# FWIW: Windows vs. Linux vs. FreeBSD vs. OSX - 12 dimensional analysis



## DutchDaemon (Jun 10, 2010)

http://mind-crafter.blogspot.com/2010/01/windows-vs-linux-vs-freebsd-vs-osx-12.html



> [..] a comprehensive breakdown of some of the pros and cons of different Operating systems:
> 
> The Operating systems in question are as follows:
> 
> ...


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## fronclynne (Jun 11, 2010)

Haha, I made it to

```
The new journaled ext3 and ext4 filesystems fix the problems with ext2 which is now only used as swap,
```
before I had to just stop.  Thumbs up, funniest article I've read in a while.


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## SirDice (Jun 11, 2010)

> Windows uses a lot of system resources and it is very difficult to keep the system up for more than a couple of months without it reverting to a crawl as memory gets corrupted and filesystems fragmented.


This is BS. In 9999 out of the 10000 cases when this happens it's the third party software you installed that's causing it. Windows cannot protect you against crappy programmers that can't do proper memory management.

Oh, and I'm not even going to mention the BS regarding Windows security.


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## graudeejs (Jun 11, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> This is BS. In 9999 out of the 10000 cases when this happens it's the third party software you installed that's causing it. Windows cannot protect you against crappy programmers that can't do proper memory management.



simple solution:
* use notepad for everything related to text
* use calc for everything related to math and sci
* use pain instead of fotoshop etc

My point is whether it's Microsofts fault or not, you don't have much choice, than use all that bloat (with few exceptions).


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## SirDice (Jun 11, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> My point is whether it's Microsofts fault or not, you don't have much choice, than use all that bloat (with few exceptions).


Yes, and my point is that a lot of people are quick to blame windows for pretty much everything. Even if it's clearly a third party that's causing the issues.


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## graudeejs (Jun 11, 2010)

Well it's windows and American Capitalism, that created such situation in first place {I think}


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## roddierod (Jun 11, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Yes, and my point is that a lot of people are quick to blame windows for pretty much everything. Even if it's clearly a third party that's causing the issues.




Well not to wax philosophically, I work in a windows shop and from my experience people who have been brought up in a strictly Microsoft environment can only think in the point and click mindset and can't or don't want to know what is actually going on behind the GUI. It is so frustrating to me to start talking to programmers or network people and watch their eyes glaze over. I think in a sense Windows is it's own enemy as that very few people actually understand what is going on behind it or understand the theory. When our CIO brought in a Web Architect - because she decided we should go our web in .Net, because everybody else does - the first thing he said to me was he did not know C or Apache because that was for geeks and there was no need to know all that.

Fortunately for me and my organization our Directors and senior database people comes from a VMS and Solaris background. A few spent years programming mainframes.


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## fronclynne (Jun 11, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Yes, and my point is that a lot of people are quick to blame windows for pretty much everything. Even if it's clearly a third party that's causing the issues.



win32 api sucks, but that's obviously not microsoft's fault, right?


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## Carpetsmoker (Jun 11, 2010)

haha, my highly developed CarpetSense is smelling a FreeBSD fanboy in that article 



> This is BS. In 9999 out of the 10000 cases when this happens it's the third party software you installed that's causing it. Windows cannot protect you against crappy programmers that can't do proper memory management.



True, to some point at least.
But one must ask if it is wise for an OS to just allow *every* program to run itself at boot time? I've never had issues with FreeBSD running unwanted services at boottime after I've installed a program.



> Yes, and my point is that a lot of people are quick to blame windows for pretty much everything. Even if it's clearly a third party that's causing the issues.



Again, up to some point this is true, but the Windows OS is **incredibly** complicated, and makes it **very** hard to debug and actually fix stuff once they go wrong.


There is a old quote from the '80's (I don't remember from who): _"You can make a system simple so that there are no obvious faults, or you can make a system complicated so that there are no obvious faults."_

You guess which one is Windows and which one is BSD


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## zeiz (Jun 12, 2010)

True. Infinite manifold of the world consists of definite number of molecules that consist of just above a hundred elements (mostly below hundred). Those elements consist of just 3 particles and those particles consist of only 2 quarks. Who knows if those 2 quarks consist of something singular? Very simple but it took millenniums to realize.
On the other hand it's M$ who turned all the World into computing one. 
However like it's always in history things come and go...


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## sossego (Jun 12, 2010)

Put the joint down.


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## Anonymous (Jun 12, 2010)

The swap part is funny, of course.
A common Linux installation is Linux + Gnu, so the core system doesn't look that different from a fresh BSD-install. All other things come on top of that.
Quote from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#GNU:


> The GNU userland is an important part of most Linux-based systems, providing the most common implementation of the C library, a popular shell, and many of the common Unix tools which carry out many basic operating system tasks.


Not that it would matter much to me.

Both are well known facts and easy to find with a searchengine of choice.


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## hansivers (Jun 13, 2010)

fronclynne said:
			
		

> Haha, I made it to
> 
> ```
> The new journaled ext3 and ext4 filesystems fix the problems with ext2 which is now only used as swap,
> ...



Your comment wake my curiosity so I took a look at the original text. It reads :



> The new journaled ext3 and ext4 filesystems fix the problems with ext2 which is now only used as swap, and the ext2 gets it's performance via an asynchronous mount (which is good for swap, not so much for file storage).



My reading is that the author is discussing about the asynchronous mount being good for swap, not stating that ext2 is only good for swap. But again, maybe I'm wrong?


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## Oxyd (Jun 13, 2010)

hansivers said:
			
		

> Your comment wake my curiosity so I took a look at the original text. It reads :
> 
> 
> 
> ...



Quoted for emphasis. Yes, I think you're wrong.


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## Anonymous (Jun 13, 2010)

During installation i am getting asked which filesystesmtype to use for swap. As filesystemtype i have to choose swap, not ext2.
My fstab says this:

```
# <file system> <mount point>  [B] <type>[/B]  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc         [B]  proc   [/B] defaults        0       0
/dev/sda1       /              [B] ext3 [/B]  noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
....
/dev/sda3       none              [B]swap [/B]   sw              0       0
....
```
The gui-output of gparted confirms that too.
Of  course i might be wrong and a swap partition is always said to use a swap-filesystem, but it is a camouflaged ext2 to confuse the users. No searchengine gave me other results than what i think i already know.

And, btw, with nowadays RAM-specs there is not much use for swap on Linux anyway. I got several installations without any swap (just realized that my swap was not swapped on...). I yet have to see the usage of swap when running 'htop', 'top' and similar commands.

PS: the term "Linux" is a bit confusing. When i speak of "Linux" is speak of Debian-based Linuxes. The others i don't know well, if at all.


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## dennylin93 (Jun 13, 2010)

I think the blog post is a bit biased, but I have to agree that FreeBSD is a great OS :e.


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## aragon (Jun 13, 2010)

Glad I'm not the only one who thought this article was kinda rubbish.  The comments on it seem to praise it highly though!


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## Carpetsmoker (Jun 13, 2010)

That is not strange, fanboys attract more fanboys.


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## SR_Ind (Jun 17, 2010)

aragon said:
			
		

> Glad I'm not the only one who thought this article was kinda rubbish.  The comments on it seem to praise it highly though!




Consider this....

"8. Development Environment

Windows:
Very few development tools are included with Windows. Most need to be purchased separately, and are rarely compatible with each other. Vista tried to introduce a "Powershell" but it introduced more security vulnerabilities and not much of a development environment.
Grade: F"

I've been using Visual Studio & SQL Server Express Editions at work for the last 5 years. They are better than most open source crap. IIS comes with OS install itself. What else? Libraries and frameworks? Stuff like WPF, WCF, Silverlight etc. are available for all and sundry. For C++ developemnt for last couple of years I've also adopted QtCreator (what? quality products only from corporations even though open source??).

Sorry doesn't fly. 

Similar is the case with rest of the article. Take for example BSOD. Its been ages I saw one (some early XP versions).

I've said it another thread and I'll repeat here again, MS has rolled out some excellent technologies in last few years. Open source bigots might wallow in a mix of ignorance and blind hatred and in process they will deny their own community (sad that few jerks claim to speak for the entire open source community) a chance to keep themselves abreast with latest in their field.

What the the fcuk is "Windows" by the way? Windows 3.1 or Windows 7? What is Windows XP feature doing in so-called "article" written in 2010?

No wonder open source is viewed with distrust by CTOs as basement hack job.


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## rden (Jun 18, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> This is BS. In 9999 out of the 10000 cases when this happens it's the third party software you installed that's causing it. Windows cannot protect you against crappy programmers that can't do proper memory management.
> 
> Oh, and I'm not even going to mention the BS regarding Windows security.



Well it starts as the 3p software fault when it's running, it becomes the OS's problem when the 3p ap exits (yes the 3p ap "should clean up after itself" but if doesn't, it's not too much to ask an OS to properly release handles ect..  Windows: F, 'nix: A).  (Just as doze's UI is cobbled up bling on their old version so is their "multi-tasking" just hacks (on top of hacks on top of hacks) of their old single tasking kernal.)

Oh, you are right not to mention the BS regarding security [coming out of Redmond] because looking at the CERT advisories it even their shiny new 'doze-7/2008 still looks bad.


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## Seth (Sep 5, 2010)

DutchDaemon said:
			
		

> http://mind-crafter.blogspot.com/2010/01/windows-vs-linux-vs-freebsd-vs-osx-12.html



It looks like a lot of this was blatantly ripped off from http://people.freebsd.org/~murray/bsd_flier.html, which was created 10 years ago.  Even the sections appear in the same order. :\


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## oliverh (Sep 9, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> Well it's windows and American Capitalism, that created such situation in first place {I think}



With all due respect, this is nonsense. It was the peoples choice. Microsoft didn't press people to use their operating system. And most of the time the operating system of choice isn't even responsible for faulty behaviour. *BSD is better in some areas, it's crap in others compared e.g. to Linux. Windows tends to be more problematic sometimes, but you cannot generalize it. Focus on the people in front of their machines, then you'll see the problem at once.


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## SirDice (Sep 9, 2010)

oliverh said:
			
		

> It was the peoples choice. Microsoft didn't press people to use their operating system.


Not entirely correct. Certainly not back in the early days. Microsoft sold licenses to OEMs per sold CPU. It didn't matter if that PC was sold to Joe Public with or without Windows. The OEM already paid for it. Guess what 'choices' the OEM, and as a result, Joe Public had.


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## roddierod (Sep 9, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Not entirely correct. Certainly not back in the early days. Microsoft sold licenses to OEMs per sold CPU. It didn't matter if that PC was sold to Joe Public with or without Windows. The OEM already paid for it. Guess what 'choices' the OEM, and as a result, Joe Public had.



It always amazed me and pissed me off, that during the big MS antitrust government law suit that this wasn't the major focus, not the integration of IE into the OS.


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## oliverh (Sep 9, 2010)

SirDice said:
			
		

> Not entirely correct. Certainly not back in the early days. Microsoft sold licenses to OEMs per sold CPU. It didn't matter if that PC was sold to Joe Public with or without Windows. The OEM already paid for it. Guess what 'choices' the OEM, and as a result, Joe Public had.



That's theoretically true, but practically futile. Back in the early days (80s), if you're refering to those, you had the choice to avoid a PC -- as I did for example. And if you're prone to presents, that's not the fault of Microsoft. But since the days of Windows 3.11/95 it's really hard to avoid Microsoft Windows, because you have to use certain products at least in most professional environments. Linux or even *BSD aren't, aside from server, coding or number-crunching facilities, a viable alternative. Today, it's possible for average joe to cope with those "free alternatives", if the sole purpose of your computer at home serves some average use like browser, mail etc. pp. Nowadays, you don't have a real choice anymore appliance dictates your "choice".


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## fronclynne (Sep 10, 2010)

Meh, an Apple ][e* is more than enough for the vast majority of word processing & spreadsheet done these days.  The escapingly small number of actually useful things produced that might require more "stuff" (if I'm not bodging my German idioms) would be pretty simple to shout down and their proponents might even be successfully shipped off to the gulag.

And forcing the dips who might as well be urinating on their keyboard for all the value of their output to forgo comic sans in their accursed e-mails would be a net win.

* & apropos of that, I'm still looking for some word processing software that does as much with as little as the old (old old) apple-works.  editors/joe is close.


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## Anonymous (Sep 12, 2010)

No operating system is secure, the person who wrote this article doesnt know what they are talking about. I'm 22, never worked in the industry and all i have is a 2 year degree in CIS and I can say that with 100 percent confidence.


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