found you may know which site I mean), luckily I cannot remember the Web address but one of the things he will tell you is that Linux stole Microsoft code. Well i’m not a programmer so cannot say for sure and would like some comments on this, but I certainly remember a case involving Microsoft using the TCPIP stack or similar from UNIX and incorporating it into the Windows implementation, hum.
4) If you use Linux you will have to work in a “dos box” – The dreaded command line (DOS/command prompt). Now, I know people who can type fast, I mean really fast and they don’t have one hand on the mouse while they are doing this, and they don’t because they know that using keyboard shortcuts for Bold,Italic new paragraph whatever, is much quicker, so i’m thinking, why click around everywhere perhaps batch processing some photo’s when you can type some commands in a console/terminal and usually achieve a whole lot more a whole lot quicker.
5) “There has not yet been a single widespread Linux malware threat of the type that Microsoft Windows software currently faces” according to Wikipedia, and if you search Google for Linux Virus the most recent discussion of a Linux virus is 2001. Don’t get me wrong, I know about “Bad Bunny” that affected Open Office.org for instance, but I believe that is more of a Java issue not a Linux one. Of course there may be some cracker out there right now desperately trying to produce something, but any vulnerabilities he finds will no doubt get patched so quickly, that it probably wouldn’t get chance to travel around the world infecting everybody in the same way as Sasser, SoBig etc. did.
So thats a start, feel free to comment if you would like to add any further info. to this
FREE as in FREEDOM Homer not FREE as in BEER, DOH !!! 