Linux is a baby that has grown up in the Operating System universe. I've been using it for the past 4 years and now I'm a full time Linux Systems Engineer who's growing to love it everyday. In fact, I had the infamous blue screen on a Windows PC today and I really wanted to give it a kick. Some say its expensive to have Linux machines running but I guess it does come with good security and stability.
Both Windows and Linux come in many flavors. All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris). Windows has two main lines: "Win9x", which consists of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me, and "NT class" which consists of Windows NT, 2000 and XP. Windows actually started, in the old days, with version 3.x which pre-dated Windows 95 by a few years.
Analysts, resellers and developers have all questioned the findings of IDC's Microsoft-sponsored paper in 2002 which concluded that Windows is better value than Linux over a five-year period. The paper was roundly criticised, after claiming that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for Linux is higher than for Windows.
Here's the 2 articles that go in favour for both OS and I'll let you be the judge of it.
1 IDC: Windows cheaper than Linux (2002 report)
Research firm IDC, in a Microsoft-funded study, has reinforced a Microsoft argument that Linux is more expensive to administer than Windows, a factor that makes Windows less expensive overall in most server uses.
IDC found that Linux cost less than Windows for hosting Web sites, but that in four other areas Windows 2000 was less expensive overall. "The cost advantages are driven primarily by Windows' significantly lower costs for IT (information technology) staffing, generally the largest single component of IT costs," IDC said in the study.
2 Linux Cheaper, Easier Than Windows
While Microsoft has been criticized for being lax in its security provisioning, the software colossus has moved aggressively in recent months to fix the problem. Indeed, since its initial criticism of open source software -- Microsoft's CEO once called open source software "a cancer" -- Microsoft has mellowed on the subject, hiring open source experts and working with mixed software installations.
Dennis said the EMS study found that enterprises with both Linux and Windows reported that 88 percent of them spent less effort in managing and supporting Linux while 97 percent said, worst case, it took the same amount of time to manage installations with both operating systems.
As for problem resolution, more than 60 percent of the IT installation personnel interviewed said they diagnose and repair problems in Linux environments in less than 30 minutes -- eight times faster than the industry average.
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