PDA

View Full Version : Is Open Source Better?



Sualdam
10-29-2003, 12:15 PM
Quote from drac in another thread:

With win XP systems are quite stable. I was able to run XP pro box for over a month without a restart. I saw blue screen just few times.

Its still not where Linux is, but the gap is very small. Can say win is now almost as stable as Linux. The only difference is that Linux is free and each distribution comes with a lot of free software while windows is expensive and comes with almost no software.

For a server platform it should be clear that Linux is a better solution since it can do all that windows box can at a fraction of the price. In today's economy businesses cannot afford to go for expensive solution while equivalent cheap solution is available.

As for desktop, windows is still the king and will be for some time. It will take time for all these nice programs to be ported to Linux platform. But one day it will happen.

In conclusion, some time from now MS will be part of history just like regular cameras are slowly giving way to digital ones. MS has to pay a lot of programmers for the product and cannot save a lot of money, thus it will always have to charge a lot of cash for its products. On the other hand, Linux is open source and no money is needed to continue its development.

Open source software, in short, is a new way of creating software with budget in mind. Instead of doing something by themselves people are teaming up and doing it as a group - strength in numbers. Each member of the group contributes and reap the rewards. Large number of contributors reduce the process to minimal cost per product unit.
Is that being idealistic, or is open source the answer to all ills?

<Note: Please avoid MS-bashing and stay on topic ;)>

OSFan
10-30-2003, 12:45 PM
I like to use Open Source, I have tried various Linux Distrobutions, and have used a lot of free software.

The Linux kernel is quite stable yes, cannot say that for the software that runs on top of it utilising X Windows, but unlike Windows, if an application crashes X, you just close X, restart it, without restarting PC, the kernel is stil running underneath.

As a server, this problem is gone, we don't need a windowing environment. Many servers run Linux, and with Linux, open source webserver - apache! Along with PHP, MySQL, Perl...

Linux is not for the average user. You don't install a program from a binary in many cases, you instead make it, compile it, install it. Not everything is as pretty as windows.

Microsoft Windows will never be a thing of the past(unless Microsoft rename it ;)), it's easy, its getting more stable. It might cost money, the software that runs on it might cost money, but the money buys you better support (in some cases) and a simple to use system.