Is it just / ?

I kid. But really, besides “its all a file”, if you take away the gui, is the only difference the syntax ? How libraries interact? How disks are mounted ?

If we stripped all ms’s junk out and made windows open source, would we still prefer linux?

When you get to a very basic level, is one of them more efficiently coded?

  • Mordikan@kbin.earth
    1·
    2 months ago

    I think its easier and shorter to say what is the same between the two than different, but some things that are different:

    1. Filesystem (ex. Linux treats everything as a file, more flexibility in organization, more compatibility for differing systems, etc)
    2. Security Model (NTFS vs UNIX, selinux, ACLs, etc)
    3. File Execution (File extensions don’t really matter in Linux - based on file permission not extension, ELF vs PE, etc)
    4. Kernel (Monolithic vs Hybrid kernel systems - Windows hands off to HAL vs the Linux kernel doing core functions)
    5. System Calls (Windows use Win32/NT APIs, Linux uses POSIX-compliant)

    Performance is dependent on use case, but in general:

    1. Linux uses fewer system resources
    2. Linux has faster boot time
    3. Linux has better CPU/disk throughput
    4. Windows has better gaming driver support
    5. Linux has higher stability/control (hence why its the defacto server OS)

    If we stripped all ms’s junk out and made windows open source, would we still prefer linux?

    In what context? For gaming maybe, but that’s one single use. There is more to computers than video games, at least for the majority of Linux users. I wouldn’t trust Windows on any server I run.