Mythbusting Linux: Linux is more stable than Windows
Stability is very often used as a marketing factor for Linux, or considered as something that gives Linux some edge over Microsoft Windows systems. As usual in Linux vs. Windows debates, many overstatements are made, and some people seem to think that Windows does nothing but crashes and prints out blue screened error messages. In reality there are many sides to this story, and the answer is far from obvious. So here we go mythbusting Linux part II: Linux is more stable than Windows.
Again we immediately run to the problem of defining that what are we actually comparing. As said before, Linux actually refers to the kernel of the operating system and that Linux comes in all kinds of shapes as sizes from mobile phones to super computers. To narrow things down we focus on modern desktop oriented Linux distributions. I have personally tried most of them, and have experience in openSUSE, Ubuntu, Mandriva and I am currently writing this using PCLinuxOS 2008. Windows also comes in various versions and editions, Windows XP being the market leader and Vista (various editions) being the most recent. I have very little Vista experience, so I will only touch that in this article, and focus on XP.
First of all I have to say that Windows XP is actually pretty good. It has been matured, service packed, patched and updated for seven years or so. That is actually an incredibly long life cycle for the operating system, and even today XP can tackle basic desktop needs very well. If good quality drivers are available for your hardware, it will be solid as a rock, unless You ruin it yourself by installing low quality software. Windows is the dominant operating system on the market, so you are likely to get good drivers for the hardware, or at least updates if defects are found. The quality of the software one installs on top of Windows defines the overall stability experience for the end-user. My desktop PC has Windows XP that I installed some 1,5 years ago and it has served me flawlessly.
Modern desktop Linux distributions have a furious development cycles releasing new versions once or twice a year. This means that the beta and release candidate testing periods are very short, usually only matters of weeks. Unfortunately a fresh Linux distribution on release date tends to contain a lot of bugs. Linux distros, like Windows, have on-line updating features and patches and updates are usually released a lot right after the release. Download and install Ubuntu 7.10 (from October 2007) today, and a huge load of fixes are available via the updater right after install. So Microsoft is not the only one pushing out service packs to improve their product quality. And the bugs of Linux distros can be very visible ones too: My Ubuntu suddenly lost all theme and icon settings, the Start button equilavent of Mandriva was visually broken, and openSUSE opens unnecessary Xconsole window if I enable clock synchronization via NTP Internet server.
Drivers and hardware support is a whole another story under Linux. Unfortunately hardware vendors are not keen on the idea of releasing their drivers open sourced, which has lead to the fact that Linux driver support is far worse than on Windows. I cannot use a native ATI driver on my Thinkpad T41, since none is available, so I have to use a 3rd party developed open source equivalent. And speaking of my ATI card, all Linux distros except Mandriva incorrectly configure this laptop for 3D desktop usage, so I have to manually edit the settings to make it work. Even with everything configured properly, 3D games seem to be a bit unstable on this computer and tend to crash or jam occasionally – I am not yet 100% sure what the issue is, but based on what I have learned from the net is that the problems are in the drivers.
So if one thinks that “I will intall Linux over Windows and never have problems again”, then one will most likely be disappointed. But there is a different side to this story as well. Linux at the core is rock solid. We here have been running our own web server for few years, and not once it has crashed, jammed, booted or had any issues with it. I haven’t checked recently but I think we around 500 days of uptime on this server since we did a complete reinstall due to mandatory update. And all the time the server is working, serving millions of database queries and sending the content to thousands of readers. In server usage, such stability simply does not exist in the Windows world, and that is why Linux has conquered the server market.
Just as I am writing this, our tech admin Xfiler dropped in to brag about his new Lenovo Thinkpad. He said it had Vista preinstalled, and it had crashed on him on the first day of use. I don’t have enough Vista experience to make conclusions myself, but based on the stuff I have read and heard, it has some maturity issues. So did Windows XP several years ago, but most likely Vista will mature after one or two service packs, just like the Linux distributions will mature after receiving a few months worth of updates.
So is the myth busted? To some extent I think that it really is. A user installing XP or a modern desktop Linux is more likely to find bugs on the Linux distro. Keep in mind that I am talking about basic desktop usage here, in other environment the situation can turn around completely. No matter what operating system you run, it is also a matter of configuration. At my work we have a customized Windows XP installations made by the IT department, and they are far less stable than my home setup made by myself. So your mileage may vary.
March 31st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
[...] ago we did some Linux mythbusting concerning two of the much debated Linux features vs. Windows: Stability and speed. Now a rather well know editor Bruce Byfield goes much farther than us and comes up with [...]
December 17th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Windows is the most stable OS in terms of ABI. Software that worked flawlessly on Windows 95 usually still works flawlessly even as far as Windows XP out-of-the-box.
However, this “mythbusting” only takes into account rapidly changing distributions.
Windows XP was released in 2002 and when it was first released very little software would work.. anti-virus software around 2002 would cripple or make the system unusable.
Now let’s look at OpenSuSE. It’s supported for 2 years and new releases are every 6-7 months. It has the latest and greatest, expect some bugs just like XP had at first release. Now let us compare Vista’s initial release… just kidding… :P
Now, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 on a PC from 2005, rock solid. As Red Hat Enterprise Linux has a long QA and release cycle it is less buggy at release point and less likely to have “bad updates”. =] Same goes for RHEL 5 on a PC from 2007. Also, RHEL can be obtained freely as CentOS with the same quality.
Windows has more bugs at release than GNU/Linux will ever do, but since GNU/Linux distros release more often… new releases should be treated in exactly the same way as new releases of any other OS.
July 15th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
How do you define “stability”? i’ve only used nx a little from livecds. something messed up once, and i had to kill(ctrl alt bksp?) the gui & (re?)start a console to allow me to shutdown properly. I’ve never used any nx intensively enough to hit ram limits.
Decades of win usage: there have always been various levels of crash, freeze, hang, total snuff. Mildest: close some firefox tabs, and various open apps begin to respond again. Next mildest: context click the app’s “button” in win’s “taskbar”, and close the app. Restart.
In some Xp computers, explorer (the file browser) will die, and erstart immediately, or you may have to “run” (like a CLI line) explorer.exe, or that may do nothing, so for efficiencies sake, you need to restart the OS.
I think hardware causes different tendencies in all OS’s (and their apps)
yum,man, curl, cryptic commands: yeah. win has it’s own, though. both could be better:
One reason why i like wget is that i has “long” and short option names. any command that’s not used often needs long names, IMO. Some “DOS” commands have a long name version: DEL= DELETE, REN = RENAME.
In majorityof usage, context-sensitive info is faster than searching thru a manual.
Of course a standardized “frontend” gui should allow easy provision of hover tips, etc. for the infrequent user. In the most haphazard app guis, hover tips could just be the documentation comments.
Also, I do not use win in an eye candy mode. i turn that junk off. All gui is functional. (Color is good, much as different color lights are used at road instersections)
The standard visual of vista is worse than xp’s. eg: vista’s icons are large and muddy. If I used vista regularly, I’d have solved some of vista’s ui problems, but tightening up xp seems easier…
Similarly, I don’t expect to ever use compiz, beryl, etc. (on 2d hardware)
The last Mac I used was a g3 running “office” apps on OS 7.x or 8.x (don’t recall). It was about as stable as win98se of the same era. Possibly being run only 5-9 helped. :-)
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:08 pm
First of all I will say this: I have installed right now in my work, Windows 2000 Server, Windows XP Pro, CentOS, and OpenSuse.
I agree with the author that the Windows XP has matured a lot and today April, 2008 it is a very stable system. I have a windows xp running IIS and a CFTV software along with Comodo Firewall. I barely ever reboot the system, only after requierd updates.
At the same time I have to say this: The comparison was not made right. The author used the BEST windows version that has matured for 7 years and compared to some of the worst linux distributions. I think a good comparison would have been if he used CentOS (which I also use for server purposes, DNS, Apache, Qmail, Squid, Firewall) or maybe OpenSuse, or Debian. That would have made a way better comparison. It´s like, “Let’s compare Vista and RHEL” everyone that has ever messed around with both of then knows that would not be a fair match.
I have been using a CentOS distribution for Samba, FTP, and internall firewall and I’ll tell you, I think it’s been 3-4 months since my last reboot, and I think I did it just for the fear that it would stop whenever I wouldn’t be at work. Yes it is that good.
But I am talking about server purposes. My desktop at home and at work are Windows XP. And yes drivers are more readly avaliable for Windows than for Linux.
So to wrap it up, I will say this: I have a rule on what is the best OS. One has to follow certain steps to come-up with the answer. My method goes like this:
1. Find the OS that can meet your needs. (Ex. How good would be to install FreeBSD if all you want to do is to play Civilization IV with the latest video card in the market?)
2.How good are you on operating that system? (Ex: You may have a Xeon with 16GB on a Dell server, but if you have Linux installed and don’t know what the command ‘ls’ is for, that OS is not for you, or you better learn)
3.Identify what is more important to you. (Ex: Security, Stability, Hardware Support and so on…)
My two cents…..or should I say CentOS :)
One Love Y’all
April 21st, 2008 at 1:37 am
The author has written quite a frank and sensible article which I think is true, but in response MLG has made some comments that are grossly unfair to Linux, that is what i think the author is trying to avoid.
QUOTE:
“I don’t want to be on the internet (providing you can find a driver for your ethernet card) ”
Which Linux distro have you been using? Are you talking about wireless-Ethernet only?
I used a few distros and not once have I found a wired ethernet card that any of them does not detect properly, Linux has an outstanding ability in this area,better than windows by a mile, gosh man be fair!!
on the other hand I quite often have to hunt for drivers somewhere to make windows use a good deal of the less common Ethernet cards, case in point I have a Dell precision 380 workstation with a Broadcom Ethernet card the machine ships with Windows Xp but if you do a clean install of Windows you will have to fetch the Dell driver CD to get on the internet, I installed Ubuntu 8.04 on the same machine and I do not have to reach for any other disc, I am on the internet immediately.
The same on an Inspiron 9100 laptop, even the wireless worked more quickly than a Windows setup, the Broadcom firmware is downloaded and configured easily by Ubuntu. I installed windows on this machine there is no wired Ethernet, no wireless Ethernet, no sound, no video drivers, display set to 800 x 600, I had to go to another connected machine and fetch the drivers as the driver disc for this laptop has been mislaid long ago by the previous owner, not so with Ubuntu you can get to work immediately after installation
almost all USB printers and scanners are detected by the modern linux distros now, my Canon pixma 2000 is one of them,
and BTW Linux should not be the one and only OS it never will be, do not be ridiculous, if you want Linux to become better take some time and read something worthwhile and join the geeks or at least file some sensible bug reports with the ones who are involved in many lovely projects (UBUNTU,GENTOO,GNOME,KDE,GIMP INKSCAPE ETC.), coming here spouting your unjust argument or ignorance does not make you any smarter than Goofy.
March 15th, 2008 at 7:43 am
[...] First of all, the PCLOS seems to be very stable and doesn’t have any of the embarrassing bugs that the bleeding edge distributions have. The upgrades are incremental, so the risk of regression errors (new bugs introduced by updates and [...]
March 9th, 2008 at 7:28 pm
[...] with Linux users. You’ll find that the stability of Linux vs. that of Windows is up for debate : Mythbusting Linux: Linux is more stable than Windows | BitBurners.com (BETA) | We Burn a Bit! [...]
March 8th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
While Windows does have its issues, Linux has just as many. Trust me, I pray for the day that SOMEONE, ANYONE brings out an OS that will completely crushes Microsoft to its core. The main issue that I have with Linux is that you have to study to get it to work. I don’t want to be on the internet (providing you can find a driver for your ethernet card) trying to get my printer that I just bought to work by chatting in every forum known to man. After booing and hissing from every nerd because I bought a new printer and did not build my own,I realize that I will need to get on Ebay and find one from the mid to late 70’s maybe early 80’s that someone has taken the time to write a driver that works for it. I have been told that the command line is as easy as typing “fly” and you will soar like an eagle (or is that python) but yet there are commands like “man” and “yum” that have nothing to do with what they mean. Yum doesn’t bring me food or taste good to me,it brings me updates through “rpm” and god help you if your a Gearhead, that last one will throw you for a loop (again, providing you can get on the internet). Windows for the most part, works. Also the really cool thing is if you search the internet (which I can get on because my ethernet card came with the drivers) there are a lot of people out in Geek land (which is like Disneyworld to me) creating free software. Software that is free and better (Gimp) than the $429.00 (Corel) software that you can buy at the software giants. Folks, don’t get me wrong, I REALLY want Linux to be the one and the only OS and I really have tried it, I just don’t get it.