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[Cloudy]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Mighty Midget @ Oct 28 2006, 09:52 AM) [snapback]263964[/snapback]</div>

I don't know much about Linux, but I heard that it's much more safe from viruses/malware and hackers than Windows. Not only because more target Windows, but because it is safer.
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Correct


Pros and cons, that I have found from using both Linux and Windows.


Windows::

Pros:

*Easy to use (generally), will run all your favourite games.
*You can customise the layout and colour scheme (and more, but only if you really know what you're doing).
*Many thousands of programs to choose from
*It will detect almost all your hardware automatically

Cons:

*Will crash (probably quite a lot, depending what you run),
*Will become infected with spyware and viruses as soon as you connect to the internet.
*Many programs are available, but they are often expensive.
*Also, programs don't usually interact with each other (unless they're programs made by the same software company).
*Also, the hard disk will need defragmented quite often.
*System will become bogged-down and slow after it's been left on for a few hours
*It's very expensive



Linux::

Pros:

*VERY stable, much less likely to crash than windows (although to say it never crashes would be a lie).
*ALMOST immune to viruses, spyware, etc.
*There are hundreds of programs available, many of which are free and open-source, and there is a Linux equivalent for almost every useful windows program, (as well as many Linux specific programs).
*You can even run many (but nowhere near all) windows programs through WINE
*There are hundreds of different distributions available. (That is, different 'versions' of linux, if you like'). Each different distribution is good for different things (some are good for beginners, some good for programmers, some good for working with multimedia, some good for all round general work, some are much more specialised). This means there will almost certainly be a distribution which will be basically made to do what you want.
*Software can download and install almost automatically
*Many distributions are free
*MUCH more customisable than Windows.
*Many programs can interact with each other (for example: the JACK audio connection kit, which can link various different audio/music applications together.. eg, you can use it to link the Hydrogen drum machine and the Rosegarden midi sequencer to the Ardour multitrack recorder, and then link the output of all of that into the JAMIN audio mastering interface)

Cons:

*It's very tricky to learn for beginners, and generally a bit harder to learn to use than Windows.
*You won't be able to play most Windows games on it (although you can run emulators and things like DOSbox on it, and SOME (but nowhere near all) windows games can run through WINE)
*The number of different distributions available can be overwhelming to a new Linux user, and it's hard to choose what one to start off with
*There are so many software options that it's hard to decide what office suite (for example) to use.
*If you log in as root (which you shouldn't do anyway...) you can very easily break your system and need to reinstall it.
*You might have trouble setting up your hardware, as there will almost always be some part of your system that Linux won't recognise. I spent about a year trying to get my wireless internet running for example. Although it must be said that hardware recognition is improving constantly, and almost everything does get picked up by linux now.





I've probably missed a lot of stuff out, but hopefully that should give a general idea. I prefer Linux over windows, but I DO still have Windows XP installed, mainly for running games on, as Linux isn't so great for that. Linux is my main workstation though, I do most web browsing, university work, and i also record music on it.