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Owners of personal computers like you and many others when think about an operating system, they can only think about windows based operating systems such as Windows XP and Windows Vista and Windows 7. These operating systems sometimes cost as much as half of the cost of the personal computer. If it is a Apple mac based computer, you have little choice of an alternative operating system, but if the computer allows installation of any operating system, then you can look at the alternate and free operating systems that are available.

Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu, Fedora, SUSE and many others. These operating systems as evolved as Microsoft’s operating systems, in fact many of the features in Microsoft Word are copied from these Linux based operating systems. These operating systems are covered under the open source project realm, hence they are free to use and even modify. However, there is a minor drawback in using these operating systems that makes people go for Windows based operating systems. These operating systems are fine if browsing and occasional typing is all you do, but when you wish to play video games and do high graphic editing in these operating systems, one will realize that there are not as many software available as in Windows that let people do a wide variety of work. Linux based operating systems have a lot of open source softwares available that are similar to their counterparts for Microsoft Windows. They might in some cases even perform better than its counterpart.

 

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Windows and Linux are popular operating systems. While Windows is most common for the home user, Linux is used extensively by software developers. Windows and Linux have come in different versions and flavors. Since Windows is manufactured by Microsoft, all the versions have come from its stable. Linux on the other hand is open-source. Different companies have created their own flavor using the Linux operating system. Some common examples are Red Hat Linux, SuSE Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu, and so on.

Windows has two categories of operating systems. The 9x series had the ones that were developed before the year 2000. They are Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me. From 2000, Windows marketed its operating system under NT series. This included Windows NT3, NT4, 2000, XP, Vista, and 2007.

The different flavors of Linux developed by different companies are known as distributions. You will always come across this word when reading literature about Linux. Almost all distributions have the similar kernel. The rest may be different. The multiple layer of software built on top of it, and the GUI will be different for different distributions. Linux can also be customized more than Windows.

On account of such many distribution of Linux, buyers are skeptical about buying Linux servers. The kernel of Linux being similar to most distributions, there is a security risk that has to be factored in. Even though IBM is a big advocate of using Linux, it is still to develop a distribution on its own. To sum it, Linux is a talented child whose father has bequeathed it to a lot of people who want to use it but not own it.