Windows > Linux

I use both, simple. Windows > Linux but I use both.

My firewall used to be Shorewall based on Debian... now its a Watchguard firewall based on erm.... that really cut down one starting with "a"...

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Microsoft: Pay licenses for software and dont have to spend as much time when trying to achieve things.

Linux: Free to a point but you have the variable cost of people's time as opposed to the fixed cost of the Windows OS with all its help and wizards and crap....Linux is also nowhere near free when you use servers at the level I do, i'd be on some expensive plan with redhat, IBM or HP or something if I was realistically using linux for everything.

I would spend more with Linux because every piece of server or client software we write is groundbreaking, I cant just 'use free bits' of others work and tie them together.

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My Preferred platform:

Windows XP (Desktop)
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003 Enterprise Architect (ASP.NET development)
Dreamweaver MX (ASP and HTML development)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Web (for obvious application)
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Enterprise (for database stuff)
Microsoft Windows Small Business Server 2003 (for PDC on internal network)

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Now, I get all the server and windows XP licenses I need for like... $600/year and if I want more... Server 2003 is like... $1,054?? I'd spend twice that in the additional time it would take a linux person to set it up for me. The $600 is sweet fuck all... I spend that on a big weekend on the town.

For those of you who know the problems we had when building biggie... SATA drivers anyone?? Two days of trying to figure it out was it???

So.. back to the preferred platform, I know some people "still like to develop in vi" and other little quirks, but if you've never tried to develop in C# or VB.NET with Visual Studio, you havent lived.

I can see how a lot of people start developing in Linux because it is free from the start, what person that's hacking 'round with their first bit of HTML or C or C# wants to pay for a) the OS for the server they've knocked up out of old parts or b) the thing they write their first program in... well one word... TextPad. When I was younger (like 14-15) I'd never buy a license to anything anyway... Now I can afford to so I do.

Did I mention the 3 CDs of MSDN.NET that are out there!? And the way it integrates with VS.NET with contextual help... no match, even from google.

Everything mentioned above just works so well together. SOOOO well.

Security issues? Yep, its the most used OS on the planet and they traditionally havent done very well at closing things up... Thats is simply a trade off between popping up a dialogue for the fucking dumbass secretary every time she clicks on a website and downloads an EXE... USER ERROR! So what do I do? Use linux for border security... problem solved, certainly not going to change everything to linux for that reason

I am also open to change, i'm not completely tied to Windows... I think the setup on Redhat is pretty cool now... oh wait... not free any more... what a surprise...

My next thread will be a little discussion of Longhorn and Avalon... VERY interesting things to ponder rather than the Windows > Linux thing... The power it puts in the hand of the end user is frightening (and i'd love to talk to 'nix people about how they think its stealing so much of the 'nix kernel structure)... time to hit the submit button and be done with this....

As was mentioned in the other thread, it all depends on what the specifics of what you want to do are. Front end application run on users desktops on Windows, back end database crunching done on grunty Unix boxes and Linux clusters.

I use Windows on my desktop, but do development on other platforms as well. Sun Solaris being our main development platform with everything being ported from there. Much stuff is driven by what the customer wants anyway.

There is a shift from those who have traditionally been on Unix flavours to Linux now for the hardware savings. Such people are unlikely to move their massive systems to a Windows envorinment.

I don't think you can make a blanket statement as to which is better overall. You can only say which is the best for your requirements in each case.

heh you shoul ddo beta testing for microsoft thechad, then you get the licenses for free, ive got 2 licenses for Windows Server 2003 that ive had for about 3 years, only used one of them once. Still has 9 more registrations on it

I think Harvey's spot on, it depends what your needs are. My Server i use Windows 2003 Enterprise(for obvious reasons its a server, and i suck at networking windows & linux). For my normal computer i use Windows XP Professional mainly cause it looks cool with the themes and i cant be bothered doin that uxtheme patch to 2000 with the amount i reinstall