Yet another salvo has been fired in the constant battle between Microsoft and the major Linux companies as to which operating system better fits the bill for business purposes. In this case, Novell has set up a web site that compares SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop to Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Vista. I took a gander at the white paper, and here’s what I found:

Novell is definitely trying to make the argument to business users that SLED is a better choice than Windows Vista in several environments, but concedes that Vista might remain the better choice in others. Novell’s reasoning focuses primarily on TCO arguments, arguing that SLED is cheaper for each individual copy. This is definitely true, and while Novell claims a maintenance cost of $0, it’s difficult to know what they mean by that.

The next part of their argument looks at the application side of things. For business users, the important one is the office suite. SLED includes OpenOffice, a free office suite, while in the Vista case, one has to buy expensive licenses of Microsoft Office. They go on to briefly mention other applications, such as Firefox vs. Internet Explorer and so on.

While all this information is interesting, and perhaps valuable to the enterprise user, it does little to convince home users. After all, most home users buy their machines pre-assembled, and are insulated from any operating system costs. This is less true with the office suite, but in many cases is still a factor. With Novell’s reasoning obviously inadequate, it’s perhaps time we instead look at some reasons I might consider using both Linux and Windows, keeping in mind that I haven’t yet had the opportunity to use Windows Vista.

Reasons to Use Linux

Being perfectly honest, I have thus far preferred Linux (in my case, Gentoo Linux) to Windows. There is a non-zero chance that this will change with Vista, but from what I’ve heard, it’s unlikely. Since discussion between distributions isn’t a factor here, I’ll focus instead on distro-independent reasons, keeping in mind that some of this may vary from distro to distro.

Control

I admit it. I’m a control freak who likes to micromanage every aspect of my computing experience. As a result, using a highly configurable operating system like GNU/Linux is potentially a godsend. Now, I have no problem with things that “just work”, and for people inexperienced with computers, they’re absolutely wonderful. However, I sometimes find that being able to fine-tune an application or feature of the operating system is very useful. In addition, using features of an advanced and well-developed command line usually far exceeds what can be found in similar graphical tools. I prefer to edit settings with graphical tools when they’re available and when they’re as powerful, but as far as configurability goes, Linux gives me a lot more freedom.

Price

Of course price is a factor. Linux, in general, costs me nothing to install, while a license for Windows can easily cost at least a couple hundred dollars. While this cost can somewhat be hidden by buying a prefabricated computer, you’re still paying it. In addition, I don’t purchase service contracts, so Linux is truly free, dollar-wise. As far as time goes, I can’t say I spend any more time maintaining Linux than I did Windows. If anything, I probably spend less, but it’s hard to estimate. For the average user, depending on the distribution selected and the hardware, a user could very easily find it easier to maintain Linux, despite Windows and its somewhat unearned reputation for user-friendliness.

Available Software

It may seem like a misprint, but it’s not. Installing software on Windows is much less painful than it was ten years ago, but it still involves finding the software you want, downloading an installer, and subsequently installing it. In contrast, on my Gentoo Linux system, I merely type emerge mozilla-firefox and I have Firefox installed. Other distributions have similarly easy tools to search from vast databases of software and subsequently install this software. The art of package management perhaps has areas in which to improve (in particular to make it easy for non-administrators to add software for their own use, if they have the necessary permissions), but it’s still superior to the situation on Windows, as far as I’m concerned.

Source Code

It’s not a big deal to many people, but at this point, I tend to believe in the technical superiority of open-source or free software, if only because more eyes are looking at it. In addition, it’s very empowering to be able to make changes myself to an application to add some desired functionality.

Reasons to Use Windows

Even with all the above reasons making it obvious that I prefer Linux to Windows, there are still a couple of reasons that might coax me to select Windows in certain situations.

Gaming

Linux gaming has come a long way in the past few years, but a lot of good games are still only written for Windows. Wine has come a long way in being able to run Windows games adequately, but it’s definitely not perfect, in many cases, using the native platform of the game is still superior. In a couple of years, the situation might be different.

Hardware Compatibility

Driver for driver, Linux probably has more hardware support than Windows, although I have no idea what the numbers might be. However, especially with the case of newer hardware, there is a lot of hardware for which there is simply no Linux support. Whether because the manufacturer has refused to release a driver or specifications, or simply because the driver isn’t yet complete, the end result is the same. This reason can be mitigated by doing some research before buying hardware, and only buying Linux-friendly components. That said, not everyone is going to spend the time to build a custom machine, and when it comes to notebooks, it can be more or less impractical, especially with more limited component selection. In any case, this situation should improve over the next couple of years.

Conclusion

When it comes down to it, there are potential reasons a user might want to use either GNU/Linux or Windows. I personally prefer Linux, but a lot of users who have grown accustomed to using Windows prefer it. When it comes to a brand new user, at this point, I feel a newbie-oriented distro might fit the bill best. I’d love to recommend Ubuntu, but its lack of out-of-the-box support for multimedia makes that difficult. (Unless it’s improved in the last 6-12 months.) But really, use what works for you, and when you’re the only one left using that outdated operating system from 1987, maybe you’ll finally realize it’s time to upgrade.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 9:41 pm and is filed under Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.