Lord Kalthorn said:
Bill Gates is a brilliant Computer Programmer; he did program MSDOS and many other early Windows Operating Systems a huge amount - even now he is Chief Software Developer of Microsoft. I'm sure Linas was a good programmer, probably a great programmer; but the two were from different times.
Actually MS more or less bought QDOS (for $25,000) which was a 16-bit clone of CP/M. This eventually became MSDOS.
Funny all the things said in this thread. People who don't even know what open source and linux is comparing it to the devil. Linux has been around since 1991, that makes it 13 years now. Open source has been around longer than that. GNU started off in 1983. It too has only grown. If it truly did suck and will die as you say, then surely it would not be getting bigger and stronger, and be considered such a great threat to Microsoft.
The reason Windows is so big is because of the marketing. I don't care to go into detail though, it gets long.
Linux really is more secure than Windows, no matter what you think or how you add up your numbers. How much more depends on how you have it all set up. But if you want the best security, neither os will do.
The stability and reliability part of Windows differs greatly depending on your experience, your hardware, and what you use it for. People who use Linux are likely to use it for over a year before seeing the kernel crash. I've personally been using Linux for 6 years, and it's only crashed twice. One of those crashes though was with a beta type kernel.
Linux runs on lots more machines than Windows probably ever will.
By the way, his real name is Linus Torvalds.
I only see 3 reasons to use Windows. First, for the games. People make games for Windows because everyone uses it. Although more and more people are making it easier to play good games on Linux. Second, some people don't have much choice to use it, maybe because they are paid to use it or can't find a substitute for a specific piece of software. Last reason, some people just like that moronic feeling Windows gives you.