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Poll

Where does KDE/Linux beat Windows?

Posted by Yaba on Feb 9 2004

Yaba
editor
Home

Look and Feel	16%
Customizability/Flexibility	41%
Easy to use	4%
Features	10%
Hardware Support	1%
Available Applications	3%
cost/benefit ratio	12%
Security	8%
Easy development of apps	4%
Support by other users/companies	2%

Votes: 1380

3/4

by Yaba on: Feb 9 2004

Score 50%

Yaba
editor
Home

OK, this is the 3rd poll out of 4 in the poll series "Which is the best OS?"

See also the previous polls for comparison here:
http://www.kde-look.org/poll/index.php?poll=61
http://www.kde-look.org/poll/index.php?poll=62

Well, maybe the time for this poll is not very fair, just after KDE 3.2 is released and Windows is lagging some more steps behind. ;-)

To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.
- Scott Granneman, Security Focus
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My Vote

by liquidrock222 on: Feb 9 2004

Score 50%

liquidrock22 2
AK Palmware
editor
Home

Personally, I think Linux beats windows in all of the above, for the following reasons:

You can easily change your linux installation to fit your needs. You can make it a stand-alone, no GUI webserver or fileserver, or a fully-loaded workstation. You can easily install only the things you want. Compare that to Windows, which requires you to have a GUI, requires you to have networking support, and requires you to have Internet Explorer, Windows Media Player, and multiple other things, installed to even run it.

Windows was, at one point, the easiest operating system to use. This was because MacOS wasn't fully developed, and Un*x operating systems were geared more towards the computer-savvy audience. Now, thanks to contributions from distribution companies (specifically RedHat, SuSE, and now Lindows), we have package managers and easy install programs to help even computing newbies install their Linux system in no time with little to no effort. And with KDE and Gnome's GUI work, the Linux GUI has far surpassed Windows in terms of performance, reliability, and in some cases ease-of-use.

Windows usually comes with only the most basic utilities... IE, Outlook, and WMP. Every Linux distribution however, comes packed with every piece of software the average consumer needs. They come with an office suite (OpenOffice.org or KOffice), media players (xine and mplayer, and their respective front-ends), text editors (kate, gedit), web browsers (konqueror, mozilla), email clients (kmail, evolution, mozilla), FTP and SSH clients (konqueror, konsole), LAN browsers for AppleTalk, Samba, and NFS (konqueror again... w00t!), and multiple other things that every computer-user needs right out of the box.

Extra software, in case your distro doesnt have what you need, is easy to install. Simply go online and download a package for the software, whether its an RPM or a DEB, and install it using your package manager (kpackage is one for RPM). Or, if there isnt a package readily available, simply download the source, extract it, and run configure and make install. Voila! Installed.

Linux has very good hardware support, for both old and new devices. It is true that Linux doesnt support all the new features in the newest hardware, usually there is a driver available, and probably already installed, that will let you use the full potential of your hardware. And, for people who have realllly old hardware, like a 386, Linux has everything you need for that hardware to work properly as well.

Saying that Linux itself is free, and you can get RedHat Linux (now Fedora Core), SuSE, Mandrake, Slackware, and many others for free online, the cost/benefit ratio far exceeds that of Windows. Especially since Linux brings you alot more features out of the box.

We all know Windows sucks at security, unless you know exactly what you are doing. Most Linux distributions however, have an easy-to-use firewall configurator easily accessible when you first boot up. SuSE has one is YASY, and RedHat has one in Anaconda. This firewall is more secure and more stable than most consumer firewalls for Windows as well.

Developing applications for Linux is far easier, and less costly, then for Windows. In Linux you get free development tools, you have all the development libraries for developing your apps, and tons of support online. You can write your software in Python, Perl, or Ruby, and it will run on almost any Linux machine. While you could also do this in Windows, you don't get the full assortment of modules/extensions for Python/Perl/Ruby.

The only thing Linux has going against it is support by other companies. But, this is changing quite quickly. Dell, Compaq, IBM, HP, and Apple are all backing Linux. Well, Apple isn't backing Linux specifically, but instead the whole of the OpenSource community. IBM has been selling Linux solutions to businesses for years now, and are currently thinking about abandoning their Unix services all together in favor of Linux. Dell has started a whole "department" to work on Linux and bringing support to Linux for their PC hardware. Compaq and HP and starting to offer Linux on their PCs as well.

So, in my opinion, Linux kicks the pants off of Windows in all of these categories. Anyone want to argue otherwise?

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Re: My Vote

by paul on: Feb 9 2004

Score 50%

paul
intrahouse
Home

Well written :)

Reply to this

Re: My Vote

by bpopp on: Feb 9 2004

Score 50%

bpopp
Home

I agree with most of what you say but I do have one argument (admittedly off topic). I love OSX, but I wonder whether people agree that Apple is "supporting the open-source community". Apple is obviously USING the open-source community and they have unintentionally inspired it, but what have they really willingly put back into it?

They also tout themselves as being open-standards compliant, but I can name half a dozen technologies they have implemented here recently that are essentially proprietary. For example, they make a big deal about Quicktime being based on MPEG4. While this is true, the codec which drives Quicktime is proprietary, closed-source and isn't easily used in anything other than the Quicktime player.

Another thing that bothers me is that their proprietary ITunes (which I love, BTW) has been released for Windows, but not Linux. A port to Linux would surely be a much simpler venture given the shared *nix kernel, but Apple instead chooses to support the "competition". We all know why this happened ($) and it has nothing to do with altruistic, open-source philophies.

Or am I wrong?

bpopp - bpopp.net
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Re: Re: My Vote

by pivarac on: Feb 10 2004

Score 50%

pivarac

No, you are not wrong. Apple don't give a shit about free-software, they have none of their apps potred to Linux - not Quicktime, not iTunes - not even a support added for their iPod. So, just big talk and nothing else.

Reply to this

Re: Re: My Vote

by jeffkjo on: Feb 10 2004

Score 50%

jeffkjo
Home

Apple has given quite a bit back to the open source community. They helped make massive improvements to KHTML for KDE 3.2, and I'm sure I'm not the first to say 'THANKYOU!'

Jeff
SuSE 9
Reply to this

Re: Re: Re: My Vote

by pivarac on: Feb 10 2004

Score 50%

pivarac

They just used the proverbial good will at free software movement, those improvements are going to end up in their products also: I think we don't owe them any gratitude, their market policy is to ignore Linux/*BSD, on which they built their OS X.

Reply to this

Re: Re: My Vote

by liquidrock222 on: Feb 18 2004

Score 50%

liquidrock22 2
AK Palmware
editor
Home

True, they haven't ported any of their iLife apps to linux. But, they are interested in making money off of iTunes, so they ported it to the OS that has the biggest market share. I would do the same.

points to the Darwin project Apple-funded, OpenSource

points to KHTML Anyone notice that konqueror actually displays things correctly now? THANKS APPLE!

Give them time they'll do more. They are in the business of making money, so that will come first of course.

Reply to this

Re: My Vote

by PovMan on: Feb 11 2004

Score 50%

PovMan
PovTek

I disagree. It (IMHO) is not physically possible to kick the pants off something.
I would have voted 'All of the above' if there was such an option.

Reply to this

Hardware Support

by leinir on: Feb 9 2004

Score 50%

leinir
KDE/Amarok, KDE/Gluon
editor
Home

I voted this, because while Linux comes with a range of drivers, it is very obviously odd that in Windows, if you reinstall your system, often you have to get 5 to 10 drivers from the web somewhere, because Windows does not support this hardware. Just because hardware vendors support some piece of hardware does not mean it's supported by the OS.

..Dan // Leinir
http://www.leinir.dk/
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Re: Hardware Support

by Yaba on: Feb 9 2004

Score 50%

Yaba
editor
Home

and another thing concerns older hardware. I have a network card that is no longer working on Windows since 98, a scanner that is no longer working since Windows 2000 and a webcam that is no longer working since Windows 98.

All of the hardware (except the webcam) is still working on Linux with no problems.

To mess up a Linux box, you need to work at it; to mess up your Windows box, you just need to work on it.
- Scott Granneman, Security Focus
Reply to this

Re: Re: Hardware Support

by sarath on: Feb 10 2004

Score 50%

sarath
Me
Home

Well i choose to disagree. I had mentioned this earlier in my post in why M$ is better than kde/linux. cutting edge hardware has minimum support. Worser still is the attitude of the companies. ATI has an increasing trend towards closed source drivers and nvidia has its now famous closed source ideology. The less known companies simply do not release the specs and give only m$ drivers. This will affect the success of linux in the long run.

Reply to this

error

by emc2 on: Feb 10 2004

Score 50%

emc2

when tryin to vote i always get this error
Notice: Undefined variable: aktpoll in /www/www.kde-look.org/htdocs/poll/index.php on line 58

Using Konqueror 3.1.4(Using KDE 3.1.3).

Reply to this

Re: error

by browntim on: Feb 11 2004

Score 50%

browntim

Hmmm,

Strange, I got that error too; but I was able to vote okay on my Windows box...

Reply to this

Re: Re: error

by iPaqTux on: Feb 11 2004

Score 50%

iPaqTux

Worked fine for me on Opera Linux.

Reply to this

Security

by moty66 on: Feb 11 2004

Score 50%

moty66
Sallati
Home

At leat we dont hear about new virus every week :D

or no ?

Reply to this

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Where does KDE/Linux beat Windows?

3/4

My Vote

Re: My Vote

Well written :)

Re: My Vote

Re: Re: My Vote

No, you are not wrong. Apple don't give a shit about free-software, they have none of their apps potred to Linux - not Quicktime, not iTunes - not even a support added for their iPod. So, just big talk and nothing else.

Re: Re: My Vote

Apple has given quite a bit back to the open source community. They helped make massive improvements to KHTML for KDE 3.2, and I'm sure I'm not the first to say 'THANKYOU!'

Re: Re: Re: My Vote

They just used the proverbial good will at free software movement, those improvements are going to end up in their products also: I think we don't owe them any gratitude, their market policy is to ignore Linux/*BSD, on which they built their OS X.

Re: Re: My Vote

Re: My Vote

I disagree. It (IMHO) is not physically possible to kick the pants off something. I would have voted 'All of the above' if there was such an option.

Hardware Support

Re: Hardware Support

Re: Re: Hardware Support

error

when tryin to vote i always get this error Notice: Undefined variable: aktpoll in /www/www.kde-look.org/htdocs/poll/index.php on line 58 Using Konqueror 3.1.4(Using KDE 3.1.3).

Re: error

Hmmm, Strange, I got that error too; but I was able to vote okay on my Windows box...

Re: Re: error

Worked fine for me on Opera Linux.

Security

At leat we dont hear about new virus every week :D or no ?

I disagree. It (IMHO) is not physically possible to kick the pants off something.
I would have voted 'All of the above' if there was such an option.

when tryin to vote i always get this error
Notice: Undefined variable: aktpoll in /www/www.kde-look.org/htdocs/poll/index.php on line 58

Using Konqueror 3.1.4(Using KDE 3.1.3).

Hmmm,

Strange, I got that error too; but I was able to vote okay on my Windows box...

At leat we dont hear about new virus every week :D

or no ?