Please give me the non-technical difference between the Linux (Gnume) and Windows NT. As early as you have. The major contents are as follow - Security - Kernal - MultiTask - Display - Thread

Non-technical? Given the questions you asked, I don't think that's possible but here goes: 1: Security. Windows 3.1 - 98 are based on DOS giving a single user complete access to the entire computer and all devices on said computer. Windows NT is based on the same principles as Linux and most any other 32-bit operating system: multiple users. Access to devices requires making a request to the operating system which allows or denies the request based on the user's permissions. Windows 2000 and XP are a combination of the two, making the appearance of 98 style access (direct access) within an NT environment (32-bit, multi-user). Windows suffers from two things. Being too open and being too widely used. Visual Basic script in web pages, emails and programs (Word, Excel, etc) can actually gain as much access to the computer as a user, meaning a program you did not write and did not (necessarily want to) execute can modify or delete any files you can, send emails and otherwise be a nuisance (or a hazard). Linux has a two-fold benefit over NT in that 1) it is not as widely used as Windows so it has fewer attacks against it and 2) the programs who are writing linux also use it. If a problem is found, the programmer-user is likely to simply fix the problem and post the fix on the internet. The I-only-do-email-user will call technical support, wait on hold for an hour and complain about the quality of service. 2: Kernel They both have one. The Windows kernel is designed to handle all possibilies making the strain on the user as small as possible. The Linux kernel is completely customizable so that anyone with the inclination can recompile the kernel, adding or removing components as they see fit. (I recently installed Slackware 8 on a new computer and recompiled the kernel 6 times before I got sick of it. I still don't know if my CD burner and joystick work.) I'm not a kernel programmer or a microsoft employee so I can't tell you more. 3: Multi-task Yes. They both multitask. 4: Display Windows uses a HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) to separate the programs from the direct to hardware drivers. All requests to display something on screen must go through this HAL. DirectX was once described as a means of circumventing this scheme, giving game programmers the more direct access to display hardware like they had in DOS. DirectX is the reason most games are written for Windows. You just don't get any better than that. The HAL allows programs to write the screen image to other devices as well (printers). Programs like pcAnywhere can even redraw the screen over a network but this isn't easy or common. Linux uses an X server to handle the display. X servers are networked by default so they have the extra overhead of copying a picture of what will be displayed to the hard drive then reading from the hard drive and drawing it on the screen. X servers can work natively over the internet (instead of copying to the hard drive, they copy to the network) so you can have a mainframe do your processing and display it on a 386 terminal. This is a unix/mainframe environment where one processor controlled hundreds or thousands of workstations. Linux has added something called an Accelerated X server. This is usually in the form of drivers that copy to the video card instead of the hard drive. Certain versions of opengl (NVIDIA drivers for example) enable hardware acceleration on Linux. This makes the performance of Linux and Windows games comparible. 5: Thread Yes. Both have multiple threads. Windows threads are part of the Window API. Linux threads are handled by external libraries, typically pthread. The real comparison between Windows and Linux is in user familiarity and user interface. Most anyone who uses a computer knows how to use windows. Not everyone knows how to use Linux because the linux interface varies so much. For example, KDE uses windows-like keyboard shortcuts. Gnome does not. Blackbox requires an external program to handle keyboard shortcuts which the user defines. In the applications arena, Windows is the clear winner simply because it has Quickbooks. Most of Microsoft office is covered by linux applications (Open Office being the most recent example) but Quickbooks stands alone as a powerful windows program with no open source equivalent.

Uh, how do you justify declaring windows better based on your opinion/availability of one app? I agree with most everything else you said but your final conclusion seems to be a bit unjustified. BTW, let this guy do his own homework.

hmm... didn't look like a homework problem at the time. Now that you mention it ... 8) The only reason to declare something better is if it does its job better than the alternative. By saying Windows is better than Linux because it does Quickbooks, I'm saying that Quickbooks is cool and it's a (very good) reason to keep windows. Maybe I haven't found a decent open source alternative, but I haven't found a decent proprietary alternative (for windows) either. Note: sorry for the blatant plug. I am NOT a reseller, really I'm not. 8P Besides, sometimes you just need to declare Windows the winner. An OS with an ego that size should be coddled, not prodded.

what are centralized compuing issues? What is centralized computing??

Just browsing for quickbooks alternatives and found this thread and a few others.... While it's not open source - MYBooks by www.appgen.com would seem to be a quickbooks alternative for either Windows or Linux. Avery