comparing 2 operating systems

8/13/2019 Comparing 2 Operating Systems

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Case Study of 2 Operating

Systems

WINDOWS and LINUX



• Comparison of Windows and Linux has become acommon topic of discussion among their users.

• Windows is the most prominent operating systemreleased under a proprietary software license (thoughselected business partners may receive a sharedsource license), whereas Linux is the most prominentoperating system released under a free softwarelicense.

• The two operating systems compete for user-base in

the personal computer market as well as the servermarket, and are used in government offices, schools,business offices, homes, intranet and internetservers, supercomputers, and embedded systems.



• Windows has tended to dominate in the desktopand personal computer markets (about 90% ofthe desktop market share), and Linux hasachieved between 50─80% market share of the

web server, render farm, and supercomputermarkets.

• They differ in philosophy, cost, ease of use,versatility, and stability, with each seeking to

improve in their perceived weak areas.• Comparisons of the two tend to reflect the

origins, historic user base and distribution modelof each.



• Some major areas of perceived weaknesses regularly cited have included the poor ease of

“out-of-box” mass-market use for Linux

regarding the desktop, and poor system

stability for Windows, both of which are areas

of rapid development in the two camps.

• The key strength of Linux is that it respects

what free software proponents consider to bethe users' essential freedoms: the freedom to

run it, to study and change it, and to redistribute

copies with or without changes.



• Because of its collaborativedevelopment model Linux has achieveda high degree of openness and

configurability while adhering to ISOand IEEE standards,

• Windows has a careful anticipation ofmass-market user requirements and

has created shifting ―standardization‖around its products through marketdominance.



Difficulties in comparing Windows

and Linux

• The term ―Linux‖ can have different meanings. In some cases, itrefers only to the system kernel; whereas in many other cases,―Linux‖ refers to a complete graphical desktop Linux distribution.

• Both come in different editions, each with different functionalities.Linux, in particular, has a vast number of distributions, includingmany that are highly specialized for specific job tasks.

• Price and support for both systems differ based on editions,distributors, and OEM products.

• Major OEM vendors of new computers may also choose tobundle additional useful software in addition to the installedoperating system.

• There are conflicting claims about each operating system from

the marketing and research done on the topic.• Microsoft sells copies of Windows under many different licenses

(usually in a closed source fashion, but occasionally in differentlevels of shared source). Likewise, most Linux distributionscontain proprietary software.



Total Cost of Ownership

• In 2004, Microsoft launched a marketing campaign named"Get the Facts" to encourage users to switch from Linux toWindows Server System. Microsoft claims that its productshave an overall lower total cost of ownership (TCO) thanOpen Source programs because of its ease of use,resulting in less work and lower staff wages.

• However, Microsoft's figures are disputed by a variety oforganizations, notably Novell and The Register. Somewebsites suggest that some common inaccuracies inMicrosoft's figures stem from including figures for Unix andSolaris with figures for Linux. Higher staffing costs mayresult from the expense of employing Linuxadministrators.

• In 2004, The U.K. Advertising Standards Authority warnedMicrosoft that an advertisement using research that claimed―Linux was […] 10 times more expensive than Windows Server2003‖, was ―misleading‖, as the hardware chosen for the Linux

server was needlessly expensive.



Desktop

Windows Linux Notes

Estimated

Desktop

Usage

Share

As of December 2007,

91.8%

As of December 2007,

0.63%From

http://marketshare.hit

slink.com/

Pre-installation

Pre-installed by defaulton almost all new

desktop PCs

Pre-installed by defaulton very few new

desktop PCs. However,

Ubuntu Linux is now

available on some Dell

and System76

computers, and SUSELinux on some Lenovo

ThinkPads. Recently

many more Linux-

based low-end

consumer laptops have

been introduced.

Microsoft's agreementwith vendors to sell

only the Windows

operating system is

being challenged in

court by French

consumer rightsgroups.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo



Windows Linux Notes

Window

Managers/

Desktop

Environm

ents

Only one available WM

per release, parts of

which may be modified;

system file patching

(uxtheme.dll) or thirdparty software such as

WindowBlinds is

required for some

modification; KDE 4

may be used as a third

party WM on Windows;

critically required tooperate the system

(graphics system failure

will render the system

unusable); remote

control not part of

original architecture.

GNOME, KDE,

Enlightenment, Xfce,

Openbox, Fluxbox, etc.

Can be enhanced with

Beryl or Compiz or thenewer Compiz Fusion

(merge of Compiz/Beryl

forks). WM not critical

for system operation

(reverts to command

line operation in case of

failure); remote controlimplicit in design and

protocol.

Different Window

managers provide

users with a uniquely

different method of

interacting with thecomputer, though

sometimes at the cost

of compatibility.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compiz

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluxbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openbox

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xfce

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WindowBlinds



Windows Linux Notes

System

consoles/

Command

line

interface

The Command Prompt

exists for power users.

A new .NET based

command line

environment similar to

that provided in Unix-

like operating systems

called Windows

PowerShell has been

developed. Currently,

Cygwin provides aUNIX-like terminal for

Windows.

Strongly integrated with

system console. All

applications can be

scripted through the

terminal, there are a lot

of small and specialized

utilities meant to work

together and to

integrate with other

programs. This is called

the toolbox principle.The command line can

be used to recover the

system if the graphics

subsystem fails.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cygwin



• It is very difficult to properly gauge the number of Linuxor Windows users as the former are mostly not requiredto register their copies; additionally, a large number ofpirated Windows copies exist.

• Desktop usage share data is estimated from webbrowser user agent strings, rather than sales informationor surveys. More estimates are available athttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_desktop_operating_systems.

• Both Windows and Linux include shells.

• A study released in 2003 by Relevantive AG indicatesthat ―The usability of Linux as a desktop system was judged to be nearly equal to Windows XP‖ (http://www.linux-usability.de/download/linux_usability_report_en.pdf).



Installation

Windows Linux Notes

Ease

of

Install

Generally easy to install in

the case of Windows Vista.

Varies in the case of

Windows XP, from relatively

easy to hard, depending on

installed hardware. May

require the usage of a driver

floppy disk, or slipstreaming

the drivers and creating a

new installation CD, if using

a large number of SATA or

SATA2 drives or RAIDarrays.

Varies greatly by distribution.

General purpose oriented

distributions offer a very simple live

CD or GUI installer (SuSE,

Mandriva, Ubuntu, Fedora etc.),

others offer a menu-driven installer

(Debian, Vector Linux, Slackware)

while others, targeting more

specialized groups, require source to

be copied and compiled (Gentoo).

The system can also be built

completely from scratch, directlyfrom source code (Linux from

Scratch). Plus a Live Cd of Linux

can work to repair Any broken OS as

long as it can mount the hard drive.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuSE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandriva_Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(Linux_distribution)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentoo_Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slackware

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fedora_(Linux_distribution)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandriva_Linux

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SuSE



Windows Linux Notes

Install

time

Estimated to be an hour

(down to 10─30 minutes for

Windows Vista, depending

on the system).

For XP/2003, far more time

may be spent due to updates

from Windows Update, driver

installations and multiple

reboots.

Can range from 6 minutes to

over an hour, depending on

distribution, but is generally

around 5─30 minutes for

general-use distributions like

Ubuntu.

•Can be compiled from source

in a few hours if not using the

installer, depending on

hardware.

Please see

footnotes for

Ease of

Install .



Windows Linux Notes

Drivers Often drivers must be installed

separately. If not included in

install media they must be

provided by manufacturer. Most

common drivers are available in

the Windows install or after aquick Internet update. The

process of installing drivers is

mostly automated.

Most free drivers available are

included in most distributions or

can be found in online archives.

Some devices (e.g. graphics

cards, wireless adapters) do not

have free drivers available due tolicensing issues, but proprietary

drivers are available from

manufacturers or special

archives. Some devices allow

using Windows drivers. For some

devices no usable drivers areavailable. Most special-purpose

drivers must be compiled by the

user manually. Time has been

invested in centralizing and

automating some driver

installation through a package

manager.



W

i

nd

o

w

s

L

in

u

x

N

ot

e

s

W

i

nd

o

w

s

L

in

u

x

N

ot

e

s

Installatio

n via Live

Environm

ents

May be installed through

WinPE and BartPE.

However, only the former

is endorsed by Microsoft.

Almost all Linux

distributions now have a

live CD that may be used

for install.

Pre-

installed

software

Some multimedia and

home use software (IE,

Media Player, Notepad,

WordPad, Paint…) plus

OEM bundled software.

Windows Vista Includes

IE7, Windows Mail,

Windows Media Center,etc. depending on which

edition you purchase. It

does not include Office

suites or advanced

multimedia software.

All main distributions

contain numerous

programs: multimedia,

graphics, internet, office

suites, games, system

utilities and alternative

desktop environments.

Some distributionsspecialize in education,

games, or security. Most

distributions give users

the choice of which

bundled programs to

install, if any.

Microsoft's methods of

bundling software were

deemed illegal in the

case United States v.

Microsoft.

Windows Linux Notes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinPE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BartPE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WinPE



Parti-

tioning Expanding NTFS

partitions is possible

without problems (onVista it is possible to

shrink partitions as well);

however, the included

diskpart commandline

tool has more

functionality than the

graphical interface

provides. Dynamic

partitioning scheme

through Dynamic Disks.

Depending on the type of

filesystem, resizing of

partitions without losingdata is possible, and the

user may install multiple

operating systems.

Dynamic partitioning

scheme through LVM or

EVMS.

Some third party tools for

Windows may allow

better partitioning thanthe built in partitioning

tools.

Windows Linux Notes



BootLoader May boot to multipleoperating systems

through a Microsoft

boot loader (NTLDR).

May boot to multipleoperating systems through

GRUB or LILO. Also has

security features, like

passwording, that is not

found in the Windows boot

loader.

For a Windows and LinuxDual-Boot System, it is

easiest to install Windows

first and then Linux.

Numerous Third-Party boot

managers are available for

Windows.

Windows Linux Notes



• Linux distributions were said to be difficult for theaverage user to install.

• Today, most distributions have simplified theinstallation and offer a ―LiveDistro‖ system

allowing users to boot fully functional Linuxsystems directly from a CD or DVD with theoption of installing them on the hard drive.

• The Windows install process, like most general-

use Linux distributions, uses a wizard to guideusers through the install process. Unlike mostgeneral-use Linux distributions, drivers are ofteninstalled separately.



Accessibility and Usability

Windows Linux Notes

User Focus Mostly consistent.

Inconsistencies appear

primarily through

backports ─ software

ported from newer

operating systems to

older ones. However,

Microsoft continually

pushes for consistency

between releases with

guidelines for interface

design.

The quality of graphical design varies between

desktop environments and distributions. The

two biggest desktop environments (GNOME

and KDE) have clearly defined interface

guidelines, which tend to be followed

consistently and clearly

Consistency

between

versions

User interaction with

software is usually

consistent between

versions, releases, and

editions.

Consistency can be poor between

distributions, versions, window

managers/desktop environments, and

programs. Software is highly user-

customizable, however, and the user may

keep the customizations between versions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KDE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNOME



Consistency

between

applications

All Microsoft software follows the

same guidelines for GUI,

although not all software

developed for Windows by third

parties follows these GUI

guidelines. As stated above,

backports tend to follow the

guidelines from the newer

operating system.

Highly consistent within KDE and

GNOME. However the vast

amount of additional software

that comes with a distribution is

sourced from elsewhere; it may

not follow the same GUI

guidelines and generally causesinconsistencies, e.g. different

look and feel of different

programs. However, there are

many standardization attempts

for major packaged distributions.

Customization

Source code may be purchasedfor modification in some

circumstances (restrictive), or

third party tools may create

modifications.

All of the kernel source code isfreely available for modification.

Most other software is free

software, too.

Accessibility Both Windows and Linux offer accessibility options, such as high contrast

displays and larger text/icon size, text to speech and magnifiers.

Windows Linux Notes

Accessibility and Usability



Stability

Windows Linux Notes

Gene-

ral

stabi-

lity

Windows variants

based on the NT

kernel (Windows NT,

2000, XP, 2003, Vista)

are technically much

more stable than

earlier versions (95,

98, 98 SE, ME).

Installing unsigned or

beta drivers can leadto decreased system

stability. Mechanisms

to terminate badly

behaving

applications exist at

multiple levels.

The kernel inherits the

stability of UNIX due

to its modular

architecture

(acknowledged to be

stable). Linux terminal

emulators and frontend

―Window Managers‖

stabilities vary widely,

but are generally stable.Mechanisms to

terminate badly

behaving applications

exist at multiple

levels.

Instability can be

caused by poorly written

programs, aside from

intrinsic OS stability.

Software crashes,

however, can usually be

recovered without

restarting the entire

operating system, and

losing data from otherapplications.



Do

w

n

ti

m

e

Reboots are usually

required after system

and driver updates, and

are occasionally neededfor software installations if

the installer wishes to

overwrite a file that is

being used by critical

running program.

Microsoft has its

hotpatching technology,designed to reduce

downtimes.

Linux itself only needs

to restart for kernelupdates. but a special

utility can be used to load

the new kernel and

execute it without a

hardware reset (kexec)

and hence can stay up for

years without rebooting.

In terms of potential

uptime, lists of the highestweb server uptimes had

shown Linux/Unix to run

longer, However, due to a

497 day limit on Linux's

uptime counter (only in old

2.4 release), these listings

are usually inaccurate.

Windows Linux Notes



Re

co

ve

ry

In modern, NT-based versions of

Windows, programs that crash may

be forcibly ended through the taskmanager by pressing

CTRL+SHIFT+ESC or

CTRL+ALT+DEL or through the

command line in professional SKUs.

Reboots were often required in pre-

NT versions (Windows 9x).

All processes except for init and

processes in D or Z state may be

terminated from the command line.

In KDE applications can be closed

using CTRL+ALT+ESC or by

KSystemGuard by pressing

CTRL+ESC. SysRQ allows low-level

system manipulation and crash

recovery if configured. Reboots areseldom required.

Windows Linux



Unre-

cover-

able

errors

If the kernel or a driver running

in kernel mode encounters anerror under circumstances

whereby Windows cannot

continue to operate safely, a 'Bug

check' (colloquially known as a

'Stop error" or Blue Screen of

Death) is thrown. A memorydump is created and, depending

on the configuration, the computer

may then automatically restart.

Additionally, automatic restart can

be applied to services.

The Unix equivalent of the

Windows blue screen is known as

a Kernel panic. The kernel

routines that handle panics are

usually designed to output an

error message to the console,create a memory dump, and then

either wait for the system to be

restarted or restart automatically.

Windows Linux



Performance

Process

Scheduling

Windows NT series use aprocess scheduling mechanism

with priorities. A user found that

Windows prefers one continuously

computing process more than two

(constantly) inter-communicating

processes when all three have the

same priority (awaiting

experimentational proof). As

Windows Vista brings a new cycle-

count scheduling algorithm this

might be mitigated already as well

as preventing CPU monopolization

due to inaccurate usage estimation.In Windows before Vista,

Programs could hog up the CPU

while trying to run causing the

machine to overload the buffer

causing either resets or the OS

to freeze/ run slowly, as it would

not kill the process if it had failed towork.

Linux kernel 2.6 once used a

scheduling algorithm favoring

interactive processes. Here

"interactive" is defined as a process

has short bursts of CPU usage rather

than long ones. It is said that a

process without root privilege can

take advantage of this to monopolize

the CPU, when the CPU timeaccounting precision is low. However,

the new CFS, the completely fair

scheduler, addresses this problem.



Performance

Memory

Management/

Disk Paging

Windows NT and its variants

employ a dynamically allocated

swap file for memory management. A page/swap file is allocated on

disk, for less frequently accessed

objects in memory, leaving more

RAM available to actively used

objects. This scheme suffers from

slow-downs due to disk

fragmentation, which hampers thespeed at which the objects can be

brought back into memory when

they are needed.

Most hard drive installations of Linux

utilize a "swap partition", where the

disk space allocated for paging isseparate from general data, and is

used strictly for paging operations;

reducing slowdown due to disk

fragmentation from general use.

Windows Linux



Programs

• Linux distributions come with a great deal of software which can beinstalled for free, with an especially large collection of computerprogramming software. Debian comes with more than 18,000software packages.

• Microsoft has had a longstanding emphasis on backwardscompatibility. In general, the Windows API is consistent over time;programs designed for earlier versions of Windows often run withoutissues on later versions.

• For the sake of progress, however, Microsoft sometimes draws aline precluding support of very old programs. That first happenedwith Windows 95, where some purely 16 bit Windows 3.1applications would not work, and again with Windows XP, wherecertain 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 thatcompatibility with old applications remains very high.



Gaming

• A major attraction of Windows is the library of games availablefor purchase. The majority of current major games nativelysupport Windows and are released first for the Windowsplatform.

• Some of these games can be run on Linux with acompatibility layer like Wine or Cedega. Others, andespecially more modern games that rely on proprietary deliverysystems, copy protection, Windows dependencies, or advancedacceleration features, may fail.

• Recently, virtual machines such as VMware Workstation 5.0have added support for accelerated 3D graphics. This providesmuch higher framerates at no performance cost.

• There are also numerous Open Source games designed firstfor Linux. While most of these are small games like Kolf orPingus, there are also bigger games, such as Nexuiz andFreeciv. Many have been ported to work on Windows as well.



Security

• The ideal software to facilitate the spread of malware has severalcharacteristics. It should be:

– Widely used, to maximize the number of those who could be infected,and the likelihood that infected systems will contact others able to beinfected

– Slowly patched, to maximize the time the malware remains effective,and minimize development effort for new malware

– Monolithic with no compartmentalization of components, tomaximize the damage malware can do

• Secure software should therefore have a small user base todiscourage malware development, rapid updates to neutralize newthreats, and a compartmentalized structure that isolates damagedsections. Linux is superior to Windows in all three areas. The last isachieved by separating user and root privileges.

• Prior to Windows Vista, almost all Windows users were given a root accountby default because lesser accounts were overly restrictive for most users.Linux user account tiers have historically allowed greater control, precludingthe need for all users to have root access. Without root, it becomes muchmore difficult for malware to spread.



Permissions

Both Windows NT-based systems and

Linux support permissions on theirfilesystems, except for FAT which has no

permission support.



Linux and Unix-like systems

• Linux—and Unix-like systems in general—have a ―user, group,other‖ approach to filesystem permissions at a minimum. This canbe seen by typing ls -l in a text terminal on a Linux system.

• There also Access Control Lists available on some filesystems,

which extends the traditional Unix-like permissions system.• Security patches like SELinux and PaX add Role-Based Access

Controls, which add even finer-grained controls over which usersand programs can have access to certain resources or performcertain operations. Some distributions, such as Fedora, CentOS,and Red Hat use SELinux out of the box, although most do not.

• Most Linux distributions provide different user accounts for thevarious daemons. User applications are run on unprivilegedaccounts, to provide Least user access. In some distributions,administrative tasks can only be performed through explicitswitching from the user account to the root account (tools such assu and sudo are very common).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Bash_Properties.png



Windows• Windows NT uses NTFS-based Access Control Lists to

administer permissions, using tokens.

• However, these capabilities were often not used to theirfull extent.

• On Windows XP and prior versions, most home usersstill ran all of their software with Administrator accounts;as this is the default setup upon installation. Thecumbersome runas mechanism and the existence ofsoftware that would not run under limited accounts also

forced many users to use administrative accounts. Thisgives users full read and write access to all files on thefilesystem.

• Windows Vista changes this by introducing a privilegeelevation system called User Account Control thatworks on the principle of Least user access.



For more information on the differences

between the Linux su/sudo approach andVista's User Account Control, visithttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_privilege_authorization_features



Localization/Globalization

• Linux has moved ahead of Windows in terms oflanguages and writing systems supported out of

the box.

• Stock Linux distributions support all of thefollowing writing systems for modern national

languages and various minority languages

except Mongolian, which the Soyombo Linux

project is working on.• Windows lacks support for Ethiopic, Gurmukhi,

Oriya, Tibetan, Mongolian, Burmese, and Lao.

comparing 2 operating systems

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