Why Linux is Better than Windows? TCO, Desktop & Server

Throughout my 2 years of using Linux, I have heard about everything that Windows does better than Linux. So I thought it time to shoot back and remind everyone of what Linux does better than Windows. Of course, being the zealot that I am, I could list far more than 10 items. But I will stick with the theme and list only what I deem to be the 10 areas where Linux not only does better than Windows but blows it out of the water. In the article we look at the first 3 areas.

This can of worms has been, and will be, debated until both operating systems are no more. But let’s face it — the cost of a per-seat Windows license for a large company far outweighs having to bank on IT learning Linux. This is so for a couple of reasons.

First, most IT pros already know a thing or two about Linux. Second, today’s Linux is not your mother’s Linux. Linux has come a long, long way from where it was when I first started. Ten years ago, I would have said, hands down, Windows wins the TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) battle. But that was before KDE and GNOME brought their desktops to the point where any given group of monkeys could type Hamlet on a Linux box as quickly as they could type it on a Windows box. I bet any IT department could roll out Linux and do it in such a way that the end users would hardly know the difference. With KDE 4.1 leaps and bounds beyond 4.0, it’s already apparent where the Linux desktop is going — straight into the end users’ hands. So with all the FUD (Fear Uncertainty and Doubt) and rhetoric aside, Windows can’t compete with Linux in TCO. Add to that the cost of software prices (including antivirus and spyware protection) for Windows vs. Linux, and your IT budget just fell deeply into the red.

You can no longer keep a straight face and say the Linux desktop is more difficult to use than the Windows desktop. If you can, you might want to check the release number of the Linux distribution you are using. Both GNOME and KDE have outpaced Windows for user-friendliness. Even KDE 4, which has altered the path of KDE quite a bit, will make any given user at home with the interface. But the Linux desktop beats the Windows desktop for more reasons than just user-friendliness. It’s far more flexible than anything Microsoft has ever released. If you don’t like the way the Linux desktop looks or behaves, change it. If you don’t like the desktop included with your distribution, add another. And what if, on rare occasion, the desktop locks up? Well, Windows might require a hard restart. Linux? Hit Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to force a logout of X Windows. Or you can always drop into a virtual console and kill the application that caused your desktop to freeze. It’s all about flexibility… something the Windows desktop does not enjoy.

For anyone who thinks Windows has the server market cornered, I would ask you to wake up and join the 21st century. Linux can, and does, serve up anything and everything and does it easily and well. It’s fast, secure, easy to configure, and very scalable. And let’s say you don’t happen to be fond of Sendmail. If that’s the case you have plenty of alternatives to choose from. Even with serving up Web pages. There are plenty of alternatives to Apache, some of which are incredibly lightweight.

In Part 2 of this series, we compare security, flexibility, package management, community