Comment by DanielStraight | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielStraight | Hacker News Reader

Good stuff, but there is something a lot of people don't consider (and the author didn't here either). Most "benchmarks" people use to judge Linux are based on experience with Windows, yet almost no one ever judges Windows based on Linux. Linux makes much more of an effort to meet Windows benchmarks than vice versa.

Linux is (mostly) secure by design. How does Windows stack up?

Linux has a powerful command line interface which can do almost anything that can physically be done on a Linux system.

Linux comes equipped with programming support (I think a C compiler should be considered a standard part of ANY system).

Linux (generally) has resizable dialog boxes. The Windows environment variables dialog box is downright evil.

Linux allows for a great deal more system and desktop customization.

If you get used to running Linux, you can pretty much dual-boot or straight up change your OS on a whim (especially given the available of Gnome and KDE). Also, you have something to change to. If you decide you get sick of Windows, it's a much bigger deal to change OS. Windows to Linux is nothing like Ubuntu to Arch.

Installing and running a development/test web server on a Linux machine is almost trivial.

I would say in general where Linux excels, it excels far more than Windows does where Windows excels. Windows may be a little better in some areas, but where Linux is better, it's so many lightyears ahead that Windows isn't even in view anymore (think virus protection for example).

The command line really is hard to make up for, without a lot of hassle, that is. When I'm running windows it's the thing I miss the most.

Other than that, it sucks that Firefox is not nearly as polished under Linux as it is under Windows. Same goes for adobe's flash player.

cygwin and putty help with making windows bearable again, and the new kernel patches and video driver updates make flash pretty darn good

Have you tried Powershell? I haven't found much I can't do with it (though I admittedly have limited Linux experience)

Powershell's single, deal-breaking problem is that there is no integration with the rich Unix CLI environment, which means that it can hardly be used as the superglue that bash and zsh can be used for. Which means that it's basically a shell language on steroids, for which I'd much rather recommend and interactive Ruby or Python shell. Powershell's problem is that it exists in an ecosystem that does not acknowledge the CLI, and it will not be useful until that situation is reversed. Since, to this day, mos windows apps don't have backends for CLI interaction, I doubt thethings will change for several years.

I can't imagine trying to do web development on a Windows machine after discovering just how painless everything is on Linux. Cygwin/Putty/msysgit/etc. just doesn't cut it when you're used to the stuff just working.

First off, I generally agree with what you're saying. I think the reason that most people look at Linux and compare it to Windows is because most people start on Windows, so it's what they're used to.

I live on Linux for the most part, so I've gotten used to things, but there are still some things that need some work, especially when it comes to laptops: namely, dealing with resolution issues, external screens, and power management. Most of these things can be dealt with if you're comfortable in Linux, but this stuff is REALLY easy to do on Windows (most likely because the driver support is better there, and will continue to be as long as Windows is the dominant user platform).

Anyway, I think Ubuntu has come a long way, and I'm perfectly happy running it as my main OS, but I can see what the author is saying here.

My big beef with Linux is CD burning programs. All of them in my experience are buggy crash fests.

I certainly have no problem criticizing Linux. I think the point I was really trying to make is that the Linux/Windows issue should not be viewed as a contest from which a winner will emerge but, like almost everything else hackers deal with, as a trade-off.

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