Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Winning the Windows Vs. Linux Battle

Microsoft has been promising a lot of nice new features in Vista. You can check them out here. I am going to make a little comparison of the features and we'll see who you think will come out on top...

Look and Feel ["eye candy"]
Windows: Direct X 10 looks intersting...I like the thumbnail view when you go ever an item in the startbar...but really there LAF is not that great...it is just glass XP...not to mention it is very, very bulky, heavy wieght and slow.

Linux: First off XGL is open source, looks great and doesn't take a super-human machine to run...it is not to hard to install and is supose to be installed right off the bat in futute releases of ubuntu, SuSE and other distros. The only hinderance i have experianced is my fglrx drivers just won't work therefore i can not install XGL.

Sidebar
Windows: Looks pretty but i would not want it because it would just make windows even slower than it alread is...could be usefull though...lots of funtionality (see this for more info)

Linux: This can be done with gdesklets which are pretty nice...i noticed no preformace drops when using them and they are open source!! There could be more funtionality but it is basicly there (+ there is probably a plugin somewhere)

Performance
Windows: The slowest windows ever! Although it does have some cool features like sleep.

Linux: Has always been very, very fast but i wish there was a sleep option and a hibernate option that is not as flaky.

Backup

Windows: This is the only place i can see windows beating linux (and only by a little)...i really like the idea of "Volume Shadow Copy" and "System Restore".

Linux: You can do something like "system resote" with a opensource tool called "sbackup", but i wish it were more intigrated with the system. As i said above i really like the idea of "Volume Shadow Copy" and as i am aware there is no tool to do this in linux...an nice intigration into OpenOffice and the rest of the systemw would be great.

Networking
Windows: From what i have seen of Vista microsoft has spent a lot of time with the interface and it is pretty and has basicly said "screw performance". The network manager looks very nice and user friendly...

Linux: networking in linux is very nice if your hardware is supported...and now adays everything is...(wireless is soon going to be shiped by default) and iff not you can use ndiswrapper (that is what i use)...gnome network manager is very nice and simple to use...and the networking tools in linux are phenomenal.

Other:
I really like windows media center...on linux there is myth tv which is good as well...Gaming and family safe programs are also neat...linux needs to get these because as far as i know it doesn't. I think the "Windows slideshow" feature is interesting but basicly useless...once laptops with this new built in technology linux will adapt. Speech recognition in windows vista also looks very interesting...linux needs something like it...something integrated into the sysem.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

yeah. thanks for the preview. a friend of mine has been boasting his downloaded beta of Vista. he said the interface was good but what the heck?!? it's too bulky anyway.

Collin said...

yes for sure...vista is bulky and requries a super system to work nicely...i am using ubuntu linux...and that is how it is going to stay :) I also like mac...so i might pick one up for my self...thanks for the comment :)

Anonymous said...

Argh just when I think I've got a decent system out comes an even heftier windows to bring it back to a crawl

Anonymous said...

Holy crap dude. How can anyone take a article like this seriously if you can't even spell. I mean, you don't even need to know how to spell. You just need to know how to use a spell checker. I ran this article though a spellchecker and there are no fewer than 30 spelling errors.