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Operating system advocacy is an attempt to increase the awareness of a given computer operating system, hopefully resulting in more users of that system, the assumption being that more users will lead, directly or indirectly, to greater improvement in the operating system ("OS"), and even in the computing world in general for using the system. It is most commonly used to refer to OS's that are in the minority of use, to compare to the OS that the majority already use. A further assumption is that most of the users of the majority OS only use it because they are familiar with it or they are locked in. Advocacy of the majority OS is most often in reaction to the sometimes over-zealous advocacy of the minority OS's.
Advocacy is one of the common pastimes of those who have a deep and abiding interest in the design, construction and usage of operating systems. For these people, the investment necessary -- both in money and time -- to own and operate a computer sometimes creates an emotional investment in their operating system of choice. Such emotional ties can lead to advocacy that can induce emotional arguments as people compare and contrast the virtues and faults of different operating systems.
These visceral debates most notably include:
Some wars of the past related to:
There are related wars over programming languages, video game consoles, and text editors (Emacs vs vi; see editor war).
Here are some of the arguments, false or otherwise, which advocates of supposedly opposing operating systems may use.
Caveats
- Note that market share can refer to either new sales or to installed base, which give very different numbers. This kind of information should be spelled out by people with a comprehensive picture.
- Because Macintosh computers have a longer usage lifetime than Windows computers, their installed base is greater than their share of new sales.
- Also, market share numbers for market segments. For example, the market share for Linux in the server market is much higher than for the desktop market.
- One definition of the term "market share" refers to the dollar value of new sales. Because Linux is often distributed without fee, those distributions would not add to its market share.
- Since most desktop and notebook computers sold by the big OEM companies are sold with the "Windows Tax", this could increase the Windows market-share artificially since the user could very well use another OS instead, unless the survey took this into account.
- Cost can mean either total cost of ownership (TCO) or the actual amount of currency required to obtain the operating system, which is a more precise and less disputed definition.
- It is worth bearing in mind Sturgeon's law.
Desktop systems
Estimated market share: 90%; Microsoft Windows enjoys a near monopoly in the desktop OS market.
Audience: all markets. Most dominant in business, though it has the lion's share of the market in all sectors.
Pro
- Large market share
- Most software makes use of a fairly consistent user interface, easing the process of getting up to speed with a new program (although almost all OS's do this, this is helped by the ubiquity of the Windows OS)
- High Reliability (for win2000 and up)
- Wide range of applications from same source as OS ensures compatibility - Microsoft Outlook Express, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office
- A perception of more available support
- Largest range of software applications, although quality varies a great deal
- Largest range of hardware, though all hardware is not guaranteed to work with all other hardware.
- High amount of competition in PC hardware, driving down costs (this benefits any OS that runs on PC hardware, but many times hardware vendors choose to work only with Windows in creating device drivers)
Con
- Not designed with security in mind, therefore frequent security updates are required
- Complex code, which creates delay between discovery of security hole and release of security update
- Microsoft's business practices (anticompetitive, privacy-invading, monopolistic)
- Primary applications from Microsoft discourage third-party alternatives, either by their quality, their ability to create lock in, or both
- Frequently targeted by malicious software developers (known as crackers, sometimes referred to as hackers) who write worms, viruses, spyware, adware or similar. Market share size and design flaws create monoculture.
- Proprietary, non-free operating system
Estimated market share: 4%
Audience: education (30-50%), arts (publishing, graphic design, video/film editing, sound editing), science.
Pro
- Productive and intuitive
- Simplicity
- "Real" plug and play, no driver installation needed to add new hardware in the wide majority of cases
- Reliability
- Underlying Mach-like operating system provides many of the benefits of UNIX or Linux, including inherently secure design, command line utilities and the ability to run almost any UNIX programs (including Apache, MySQL, sendmail, etc)
- "iApps" - iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Mail, etc. - high quality applications included with the OS, working seamlessly with it, and already installed on the Mac
- Compatibility with Windows and Linux for a wide majority of usage, especially over networks
- Aesthetic design (both in hardware and software)
- Very understandable, integrated system
- "Single-source" OS, CPU, and major applications ensures better compatibility
- Rarely targeted by malicious software developers (known as crackers, sometimes referred to as hackers), worms and viruses.
- Rapid, reliable response from Apple with security software patches.
- Responsive, supportive user community
- Bundled developer tools, eg gcc, Cocoa, Interface Builder and Xcode, allow rapid application development
- Very simple object-oriented driver model allows third parties to develop hardware drivers very easily (though in practice manufacturers do not always bother to release Mac drivers)
- You get what you pay for. Updating or upgrading Apple applications is automatic and free (or much cheaper that Microsoft applications)
Con
- Small market-share compared to Microsoft Windows
- Only runs on Apple's proprietary hardware architecture, which is usually more expensive than performance- equivalent PC hardware
- Smaller range of software compared to Windows. Each software niche (e.g. word processing or accounting) tends to only have one or two notable examples although the examples usually function well.
- Smaller range of games and/or delayed Windows ports.
- Smaller range of hardware devices compared to Windows though Macs use standard USB and FireWire peripherals, and have class drivers for the majority of devices (however, most PC hardware will "just work" even if it doesn't say Mac on the box).
- Legacy applications running in Classic environment "emulated" in Mac OS X might reduce overall system performance (though most application now run natively on Mac OS X)
- No ability to customize the user interface without third party hacks
- Graphics card driver development tends to lag behind Windows as well as ports of popular software, especially games.
- The GUI (Aqua) is proprietary (though Core (Darwin) is a free OSS operating system based on BSD).
Estimated market share: 2-5%
Audience: information technology, computer science, software engineers, cost-saving measure used by companies and governments.
Pro
- High stability. The operating system is rarely the failure point in "crashing", etc.
- Low purchase cost (free on most distributions)
- High flexibility and freedom, highly customizable
- Hobbyist atmosphere
- Large community; allows free user support by advocates, any vulnerabilities or bugs that are found are patched much faster than closed-source software.
- Commercial support available
- With desktop managers such as KDE and GNOME, Linux offers a graphical user interface much like the Mac OS/Windows interface, in addition to the traditional Unix command line.
- Many free or otherwise gratis software packages offer the functionality of programs available on the other desktop operating systems.
- Rarely targeted by worms and viruses
- Fewer security holes
- Some distributions are Security focused operating systems
- Linux is a Free Software operating system, which gives you the freedom to access, modify and redistribute the source code or any part of it.
- Open development style and a license that requires distributed changes to be made available in source code for others means that future changes will be available for everyone. What anyone contributes, all must benefit from. In the long run, it may be impossible for proprietary OS vendors to compete with this.
Con
- Some features of proprietary operating systems may not be available yet.
- Lack of support in free versions
- Migration costs. Users of other OSes face retraining, application compatibility testing, and potential lower initial productivity as users learn new ways of using the OS instead of getting work done. This initial cost may well be more than offset in the long run. This is the total cost of ownership argument.
- Small market-share for desktop computers
- Few commercial applications (this can also be seen as a pro, but many users, especially corporate users, only look at what applications are available for purchase.)
- Lack of a single target to write applications to, i.e. distribution incompatibilities. An application cannot be written for "Linux" and expected to work on every distribution without significant knowledge of each distribution's differences. It may need to be ported to each distribution.
- Desktop managers widely seen as too geek-oriented and not user-oriented; supposedly difficult to use compared with commercial GUIs.
- Many essential tools lack consistency in syntax or semantics, undermining ease of learning (learning to use a new tool can become a "research project")
- Initial setup process varies greatly among distributions
- Software Installation varies greatly among distributions
- Incomplete hardware support (USB, Firewire, "Winmodems", some video cards etc.) Linux drivers are often neglected by hardware manufacturers, adoption of newest technologies is relatively slower than proprietary systems.
Server Systems
Many of the same arguments as for the operating systems used for desktop purposes, but some specific advantages and disadvantages due to being applied in a server situation.
Microsoft Windows
Pro
- Ease of configuration for basic tasks
- Corporate management personnel tend to be more comfortable with it due to the feeling of one large successful entity being responsible for it
- Alleged faster at file sharing than Linux [1] (http://download.microsoft.com/download/c/c/b/ccb52352-90e4-4260-8c8c-113571bf48f3/MSvsSamba.doc)
- Alleged lower TCO than Linux [2] (http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/d/0/7d059de9-1557-415c-8332-920db6f89e44/FRSTRossCosts0404.pdf)
- Alleged vulnerabilities fixed faster [3] (http://download.microsoft.com/download/9/c/7/9c793b76-9eec-4081-98ef-f1d0ebfffe9d/LinuxWindowsSecurity.pdf)
Con
- Expensive software licenses
- Difficult to move configuration from one machine to another: nearly all configuration is done through a GUI often making it difficult to do repetitive changes to multiple machines.
- Difficulty of configuring anything that the GUI designer did not think of ahead of time, potentially results in reduced customizability
- Frequently exploited by malicious crackers, worms and viruses
- Stability sometimes problematic (low uptime)
- Low performance in some uses or applications
- Need recent, expensive hardware to be able to run recent versions
- Moderate to low level of security, slow fixes
- Remote administration possibilities limited and insecure
Pro
- Initial cost low or zero
- Stability
- Diverse hardware support including older PC/hardware
- The most rapidly progressing server operating system
- For a moderately skilled administator, ease of installation and management
- Availability of free and paid support
- Its support of most file systems in common use makes it especially good for mixed-platform environments
- Most configuration is done by editing text files greatly contributing the ease of automated maintenance or large scale repetitive changes
- Linux is a Free Software operating system, which gives you the freedom to access, modify and redistribute the source code of any part of it, so long as you release your changes for others to do the same.
- For some applications, such as web servers, it is one of the most common platforms and is thus well served with software and hardware (see LAMP)
- Remote administration comprehensive and secure
Could be either
- Most configuration is done by editing text files or using command-line utilities, which Windows and Macintosh GUI users may find cumbersome; system administration usually must be performed by someone who is familiar with these files and utilities (compared to Windows or Mac OS X where many server admin tasks may be "point-and-click"). (GUI admin utilities exist but are neither standardized nor commonly used.) - On the other hand, the system of storing settings in text files enables ease of copying configurations from one machine to another, extremely useful in a network server environment, and removes the reliance on unwieldy GUI interfaces. All configuration can be done from the command line, as with any Unix-like operating system, meaning that the server does not need to run otherwise unneccessary graphical interface services, detracting from its dedicated purpose.
Con
- While all command-line tools have some documentation in the form of online manual pages, these help documents are usually just technical references; the purchase of a well-written book on Linux system administration is almost always necessary.
- According to critics, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is higher with Linux than with other easier systems because Linux requires more tech support. This argument is somewhat controversial. See also Microsoft and Linux.
- Less secure than traditional Unices. Due to the strong political and philosophical convictions of Richard Stallman, GNU su, used in almost all Linux distributions, does not have the ability to restrict access to the root account via a wheel group [4] (http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/coreutils_149.html). However, this is possible using PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules), now standard with most distributions, which allow restriction of many commands to certain groups.
- It is also the most popular of the Unices, thus it is more attractive as an exploitable operating system.
Pro
- Extremely stable, even under enormous (enterprise in the jargon) workloads
- Long history of success
- On the highest-end Sun hardware, supports hardware features such as hot-swappable RAM and CPUs
- Remote administration comprehensive and secure
- Offers high degree of security. For an even higher degree, Trusted Solaris offers a military-grade security
Con
- Restrictive license (not a free software)
- High cost (depending on licensing, non-commercial use is free)
- Support from Sun is expensive
- Vendor lock-in
- Many of the same features as Linux, due to both being open source systems. See FreeBSD and Linux for a direct comparison of those two operating systems. Mistakenly thought of as only a server OS. It has the same desktop components available as Linux and other open source operating systems.
Pro
- No/Some purchase cost
- High degree of freedom - source code is available. Anything that is possible to do with the hardware can be done
- License allows modifying the code and either distributing changes or not, depending on the choice of the developer.
- Design coherence
- Long, proven history of good reliability
- FreeBSD has a unified kernel and userland: the kernel and userland are specifically tested (and versioned) for each other. Also, the directory structure is coherent and predictable.
- The ports tree makes it easy to download and install new software: locating, configuring, compiling, recursive dependency handling are generally taken care of.
- Re-building system software is facilitated with automated full system building tools
- A Linux compatibility emulator makes it possible to run most Linux binaries
- Most configuration is done by editing text files, greatly contributing the ease of automated maintenance or large scale repetitive changes
- Great effort goes into documentation; the man pages are generally complete and helpful, and the FreeBSD Handbook is a good resource that is available for free
- Remote administration comprehensive and secure
Con
- Most configuration is done by editing text files or using command-line utilities, which Windows and Macintosh GUI users may find cumbersome; system administration usually must be performed by someone who is familiar with these files and utilities (compared to Windows or Mac OS X where many server admin tasks may be "point-and-click"). (GUI admin utilities exist but are neither standardized nor commonly used.)
- While all command-line tools have some documentation in the form of online manual pages, these help documents are usually just technical references, not introductory documentation.
- Possibly somewhat less focus on the desktop and ease of use than Linux, can lead to the appearance that it is not suitable for the same users.
- According to critics, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is higher than with other easier systems because it requires more tech support. This argument is somewhat controversial. See also Microsoft and Linux.
- Popular enterprise technologies such as Java are not tailored to the platform.
Pro
- No cost
- High degree of freedom
- Portability: claimed to run on more architectures than any other known OS. This point is disputed (http://www.kroah.com/log/2004/09/29/#more_archs).
- It has a long, proven history of reliability
- Remote administration comprehensive and secure
Con
- NetBSD is widely ported, but finding a recent distribution for obscure architectures can be difficult
- Most configuration is done by editing text files or using command-line utilities, which Windows and Macintosh GUI users may find cumbersome; system administration usually must be performed by someone who is familiar with these files and utilities (compared to Windows or Mac OS X where many server admin tasks may be "point-and-click"). (GUI admin utilities exist but are neither standardized nor commonly used.)
- While all command-line tools have some documentation in the form of online manual pages, these help documents are usually just technical references; the purchase of a well-written book on BSD system administration is a necessity
- According to critics, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is higher than with other easier systems because it requires more tech support. This argument is somewhat controversial. See also Microsoft and Linux.
- Popular enterprise technologies such as Java are not tailored to the platform.
Pro
- OpenBSD is one of the most secure versions of Unix, using integrated cryptography and proactive security measures, including extensive security auditing. This has led to a record of perhaps the fewest remotely executable security holes of any freely and commonly available operating system
- Many security features are available that are either not available or much less well integrated into other operating systems, eg systrace
- Project focus on security leads to security not being an afterthought, or just a set of features, but integrated in and always taken into account in design decisions. (see Security focused operating systems)
- It is free, and supports a variety of hardware platforms.
- It has a long, proven history of reliability
- Remote administration comprehensive and secure
Con
- Some critics say that most of OpenBSD's security is just due to the fact that the operating system is installed with almost every daemon turned off by default
- In late 2003 a report [5] (http://bulk.fefe.de/scalability/) was released claiming scalability problems, making it a poor choice for certain tasks involving high system load, which has been used as an argument against OpenBSD. OpenBSD advocates claim this report was biased.
- According to critics, the total cost of ownership (TCO) is higher than with other easier systems because it requires more tech support. This argument is somewhat controversial. See also Microsoft and Linux.
- Popular enterprise technologies such as Java are not tailored to the platform.
Pro
- Like Mac OS X, Mac OS X Server is based, in part, on BSD, with a "friendlier" GUI
- The latest (Panther) implements Apache webserver, MySQL, Perl, PHP, Postfix mail server, Squirrelmail, ipfw firewall, AFP Apple File Sharing, SMB file sharing (and other standard server tools). All tools are available from the standard install and require no command-line compile or configuration for standard operation.
- Server Admin and Workgroup Manger, allow management of standard UNIX services from a GUI.
- Most other UNIX-based server tools (e.g. Jakarta Tomcat, etc) are available (though they may require install, compile, and/or configuration).
- User management is based on NeXT's NetInfo but compatible with LDAP.
- Licensing terms far less expensive compared to other commercial server offerings - a very competitive fixed fee "unlimited clients" license is available.
Con
- Only available on Apple hardware (though does work seamlessly with Windows clients)
- Macintosh and Windows NT/2K/XP users may dislike having to occasionally edit configuration files by hand
- Similar functionality, without the Server Manager GUI, may be attained by installing open source tools on the standard OSX
See also
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