Does Linux better?

samiux

Linux gives you choice
Linux is licensed by General Public License (GPL) that allows anyone to modify and redistribute with the source code.  Anyone can download Linux distributions to run.  Anyone can make his own Linux distribution.  Therefore, there are many distributions for different applications.  There are some special purpose distributions such as router, firewall, Intrusion Detection System (IDS) and etc.  Every Linux distribution has her own special features to meet your special requirements.  

In additions, you can choose your Window Manager, that is the outlooking of the desktop.  Some are for low-end computers that consume less resources and some are for high-end computers that provide fancy features.

Linux follows the standard
Linux is developed based on Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX) that Unix follows.  POSIX is IEEE standard.  Application softwares of Linux are also follow the standard of computing.  For example, Firefox (the broswer) is follows the standard that can surf any standardized web pages.

Learn once
After you have learnt how to use Linux (any distributions), you can very easy to adopt to any Unix-like systems.  For example, Solaris, BSD and etc.  The learning curve is lower than other operating system users.

Safer by default
Linux (or Linux distributions) is very hard to be infected by virus or malwares.  Safety is designed by default.  The source code is opened for anyone (including Black Hats and White Hats) to inspect.  Flaws can be easily found and it can be fixed in a very short time.  The source code is maintained by experts all over the world.  They are volunteers and developing the kernel or application softwares for expertise or hobby.

Gaming
There are many games for Linux.  Some of them are developed by OpenGL and supports 3D.  Almost all of them are free of charge.  They are including First Person Shooting (FPS), Real Time Strategy (RTS), racing and etc.

Lower cost
Almost all Linux distributions are free to download and use.  They are including free update and upgrade.  The running cost is lower compares with other operating systems.

foobar

Pretty much agree the above when compared with proprietary OSes, but many of these points are also valid for other FOSS OSes like the BSDs except they are BSD licensed And lets not forget apart from the above pros there are still cons to follow

Actually it is pretty interesting that Linux overtook the BSDs in public recognition in spite of joining the game late. Maybe the BSD license itself cumbered the development owning to too many commercial involvements

foobar

原帖由 foobar 於 2008-12-31 15:16 發表
Maybe the BSD license itself cumbered the development owning to too many commercial involvements   

Oh... Looking up the history further shows that the first BSD licensed BSD Net/1 Release was released in mid 1989 (earlier BSD releases contains AT&T code), and then there was legal disputes regarding the BSD release which is not settled until 1994   The BSDs we know today was based on 4.4BSD-Lite which was released 1995, so Linux actually got a head start when BSD was stalled during the lawsuit