On 7 Jul, Derek Fountain wrote:
This isn't strictly SuSE related, but it is Linux related.
What are the fundamental differences between Linux and Windows these days? I can think of graphics, which is totally different, and disks/mount points which are handled differently. With Windows becoming network-ed (albeit badly), what genuine differences does that leave for the Linux community to exploit?
There have been a lot of good reasons already posted. But the one that really endeared me to Linux was automation. Shell scripts are powerful! I wrote my own diary program, download comics every night for offline viewing on a single page, ftp files in the middle of the night, start certain programs when starting X depending on the time of day, maintain a mailing list, etc... And behind the scripts are all of the command line utilities: sed, grep, wget, find, ls, tar, gzip, xtpanel, ...and countlesss more. Windows programs tend to be GUI centric. You run the GUI, hit the buttons. GUIs require manual intervention. Even with scheduling software, there's no way to start many Windows programs in a non-interactive mode. The Unix/Linux text based utilities aren't pretty to the eyes. But I can automate them. Run 'em from cron or within another program. And I won't even try to list all of the compilers/interpretors that are available for free (i.e. no cost). It's a programmer's dream. Of course that's what some users and critics don't like about Linux: too many cryptic commands that run from a command line. To each his own. -- Robert Wohlfarth rjwohlfar@bigfoot.com "My theory's right. Reality needs to be fixed." -- To unsubscribe send e-mail to suse-linux-e-unsubscribe@suse.com For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the FAQ at http://www.suse.com/support/faq