by Lam Luu

Created on: July 23, 2008   Last Updated: May 20, 2009

The choice between Microsoft Windows (or Apple Macintosh for that matter) and GNU/Linux is a very interesting one. It is not simply a choice between two Operating System, but also a choice between two sets of philosophy and approach to software in general. In other words, GNU/Linux is not just a better Windows, as many pro-Linux people would love to believe, nor is Windows a better Linux, as Microsoft would like you to think. They are like car and motorbike, to borrow the metaphor from a blog: both are for moving from one place to another, but we cannot compare them, and choosing between a car and a motorbike involves more than just a match between their features. So are GNU/Linux and Microsoft Windows.

Windows is about selling software. In other words, Windows needs you. When you have some problems, it will cuddle you up, put on a face that it is working extremely hard for you. This may not always be the case (anyone reading the EULA of Windows will doubt that), but at least Windows acts as if it is. And you, as a customers, pay for this behaviors. Frankly, you can have an operating system with no cost at all, with superior technical merit (not just GNU/Linux, but also BSDs, Amiga, [once] BeOS, or even Mac OS without the fancy interface). However, you pay to get these loving and serving behaviors that Microsoft would use to deal with you.

GNU/Linux is the opposite. Remember where GNU came from? Richard Stallman was fed up with closed source software, and he wrote his own; Toward Linus needed something to play with, and he wrote Linux. Then, someone else liked Stallman's idea, and helped him out, so that the someone would have software to suit his/her needs; or another hackers also wanted a kernel, and helped Linus out to improve Linux to get the desired feature. In other words, GNU/Linux grows by the community, whose members need it, love it, and improve it. GNU/Linux itself does not directly need you, the new comers. Okay, your presence is neat, like for ego, or tester, or friendship. However, they will continue to exist without you, and your usage of GNU/Linux, by the virtue of itself, does not help out anything. Only your involves in the community do, but by the time you start doing that, you don't really need to read this essay.

Imagine yourself being a new comer to both worlds, and you encounter some problems. What would you do?

In Windows, the OS would signal some errors, and pretend that it is trying to fix that. Of course it can't (if it can fix,

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