[plug] Linux/Win2000 feature comparison guide

[Christian]

On Fri, Oct 27, 2000 at 09:50:23AM +0800, Jeremy Malcolm wrote:
> I don't think this has been mentioned on this list before, but I found
> it on a CD from Micro$oft and I was surprised at how relatively
> even-handed it is.  Most of the points that Micro$oft makes are things
> that Linux advocates would probably concede, although they would
> disagree that they are all disadvantages.  For example Micro$oft makes a
> point of how Linux is made up of open source components from disparate
> sources.  You can't argue with that, but you can argue over whether it's
> a disadvantage of Linux over Win2000.

I would say it's undoubtedly a disadvantage... but whether it's a
*significant* disadvantage or not is another thing.  It's nice to use a
system where all the core components come from the same place (e.g.,
BSD) but you don't notice any significant drop in the quality of the
experience when they're not.

As for the rest of the quoted Microsoft evaluation, I guess they've been
reasonably fair.  Except that it seems they seem to have evaluated the
core system as it stands and haven't taken into account the fact that
Linux distributions are almost infinitely extensible by simply
downloading and installing new packages (as Leon has pointed out).  It
seems that Microsoft is stuck back in the era where you are limited by
what your vendor gives you on the CD, except where you're willing to pay
3rd party licensing agreements and face potential incompatibility
issues.  Of course, with Linux it's just a matter of installing a new
package for whatever you want to do -- and in the case of Debian, that's
a trivial one-line task.  (Not that it's that much harder in the other
distributions either.)

Regards,

Christian.