What is the difference between the Linux OS and Windows OS? Which is better?
Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at
11:39
im mainly a pc gamer but i do go on microsoft office and word quite often. does linux support pc games? does it have simillar files like microsoft office?
Tagged with: Linux • Microsoft • microsoft office • pc gamer • pc games
Filed under: Linux
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As far as differences between Linux and Windows, there are plenty. Linux is distributed as open source, which means that anyone can download the operating system without paying for it (there are some enterprise versions of Linux that do require payment, however). Unlike Windows or Mac, there are thousands of different versions of Linux OS distributions (think of distribution like a flavor of ice cream or something similar, each distribution has its own pros and cons). If you’re interested in checking out a distribution of Linux, I would suggest Ubuntu–it’s about as user-friendly as you can get. I listed the link to the website at the bottom. Please note, however, that there are several steps to using Linux on your machine such as partitioning your hard drive and other similar things.
However, there is no answer to your second question of which is better…it’s simply a matter of opinion. Most individuals will use Windows or Mac simply because they are easy to work with and pretty much all hardware/software will work with them without special drivers, etc. However, since distributions like Ubuntu have come out, individuals have found Linux to be nearly as easy as working with Windows or other operating systems. Most servers use Linux simply because Linux doesn’t crash nearly as often as any other OS.
As far as gaming, Linux does support quite a few games like Doom and Quake (there’s a URL at the bottom with a list of quite a few games that it supports). Besides newer games like those, there is a program that will let you play console games (NES, SNES, N64) on your computer…however it’s quite hard to find the actual games since most of them are copyrighted.
Finally, there is a open source program suite called "Open Office", which is free to download. Open Office is used quite a bit on Linux machines and is able to open MS Office documents (Word, Excel, PowerPoint). You can actually run Open Office on a Windows machine for yourself and try it out if you want (link below).