User:DanielPharos/Sandbox

Please note: this is a copy of "Comparison of Windows and Linux", a page recently deleted. It's only here so I can save the 'good bits'. Do NOT edit this page.

Linux and Microsoft Windows differ in philosophy, cost, versatility and stability, with each seeking to improve in their perceived weaker areas. Comparisons of the two operating systems tend to reflect their origins, historic user bases and distribution models. Typical perceived weaknesses regularly cited have often included poor consumer familiarity with Linux, and Microsoft Windows' susceptibility to viruses and malware.

Mission critical systems
The FAA has switched to Linux for their air traffic control. An incident caused by a known design imperfection in the Windows servers not properly taken into account by third-party software and human error caused a software crash and nearly resulted in an 800-plane pile-up in California. When the backup system also failed, radio systems were unavailable for over three hours and this left 800 planes without contact with air traffic controllers and in five cases, planes become too close to one another according to comments by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

Platform for third party applications
Microsoft has had a longstanding emphasis on backwards compatibility. In general, the Windows API is consistent over time, with new features added; programs designed for earlier versions of Windows often run without issues on later versions. For the sake of progress, however, Microsoft sometimes draws a line precluding support of very old programs. That first happened with Windows 95, where some purely 16 bit Windows 3.1 applications would not work, and again with Windows XP, where certain mixed-bit applications would not work. 64-bit versions of Windows (XP-64 and Vista-64) drop 16-bit support completely. However, 16 bit emulation and the enormous array of application-specific tweaks (“shims”) within new Windows versions ensure that compatibility with old applications remains very high.

In the Linux world, the landscape differs. As most (if not all) parts of the operating system are open source and many Linux programs are open source, when a Linux distribution breaks backward compatibility, anyone willing might write a patch to the operating system or the program itself that would allow the older software to work. In reality though, since many popular Linux distributions uses software repository and the most popular programs exist in the repository, the programs provided in the repository are guaranteed to be compatible with supported versions of the distribution.

Gaming
A major attraction of Windows is the large library of video games available for purchase. The majority of current major PC games natively support Windows and are released first (and often only) for the Windows platform. Some of these games can be run on Linux with a compatibility layer like Wine, Cedega or CrossOver. Those that rely on copy protection or undocumented features often require much more effort in order to work properly. It has also been shown that native speeds can be achieved with applications running under WINE.

There are notable exceptions, such as id Software's Doom and Quake series. When a developer chooses to write graphics code with OpenGL instead of DirectX, Linux ports become much easier. In addition, games such as the Unreal Tournament series are written in 3 parts: The core 'engine' of the game, the graphical display system, and the actual game data itself. The first two, typically being compiled programs, require porting, however only the graphical display system will often require much work (Windows to X Window, DirectX to OpenGL, etc.). The third part, the game data itself, is typically written in system-independent file formats and scripting languages. This allows the game developer to separate the actual game experience from platform compatibility. This also serves to reduce the cost of development in 2 ways.


 * There is no need to port the game data to another platform, which eliminates the need to compile and bug-fix the game data for each platform.
 * Future releases of the software can use the same "engine" and graphical display system. This allows game developers to focus more on the game experience, and less on compatibility issues.

OpenGL provides a platform independent, widely accepted and available solution for 3D graphics, but does not address input devices or sound. The Simple DirectMedia Layer(SDL) libraries provide support for these features on both Linux and Windows, and are often used to provide portable gaming support.

There are Open Source games designed specifically for Linux, including over 1200 native Linux games with over 220 games using proprietary licenses. While most of these are small casual games like Kolf or Pingus, there are also larger games, such as Freeciv and The Battle for Wesnoth. Many have been ported to work on Windows as well. Some gamers opt to dual boot Windows and Linux, using the Windows partition for gaming and other applications, while using the Linux partition for the needs it addresses better.

Security
The actual security of the operating system can be affected by the actions performed by the user, such as tampering with security settings, tampering with network settings or running malicious executables or "malware". Users with administrative privileges have more control and so do the programs the user runs with these elevated privileges.

Localization
It is easy to have multiple languages installed in both operating systems and to switch between them while the user is logging in. In MS Windows, localization can be provided by a separate installation of the operating system, the Multilingual User Interface (MUI) can be used to provide multiple languages on one installation, and in certain editions of Windows (such as Ultimate) it is possible to switch languages from the control panel.

In Linux the language can be chosen separately for any subsession and any instance of a program (by setting environment variables), separately for different aspects of the locale (date format, collation, message language etc.).