Linux or Windows: 25 Things to Know While Choosing the Best Platform

I agree with what you are trying to come across, but you could have worded it much better. One example you mentioned Linux “has far fewer security holes than Windows which is used on all the world’s supercomputers …”. I believe you intended to say Linux is used on those systems, not Windows. Also, getting a USB drive to work on Windows only requires plugging it in. Likewise with drivers and, IMO, Windows has far more drivers than Linux. While I am not a Windows advocate for many reasons, Linux is far from being that great either. I think the “wilg” and “Alan Hill” replies above were spot on.
I was writing computer S/W most likely before you were a gleam in your daddy’s eye (and, maybe, even before he was in your granddaddy’s eye – nearly 60 years ago). 🙂 Linux is based on Unix and both Unix and Windows (based on MS-Dos) were “hacks”, although Unix was a much more sophisticated “hack” (and was a take-off on the Multics project). Windows came from an OS initially developed for early PCs when it was still a hobbyist’s world and, while not quite quick and dirty initially, was essentially a tool to help get those early PCs up and running. It is also my opinion that the best OS (and still in use by banks and financial businesses) was OS/2. However, it wasn’t until OS/2 WARP came out that it became a much better OS for the average user, but was also too late, IMO, due to some bad decisions and Microsoft having already signed up most H/W manufacturers to exclusive deals. BTW, I first started using Linux back in the early-mid 90s using the Slackware version and later, Ubuntu 6.0. And prior to MS-DOS (followed by Windows), I used OS/9, another Unix clone, back in the early 80s – it ran on a 64K memory machine powered by a 6809 microprocessor.

Unfortunately, the average user is in the same category as your mother. They turn it on and expect it to run like any other electronic appliance they have in the house. Warnings like that don’t mean much. That is why those users will live with Windows forever. I have family members and friends who are still using Windows XP (and earlier) because that is what came on their PC when they bought it and is still running. They will only end up going to the latest version of Windows when there PC dies and they need to replace it. A few have tablets and/or smart phones and their PCs are now in the closet gathering dust.

it’s Windows that crashes Windows. Usually through Windows update forcing its notorious system trashing releases.

just posted to help in case you hadn’t seen them. None of them are as expensive as the proprietary solutions, it might be noted.

Also, I have used GIMP in a production environment (Advertising & Product design) for 7 years, and it’s not the big deal that Adobe users seem to think it is. There are definitely things for GIMP to improve, but they certainly don’t prevent anyone from making commercial quality graphics and photo editing. Also, they are improving, and for free. 🙂

That’s just my personal experience though. Different people have different requirements, and I agree it does no good to judge and berate each other about what tools we choose to use to get the job done.

I choose to use and help improve Free Software because I believe in user freedoms, but I totally get those who just want the extra convenience features of Photoshop over those in GIMP, Krita, etc., and consider that convenience more important than the 4 essential user freedoms. It’s for each of us to choose from.

No bad feelings amongst brothers here.

“the issue is, for each tool that is ported to Linux, another 3 tools born on windows.”

It’s getting better. But yes, still slow. I just appreciate what has been done and help to make that stuff better on the Linux side. Patience seems to be paying off more and more lately, and Blender and Godot are great examples. I think crowdfunding helps tons, so for every tool you want on Linux, it’s worth letting the devs know. 🙂

Good luck with your projects, and sorry, I edited the last post I made, and answered more stuff, just hit post too early!

who said you gonna use it on a server instead of on a desktop? do you even know what tools the person will gona use?
for example, there are no alternatives for VRoid on Linux
No alternatives for Facerig (real-time face mocap)
no alternatives for MMD (there are TONS of animators that use MMD since there are tons of assets in standard sizes, and famous characters for it in case the person wants to make an animation)

there are tons of specific niche tools.

tools to mod games/hack roms, to make games, music etc in a specific workflow, easy to use for a certain genre etc.

linux is freedom?
what is freedom? do what you want when you want?
in that case, windows give you more freedom since it has a broader ecosystem that covers more use cases.

see how the software works, modify and distribute? well linux is better at that, but that benefit software developers and only then.

In my case, i had a few tries with linux before starting to like it.

i used it once in some public computers, tried to download and run my games on it to show to a few friends and got frustrated that the system asked me, what program i should use to open an exe file (i thought .exe was some kind of self executable/assembly level bytecode that comunicates directly with the hardware and tha the system sucked for no simply runing it)

a few years later (or maybe prior) i used it on school, the teatcher didnt bother to explain to much about it, so i thought it was just an windows imitation that someone made because he thinked “if bill gates did windows and became rich i should do my own OS too!” and that it was just an waste of time that had to reinvent the whell on security etc instead of moving foward.

years later i gave another chance without even realizing it was the same thing.
i was used to make my own homebrew softwares thanks to multimedia fusion (nowadays called clickteam fusion) i didnt knew much about programing, i thought that writing code was obsolete because everything they teach me at school i could easyly make clicking in the easy to use point n click interface of clickteam fusion, do all that an more, so i was just staring to see the point of lower level programing (i didnt knew that all programs were made in code includiong MMF, and that i wouldnt had to deal with MMF limitations if i dive on lower level)

at that time, my parents purchased 2 new computers so we could finally stop sharing a single old computer with 5 persons at home, but the issue was, they came with windows vista, in terms of hardware they should be much faster but thanks to Vista the notebook became slower than the old computer quite fast, the newer was faster but not blazing fast as the old computer when it was recently formated windows98, and the old computer died out of age.

then i started to searching for alternatives, i couldnt afford windowsXP with my allowance, i didnt want pirate since my parent could break the computer if he ever discover it, so i heard of linux and how it was made with colaboration in open source, and thought it was just an hobbyware as the softwares that i made, but thought it would be a cool experience to use/learn/contribute as an hobby, i thought some parts of the hardware may not work properly, maybe i would have to develop my own video drivers to make it work on my computer, but i thought i would know how to do it since i was used to make “hobyware” on MMF i thoght i knew what i was doing and that it would be easy to do.

to my surprise i didnt need to install a single driver, even my printer/scanner that took 2 hours to insall on windows (and instaled a bunch of crapware that try to make the life easier but only makes it harder) didnt even need to be installed on linux, it was just plug n play with an generic program to print and scan that worked for every printer/scanner instead of just this one.

back on the windows, i tried to find freeware or cheap alternatives to photoshop, coreldraw and others, since i wanted to make an game, need vector/drawing/animation programs but couldnt afford those and didnt want to pirate due to morals (ethical, being sucessfull without cheating), being afraid of being arrested and being afraid of distributing virus to my customers if i got any by using pirated softwares, nad being afraid of losing my data all over again due to virus.

in windows i couldnt find none of that, it had more softwares but that only made it harder to find any good that wasnt an ransomware- trial that pretend to be free only to lock your files created on it in a paywall, demos with limited features (aka you cant save), other crap softwares, softwares that came with an virus or adware-bar self instaling on browsers and good software that was too expensive for my pockets.

on linux i found great softwares with the built-in package manager that deal with updates (instead of each software making it own process to manage an updater, making the computer slower or not updating making it unsafe/without stability and speed patches)

and i knew that all of that was open source, wich made me see how good open source software could be and start supporting this ideolgy, even if some softwares had windows version i coulnd find it in the sea of crap that windows has and even the ones i knew (firefox) i didnt knew they were open source.
even the screen savers were impressive and open!
(but i never could understand the code of anything that i tried to read)

meeting linux was an “god’s gift ” at an time that i was thinking it was impossible to make an homebrew game without cheating with pirate software.
the only issue was… lack of an game engine, and lack of games.
as for the games i didnt knew about steam (or had an international credit card that was required back then) many games that i wanted to play werent avaliable for pc anyway, the emulators i wanted were also avaliable for linux, so it was not an major issue at the begining.

as for linux game engines i tried a lot but none of then was good enough, they were either hard and undocumented or limited, i tried to look back on windows construct 1 was open source but windows only (and using windows only apis) back then, but i heard from a friend that clickteam started making it easier to pirate their software (MMF) to kill their competition, and aparently it worked, construct failed as open source so they decided to start over, this time as propritary and… their company is in a much more healthy $$ state right now, instead of stagnated without evolution.
that was disapointed, open source seemed to be an solution for everything , but some companies had an better luck without it.

i entered an college for game making, and for the first time on my life i had an healthy social life with tons of persons arround talking the same languague, but i had to know more games to keep in touch with the conversations and to play with friends and understand the conversations i had to play games that only worked on windows again.

then i heard about steam and saw more and more games that used to be console exclusive being ported to windows, and being much cheaper on it , i tried to keep using linux, but only make me acumulate games to play, have Headache trying to install games, some times it worked with worse performance, sometimes the performance wasnt playable other times worked flawless, but the time i lost trying to make it work could be better spend playing more stuff or studying.

i tried to make my own game engine since i didnt had an good enough on linux, tried native but didnt knew how to distribute anyway, so tried to code for web and simply host the game online to distribute, but html5 was a bit imature and i didnt knew what i was doing.
i tried HTML doom for the game and it was working (but that dont scale well, it became slow when the game get more complex and you cant manipulate individual pixels for special effects) , the audio api was not there so i tried a lot of experimental apis having to rewrite the code from times to times, tried to mix up an physics librarie, realized i need an asset- preloader otherwise the game would not always work (only if the pages were load twice and the scripts loaded in the right order)
then i realized i need the canvas tag and audio api got stable, but managing the code was harder and only i used it (at least it was easier than trying to understand code from others and code that wasnt meeting the requirements at all) then i found an game engine in html much better than mine tried to migrate to it only to realized that none of my knowledge on canvas could be used to extend it (because canvas 3d/gl was different api from 2D canvas), the engine was cool an all but too limited so i would have to expand it before write my game, i couldnt wait anymore so started doing what i could before i add new features, but i lost my data again due to failure on the hardware (i’m still not used to versioning/backups) and i gave up on the engine anyway.
being open source is great and all , but even an empty text document count as an open source software, what matters in the end of the day is if the software has the features that i need or if i would need to code it my self, and if the software will limit me later on.

i tried Unity since it was quite powerful, and then i meet godot , godot isnt as powerfull as Unity yet, but it has what i need for my personal projects and if i need an new feature i can add it since its open source.
unity looks like an better option for comercial games since it has an massive asset store, so i’m sticking with those 2.

as for gaming, when valve announced steam machines they gave me a lot of false hopes.
they ported a lot of games but my hardware was good enough to play those on windows but not on linux.

i hoped that all the games of the current gen would be ported (since that is what happens for every major game console, except for online games) and the old ones would be playable soon or later thanks to wine anyway, so i would be able to finalllly able to ditch windows, but instead the console was delayed and floped.
looks like i developed some kind anxiety problems that lasts until now, in this mean time that i was waiting for steam machines launch only to get disapointed.
valve didnt market it at E3 or at all, no one knew if they count it as pc or console, people were quite miss informed of what it was and many people didnt knew it existed since valve did no effort to market it at all and oems had no incentive since they wouldnt make a profit of games soud and could simply sell the same hardware with windows if the console floped, they had no reason to care about if it would flop or not and didnt bother to market it, or give reasonable reasons to chose it over the samething with windows.
valve made no exclusives (and looks like they will stick with that strategy)
linux users were satisfied as if we hadnt any problem in the gaming

(we have a lot of games! let ignore that most of then are indie and many dont worth your time…lets ignore all big titles launching and focus on the small ones we have, or ignore that the big titles came when an enhanced edition was already launched for other platforms, or an sequel or the performance was worse)

the games that used to be console only started being ported to windows and being much cheaper on it than buying an used old game and buying an old console, some emulators are windows excluvies or performs better on it, i learned about platforms that i didnt knew existed or that arcade versions were better than console versions and we didnt had emulators for some of those arcades on linux, and for those who use consoles to not having to use windows, that started making less and less sense.
games like street figher5 you need an windows pc or ps4 to play, xbox exclusives was also avaliable for pc either , so, what is the point of spending more money into hardware (buying more consoles and and stronger pc), more money on games (sometimes with an inferior version of the game, or censored one without being able to instal patches/mods to remove the censorship), waste a lot of time and effort trying to make an game play knewing that it could crash or have graphical glitches at any time spoiling the experience, only to avoid using windows?

at the begining i saw the anoucment of some bomb indie titles…
might n9 ! and will be avaliable for linux! (floped!)
yooka laylee! and will have an linux version! (floped)
blood stained! (still wating)
but the issue is, almost no title that i care about so much as i cared about those were anounced for linux.
i was happy to knew that i would be able to finally play disgaea only to realize that disgaea 1 will not be avaliable (so either i skip it, or i try wine or play on windows anyway) and only to realize that at the consoles they are already at disgaea 5 and i didnt even played the 1 yet!

ookami was ported to pc, not having to deal with emulators to try to try it! but not for linux.

looks like that for each 1 game that is ported to linux that i want to play, 5 are ported to windows.

and the same is happening with tools, unreal and unity being ported was great, but new tools, tools that would save me a lot of time on making the type of content i want to make are being born as windows only.
(and make this is hard enogh to do with an small team, its even worse if you refuse to use the best tools avaliable just because they dont have an linux version, wich isnt done by those companies out of malice, even some open source tools dont have an linux version or cant afford to have the same level of support due to the small markethsare)

consoles may die in a near future (or be a machine for fools only) wich is a shame, MS having an monopoly isnt a good thing at all, consoles at least had all the multiplatform games from the current gen (plus a few exclusives)
if valve had sucess entering this market with an open system instead of closed, linux would have all games from current gen, up to 150 millons of users and old games would run anyway thanks to wine, with more and more big companies making efforts to creating bridges, multiplatform code or improving wine to sell their games either on desktop or steam machines, with the performance being determined by how good the system is instead of marketshare.

that would make the system an viable option for more people on desktop and those niche aplications could be ported as an result or wine receiving more resources due to more users.

at least with consoles alive, gamers had an incentive to not give an monopoly to MS, and consoles were an market were games were used to not having old games so they wouldnt bother that much if steam machines didnt had those, but it would be a bonus if it had.

but steam machines floped…

how can i say it, it has being an roller coaster of emotions those years, trying to avoid windows becaming harder and harder, realizing that i would be able to play something only to think about it and realize that i would need to use windows to do so, trying to give up just to valve relase an bomb like proton-bomb creating me hope all over again.

and every time i complain about anything or admit to my self and speak open about it, saying that something isnt good enough yet (like the current linux ecosystem) i’m treated like an heretic.

so, i’m tired of that bullshit.
volunteers arent obligated to do what i want or what i need, they are doing me a favor in doing so, and i’m not obligated of using linux and giving up lot of things as well, i’m doing a “favor” for then helping increase the marketshare, trying my best to create alternatives or wait until either an game/tool run on wine to use it, or the software/game is ported before i purchase it or for some one to create an alternative to it.

i can make some sacrifices in order to contribute to an better world tomorrow, but i cant sacrifice 99% of my confort, only 80%,70%,60%….maybe 10%, cant measure.

the point is, i can deal with some sacrificing some confort in order to have more freedom, i had to do with to make the games that i want instead the games that an easy to use engine allow me to do, i had to do it in order to keep using linux, instead of being an microsoft slave.

what i cant deal with, is people trash talking me for not giving up all my confort for the gnu cause, even if i cant be sure it wouldnt be in vain, that isnt a lost cause (not as a whole but to expect to everything to conform)
if an person think i should be obligated to use linux/free tools (otherwise i’m some kind of imoral, scum), that person should obligue her self to make the tools that i need to keep using it, or stop trash talking me.
if she/he cant do it, she/he cant prove that what she/is is proposing is doable.