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Operating system advocacy
Operating system advocacy is an attempt to increase the awareness and improve the perception of a given computer operating system. The motivation behind this is often to increase the number of users of that system, the assumption being that more users will lead, directly or indirectly, to greater improvement in the operating system ("OS"). 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 often made by OS advocates 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 vicious 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
- Very reliable for day-to-day tasks (for Windows 2000 and later)
- 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
- Best driver support, particularly for gaming
- 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 closed-source code, which creates delay between discovery of security holes and release of security update
- Microsoft's business practices (anticompetitive, privacy-invading, and 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
- Very expensive, with expensive licensing too. Some consider that since the company is already amongst the richest in the world, this expense is unjustified and immorally greedy.
- Widely seen as unstable, particularly with the FAT32 filesystem.
- Cannot learn how it works due to restrictive license.
- Even if users may know how, the license restricts them from fixing source bugs or security holes.
- Technical support widely criticized.
- Software often described as 'bloated', putting the system requirements at a higher level, and causing general instability.
- Only available for the IBM x86 computer architecture (with some versions for 64-bit processors).
Estimated market share: 4-9%
Audience: education (30-50%), arts (print publishing, graphic design, video/film editing, sound editing), science.
Pro
- Simple and intuitive interface.
- "iApps" - iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, Mail, Safari, iChat, etc. - high quality applications included with the OS, working seamlessly with it, and already installed on the Mac
- Strong attention to hardware design and ergonomics.
- Aestheticly pleasing design (both in hardware and software).
- Enthusiastic, loyal user base.
- "Real" plug and play (no driver installation needed to add new hardware in the majority of cases - most standard devices are supported by class drivers included with MacOS X.)
- Reliability - single-source main hardware supplier tends to lead to higher 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)
- Compatibility with Windows and Linux for a wide majority of usage, especially over networks
- "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.
- Software and hardware ergonomics and aesthetics tend to lead to higher productivity.
- (Possibly) lower TCO due to lowered support costs.
- Bundled developer tools, eg gcc, Cocoa, Interface Builder and Xcode, allow rapid application development.
- 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).
Con
- Small market-share compared to Microsoft Windows
- Only runs on Apple's proprietary hardware architecture, which is perceived to be (and occasionally is) more expensive than performance-equivalent PC hardware.
- Limited selection of hardware form factors - for example, micro-laptop, tablet and blade models not available until/unless Apple manufactures them.
- 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. Fewer shareware titles.
- Some software which requires formatted source data - for example, mapping software - in limited availability on the Mac untill/unless manufacturers decide it's worth the effort to port the data and their proprietary applications.
- Lagging development for graphics card drivers and smaller range of available games. Those games that do make it to the Mac are often late and/or more expensive, compared to Windows versions.
- Smaller range of explicitly supported hardware devices, compared to Windows. (This is somewhat controversial, since as noted above, most standard devices are supported by class drivers included with MacOS X.)
- Less availability of unauthorized software - more pirated software is available for Windows; this is often a consideration for users who intend to steal software from friends.
- No ability to customize the user interface without third party hacks.
- Aqua (the GUI frontend) is proprietary closed source, meaning upgrades come from Apple if anywhere at all.
- "Single-source" hardware ensures extremely limited portability
- Legacy applications running in Classic environment "emulated" in Mac OS X might reduce overall system performance.
- Software vendors' price for new versions of legacy software was prohibitive for some users.
Estimated market share (commercial): 2-5%
Estimated computers using linux: maybe 7%, maybe more? some would say less...
Decentralized, impossible to count, many Linux users identify the browser as Internet Explorer under MS Windows to have access to some web sites, other people have dual boot with MS Windows for some games... But we can say there are at least 30 millions and growing fast; soon in 2005-2006, there will be 200 million new Chinese computers on linux.
Audience: information technology, computer science, software engineers, cost-saving measure used by companies and governments. But this list is going to grow (see first Pro...)
Pro
- The purpose from the begining was to build an universal operating system, and so there are many free software on this platform that become in time more valuable than commercial software on other proprietary platforms.
- Some would hope proprietary software from MS Windows will be released for linux, but this may also be just limited to a few of them, as it has been until now, because linux already has free aternatives for most of that software. Some will consider not having all that proprietary software as a negative point however, but many consider it as a positive one.
- 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 graphical user interfaces much like the Mac OS/Windows interfaces, in addition to the traditional Unix command line and other unique window managing concepts.
- 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
- Most distributions have a quick release cycle, meaning they are often 'newer' than commercial operating systems, with the latest software included, bugfixes, security fixes and hardware support.
- Can be used as a learning tool because source code is open to see.
- Usually comes with a huge array of bundled software, also free.
- Much more portable than Windows and Mac OS: versions are available for a wide range of computer architectures.
- 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.
- Free versions lack professional, enterprise-level support
- 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 often 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 process varies greatly among distributions
- Incomplete hardware support (Some noncompliant USB devices, some Firewire implementations, "Winmodems", some video cards, etc.) Linux drivers are often neglected by hardware manufacturers, and 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]
- Alleged lower TCO than Linux [2]
- Alleged vulnerabilities fixed faster [3]
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. Compared to CLI and script-based systems found on UNIX systems, the shell and its available applications are extremely limited.
- 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
- Often requires global facility software upgrades due to voluntary incompatibilities between release ABIs, i.e. SMB protocol incompatibilities between older and newer Win32 releases
- Moderate to low level of security, slow fixes
- Remote administration possibilities limited and insecure (and some remote administration services enabled by default where servers generally require secure default setups).
- More and more sysadmins refuse to work with closed source products
- Not as popular in the web server market as Unix is.
- Inability for organizations to audit the system against security and information theft to derive systems for corporate or government mission-critical tasks
- As a result generally inadequate for collocated servers, or servers in general. In fact, several Internet Service Providers ISP charge more for people running Windows based servers at their collocation facilities, allegedly "because of administration nightmares that ensue".
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 administrator, 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 unnecessary graphical interface services, detracting from its dedicated purpose.
Con
- Annual Enterprise Edition licenses can be costly. However, skillful sysadmins do not need commercial distributions to achieve the same results, since most server-critical software is free.
- 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]. 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
- Open-source under the CDDL
- Free of charge
Con
- 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
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.)
Con
- 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. Can be used from desktop systems running Gnome or KDE to the most secure server setups, using cryptography for filesystems, swap and remote administration, systrace to monitor and restrain system calls made by software, firewall software, auditable code, non-executable stack and heap (minimizing the possibilities of "stack smashing" and "buffer overflow" based exploits to succeed in executing arbitrary code remotely), and verified executables (disallowing execution of non-trusted software). All this security is available out-of-the-box, without the need for third-party patches.
- The quality of its networking TCP/IP stack is renowned, and used as reference for most new implementations
- Like other BSDs, a common CVS repository to properly synchronize base kernel and userspace improvements, which enhances stability
- Portability: claimed to run on more architectures than any other known OS, though this point is disputed. Is however well known for the record time needed to port to new architectures
- It has a long, proven history of reliability (security and stability).
- 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. Of course, this is debatable when dealing with general UNIX sysadmins.
- 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 by their vendors, although generally working well because of excellent binary compatibility with other operating systems.
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] 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
Pro
- Noted for stability of code, as well as exceptional uptime, which is often measured in years
- The ability to run only the applications and services desired
- Server can run in text-only mode and load the GUI only when needed
- Offers good performance out of the box, but responds well to knowledgeable configuration and tweaking
- Features mature, robust, and scalable Directory Services (NDS/eDirectory) since 1994
- No viruses, worms, or Trojan Horses specifically targeting the Netware OS have been discovered
- NDS/eDirectory password protection has never been compromised
- Interoperates well with Windows, Macintosh, and Unix/Linux clients with native protocols (CIFS, AFP, and NFS, respectively)
- Comes bundled with Apache webserver, Pervasive SQL, and other top-notch enterprise tools
Con
- Not useful as a workstation in the conventional sense; limited console functionality reflects its file-, print-, and application-server heritage
- Expensive software licenses
- Public perception of the OS as being old-fashioned or tied only to IPX/SPX protocol
- Dwindling support from software developers
- Dwindling support from hardware vendors
- Lack of technicians familiar with the OS
See also
External links
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