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Well for starters, getting billions of people to use it as opposed to a few million nerds.

How does that makes Windows a better platform than Linux?

If we use the same logic, then is McDonalds better than the other hamburgers just because more people go to McDonalds?

But that is not what happened.

Microsoft managed to make deals such that stores won't sell anything but Windows, and OEMs won't install anything but Windows (unless you go to a Mac specialist store, which is even more expensive).

The only way I can buy a Linux machine is to either: (1) go to some very obscure on-line supplier, and hunt through many levels of options on their web page, and if I'm lucky, I can find a selection to opt for a Linux OS, or (2) I just buy parts, including a blank hard disk, and assemble my own systems.

I personally follow the second option. In this way, I can get a nice Linux machine for about a quarter of the (total hardware+software) cost of a store-bought Windows machine of equivalent performance and functionality.

Unfortunately, that second option is way beyond most people, and so most people are simply unable to choose Linux.

However, getting back on topic: One thing that Linux does infinitely better than Windows is that it is way, way easier to "roll your own" system on Linux. You can start with a bunch of computer parts in separate packaging, plus a Linux LiveCD, and assemble, install and configure a fully-functional Linux machine in a couple of hours. The hardest bit is often getting some of the parts out of the plastic packaging.

I have just finished using Unetbootin on my desktop machine to prepare a bootable USB stick for Kubuntu 10.4 beta 2. I had downloaded the .ISO file earlier today. Excuse me while I go now to put this new OS on my netbook (which has no CD drive). Back in 10 minutes or so ...

(You just can't do that with Windows).

Edited 2010-04-09 11:44 UTC

It's not "Windows" but Microsoft that has gotten those billions of Winodows users and few of them obtained through product quality or functionality.

Popularity is not an indication of product quality either; it only indicates retail market success which involves many variables beyond the product attributes.

- Work with projectors.
- Audio. Linux audio is currently more broken than ever
- Gaming

- Work with projectors. "

RandR works just fine.



Nope. Works beautifully out of the box (KDE). Can't say the same for Windows (you will often have to find a 3rd party driver for your audio).



Fair enough.

I'll see your "gaming" and raise you "formats supported", "interoperability" and "cross-platform support".

Edited 2010-04-09 12:42 UTC

This is both true and not true. At the moment things are *so close* to being perfect that I can smell the finish line, if I may mix my metaphors.

If distributions would set up everything to just use jack by default then 90% of everything would work correctly automatically. The other 10% is mostly the same 10% that fails to work with PulseAudio, too.

Perfection is on its way. I am not a PA fan but I understand that it has some advantages that users apparently want. As such my proposed ideal audio stack in Linux is

PulseAudio -> Jack -> ALSA

And stack everything else on top as PA recommends. Each application targets jack if it can, PA if it must, or a higher level library (e.g. libao). Anything targeting ALSA gets routed through jack for mixing.

This gives you a stack that is flexible and friendly. The only issues are PA being a resource hog, jack stability and the unfriendly fact that they both require everything to be run as the same user. All three of these problems have solutions that will arrive sooner or later. Meanwhile audio *does* work, it just has to be configured with care. This makes it like any number of issues Linux has had in the past--from X to wireless networking--which have gradually gone from horrid to Just Works.

I'm pretty sure if you install a five year old distro, you'll revoke that point about sound in Linux. I've never seen the sound preferences UI look so good and work so well and to me it looks very comparable to the one in Windows 7..

Gaming? Well, Until a Linux distro gets big market share then you cannot compare, since game developers will always make games for the most used system or the most profitable one. Most game developers seem to primary develop for consoles now days and gaming on Windows is at an all time low thanks to pirating.

- Firefox is much faster on win7 64bit than ubuntu10.04 64bit.
- win7 has 1 homegroup password to enable sharing files easily

Edited 2010-04-09 15:27 UTC

Understand the last two, but what do you mean by working with projectors? Its just another screen right?

I can't really argue with that. That's why I dual-boot.

For TF2, there's Windows; fore everything else, there's Slackware.

Provide a stable stack of APIs.

Provide a consistent keyboard driven UI (really!)

Provide slow-moving driver interfaces.

That's about all.

Provide a consistent keyboard driven UI (really!) "

If you can say that with a straight face, you've not used Windows 7 extensively via the keyboard. Consistent is the last word I'd use to describe it. Controls and areas that were formerly simple to navigate are now a mess with the keyboard. And as for the apps themselves (Microsoft and third party)... well, let's not even go there. GNOME/GTK+ is quite a bit better in most cases (unsure about KDE). However, the only os as of yet to have true keyboard consistency across all areas of the os and 99% of applications is OS X. It operates differently from the two above mentioned, but is much nicer once you get used to it. Other oses would do well to take a leaf out of Apple's book here (wow, did I really just say that?).

While I'm a Linux user I must say: Stability. Both API and crash wise. When the graphics card driver crashes in Windows (XP) then the desktop stays up. It switches to a fallback driver with less resolution and color depth but your applications still all run unchanged (well, maybe not 3D apps). THAT is awesome, I want that in Linux! Also the GUI (and apps like Firefox) feel a LOT snappier under Windows. Other than that Linux wins.

As I understand it, they're working toward that (eg. Kernel Mode Setting) but I haven't seen any improvement because nVidia has been slow to support new X11 APIs.

Play games and uhm.... yeah. Play games.