There are many heated debates and arguments in the world of computers and technology these days. Some of these debates have been around since the computers first became popular amongst average, everyday people. Issues like choosing a Mac or a PC, or choosing an Apple operating system or a Windows operating system have been highly debated for years – and there have even been a recent line of commercials that brings this argument right into your own living room. However, one of the newest arguments involves a relatively little-know, but highly powerful operating system known as Linux. And the exact question is what one is better – Linux or Windows?

Well, the answer is not a simple and quick one, by any means. There are many things that you need to take into consideration when trying to make the decision between running Linux on your PC or running Windows – and this article attempts to help educate you on the topic, so that you can make a better decision for yourself regarding Linux vs. Windows.

The first thing to consider is your PC gaming life. If you are always playing the hottest new game, you probably want to stick with Windows. Because it is by far the most popular computer operating system available today, more games and applications are developed for Windows than any other platform. And while you may be able to run most Windows-based games on a computer that is running Linux, it’s not a guarantee that every single game in your collection will work. That is why if you are a computer gamer by any means, you will definitely want to pick Windows over Linux.

However, being the most popular operating system has a down side too, as Windows users are well aware of. Because more people use Windows on their home computer than any other operating system, malicious computer users and computer hackers target Windows-based computers far more than any other computer. There are thousands upon thousands of different viruses that may affect your Windows machine – with Linux, however, this simply is not the case. Computer hackers are not going to spend the amount of time that it takes to try and develop a virus for Linux, when it is so easy to make one for Windows. So if security is your main concern for your home computer, without a doubt Linux is the way to go.

Because Linux is an open source operating system however, it has gained quite a bit of popularity lately. What this means is that all of the ordinary users of Linux are free to play around with the operating system and develop their own programs and applications. And as this becomes more and more commonplace, you never quite know what Linux might come out with next. Indeed, it might be even better than anything Windows has to offer. And if you are already running a Linux operating system on your home computer, you will be a step ahead of most users who are still using Microsoft Windows on their machines. Ultimately, the choice is yours – though each system does have its advantages and disadvantages.

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By: John Parks

Way back in the late nineties I bought a Dell laptop, preloaded with Microsoft Windows 98. It was a great little machine and I used it daily for a few years without any problems at all. After a while though I decided to upgrade it to Windows XP. I thought at the time that this was probably a mistake because the laptop only had 128MB of RAM and a 6GB hard drive. I feared that the upgrade would kill the machine stone dead…and it did!

I struggled on for a while, but the fact that it took 10 minutes to boot, and often gave the impression that it had died midway through performing an operation, I slowly moved the machine to one side and quietly forgot about it.

It sat gathering dust for about a year or so and I was just on the verge of throwing it away when I thought I would try changing the operating system to Linux, after all, there was absolutely nothing to lose. I knew virtually nothing about Linux, so I did a bit of reading to try and establish which of the many ‘distributions’ I would go for. In the end I opted for Mandrake 10.1 (we’re talking about 2004/2005 here).

The installation went well, without any real issues along the way, and wow!, I now had a machine that could go back to being a productive work horse. The plethora of applications that come with Linux, especially the OpenOffice.org suite of applications, mean that you can do everything you need to do, just as well as with Windows. Don’t get me wrong – I think Windows is great as well, but it costs a lot of money and it needs a pretty beefy machine in order to run recent versions of the operating system. Whereas with Linux you can take pretty much any Pentium machine and voila – you’re away.

So, if you’re on the verge of ditching your old Windows machine, think again…maybe by switching to Linux you’ll be able to get many more years out of the old beast!

By: John Dixon