Flavors

The flavors of Linux are known as distributions, which come from various companies. The Linux distributions, which are released at the same time, use the same kernel. However, they would differ in the additional software provided.

All flavors of Windows come from Microsoft only. Windows flavors fall under two wide distributions: Win9x consisting Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me, and NT Class which consists of Windows NT, 2000 and XP.

GUI

Linux provides two types of GUI – KDE and GNOME. Linux GUI comes as an option to the user. If the user does not want it, he can avoid GUI.

GUI is integral part of Windows o/s.

Cost

Linux is cheap or free. For server use also Linux is cheap compared to Windows.

Windows is expensive for desktop or home use. For server use also, Windows is expensive.

Bugs

Linux is reported to be having few bugs, when compared with Windows. Also bugs are fixed faster in Linux as its source code is publicly available it is easier to find bugs and fix them.

Reportedly, most Microsoft products have security bugs and it takes a long time to discover and fix them, when compared with Linux.

O/S software installation

Installing Linux is considered to be difficult, as different Linux distributions have different installation programs.

Installing Windows is considered very easy.

Application Software Installation

For Linux, application software installation is reportedly different for every distribution.

Though application software installation is not standardized, it is usually consistent with the Windows platform.

Application Software

There are very limited applications available for Linux.

There are numerous application softwares available for the Windows platform.

Viruses

Linux is considered virus-free as compared to Windows.

Reports say that numerous viruses enter the Windows platform easily.

Hardware devices supported by OS

There are very limited hardware devices for Linux, when compared to Windows.

A majority of hardware devices support Windows.

Clustering

Linux can make enormous clusters of computers.

Windows cannot support large clusters.

Security

Linux always requires the user id and password to log in.

To log in Windows user id and password are not compulsory. Windows 2000 and XP can be configured in a way that user can access system without a user id/password.

Multiple Users

Linux is a multiple-user system.

Windows is basically designed for the single user. Though there is a multi-user version of Windows, it is not pre-installed on all systems.

Networking

Linux is based on TCP/IP.

Windows is based on TCP/IP.

File Systems

Linux's default file system – “ext2.” Linux file names are case sensitive.

Windows uses FAT12, FAT16 and FAT32 file systems. File names in Windows are not case sensitive.

File Hierarchy

Linux File Hierarchy is a unified scheme. In Linux all directories are attached to the root directory - identified by a “/”. All hard disk partitions and devices are shown as sub-directories of one root directory. In Linux, there are no standards regarding which sub-directories should be used for which device.

File Hierarchy is volume-based in Windows. Alphabets are used to represent different devices and hard disk partitions in Windows. In Windows, a standard format for representation of sub-directories is followed. For example, A drive is always the floppy drive and C drive is always the boot partition.

Shutdown

 Linux cannot be shut down without first logging out.

 There is no need to log out for shutting down Windows.