100 reasons Linux beats Windows

By David M Williams
Sunday, 28 September 2008 09:30

Opinion and Analysis

That's right; you heard me. Here are – count 'em – one hundred reasons why Linux beats Windows. We can be an argumentative lot here at iTWire. Earlier this month I presented five reasons to upgrade from Windows Vista to Linux. Alex Zaharov-Reutt hit back with ten reasons to stick with Vista and forget Linux.

Sam Varghese opted for double or nothing and countered with 20 reasons to shed the Microsoft yoke and use Linux. Not to be outdone Alex responded with 40 reasons to lose Linux and vote Vista.

Where do you go from here? Well, if you’re Davey Winder you put up ONE reason why OS X is better than Vista and Linux.

Ok, enough! The month is almost over. Time for me to end it once and for all. Here are 100 reasons why Linux beats Windows. ‘nuff said.

1. You don’t have to “activate” Linux by phone or Internet.

2. If you change your hardware and re-install Linux you don’t have to call someone to justify it.

3. There’s no such thing as Linux Genuine Advantage.

4. Linux vendors, for the most part, don’t charge you a cent.

5. And they didn’t give $10m of your hard-earned cash to Jerry Seinfeld.

6. You can install Linux on as many computers as you want.

7. You can give it away to friends and family.

8. You can download it and you can burn disc after disc.

9. You don’t have to enter obscure product keys stuck onto your computer.

10. You don’t have to store product keys for safety.

11. Nobody ever sells a second-hand computer with Linux on it and then has to deal with buyers complaining they were “ripped off” because Microsoft Word isn’t installed.

12. You don’t have to explain to Linux users that “Windows 97” isn’t a product, nor is “Office 98” and that it’s not “Vista” which has the ridiculous ribbon bar.

13. Do you like the Internet? The TCP/IP protocol was built on UNIX computers. It’s natural to Linux, unlike Windows which only embraced TCP/IP as its native protocol from Windows 2000.

14. Do you like to program? The C programming language was built for UNIX.

15. Similarly, many well-known scripting languages debuted in the UNIX/Linux world.

16. If you learned PHP you’re now able to write web apps for Windows Server 2008 which supports PHP out-of-the-box – not Microsoft’s own ASP.NET. Meanwhile, Windows devs need to pick up PHP now.

17. You don’t need to defragment Linux. At all. Ever.

18. It’s not even the case you really do have to defragment it but the vendor will say it is “maintenance free” because you can schedule a task to do the defragmentation.

19. You don’t have to worry about viruses.

20. You know your computing experience will be safer and more secure because of the Linux ingrained philosophy of running processes at the lowest required level of access.

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