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Most experts agree Linux is safer than Windows
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All scientific supercomputers use Linux
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Professional hackers use Linux
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Linux is the undisputed backbone of internet servers
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Critical military infrastructure relies on Linux
Microsoft’s revenue was $300 Billion last year. They have UNLIMITED ressources.
So why is Windows still worse than Linux ?
It also depends on what you mean by worse than Linux. A lot of the criteria that you’re evaluating definitely have Linux as better than Windows, but Windows is better than Linux in other ways that I notice on a day-to-day basis when I’m switching between the two.
Performance under memory pressure is the biggest one, I think. I don’t know why, but Windows handles extreme memory pressure and heavy page filing incredibly gracefully, whereas any Linux device I’ve used, and Macs, seems to stutter, slow down, and really struggle under memory pressure, even when there is superior hardware involved. I usually have to wait several minutes before my daily Linux driver recovers from heavy page filing, whereas it’s usually just a couple of seconds with my Windows box.
I dont know; this seems like super specific case where you’ve economic means to afford or be around all of those high end systems and the same hardware is underpowered for your use case.
My first personal laptop had Windows 7 but as soon as Windows 8 came it struggled (only having measly 2GB of RAM) - so i switched to Ubuntu and it was a breeze for the next 10 years. I always used to try new version of Windows when released but it they always seemed to be memory hog and become bloated over time.
You kind of haven’t addressed the point though, you’ve just pointed out that linux experiences memory pressure less often.
But OPs point is that Windows is better at it when you inevitably fill its memory. I run multiple clusters of docker containers and virtualised systems in my day to day, and its true that linux (Ubuntu at least) isn’t the best at huge memory pressure, especially when I fill swap. And I’m running the latest intel chip with 32gb. I wish I’d gone 64gb… but, memory prices.
I don’t know if thats better or worse than Windows though, I haven’t touched an MS machine in a decade.
That behavior with Linux is absolutely real, and it’s very weird that it hasn’t been fixed in over a decade. It’s due to the default OOM (out of memory) killer being way too conservative with killing an application when the memory is completely full and disk swapping. Some people have solved this with an app that watches for OOM situations and acts with more decisiveness to kill an offending application before it swaps and brings the system to a halt, called EarlyOOM.
That still isn’t quite as good as Windows handling though, as Windows can generally handle those situations without killing the application at all.
TIL!
Awkwardly, I find that the largest memory pressure tends to come from a particular web page that continually gobbles up more memory the longer it is open.
There’s always one of these somewhere, and I’m bad at closing tabs. I usually notice pretty quickly when I come back to my computer. As soon as we start hitting page filing, since everything is stuttering and slow, but if it goes overnight, it can literally be 15 to 20 minutes before the system is responsive again after I kill the offending process.
Whereas on my work device, which is Windows, I usually might not even notice until I’ve maxed out my page file, which can be 64 or 128 GB depending on the device. And even then, I only notice because file operations start getting slow because the SSD is being thrashed. Killing the offending process results in responsiveness usually within a few seconds and a full clear out of the page file in a couple minutes.
The explanations that I’ve gotten from another commenter make a lot of sense. That Windows has just always had to deal with high memory pressures, so has been forced to mature in that sense. It is rather odd that Linux is behind on this, though, given its overwhelming representation in headless environments
Windows has had to deal with memory pressure a lot more than Linux. Some of this is bloat, but historically there’s also just been a lot of low end systems sold with Windows. All of the Windows 7 systems sold with 1GB, the Windows XP systems sold with with 256MB, running Windows 98 in 16MB, and so on.
Windows is always looking for memory it can page out and does a lot of preemptive paging so that if it suddenly needs a bunch of free RAM - like if the user suddenly launches some memory hog of an application, Windows has it available. Windows is also a bit smart about it - it’ll page things out but still keep the data in RAM too. So for example an application idle in the background will be paged out in case Windows needs that memory, but it’s also kept in RAM so if the user pulls the application back up, Windows doesn’t have to read everything back from the page file either.
This has lead to complaints about Windows constantly thrashing the disk and doing things in the background, but there is some method to the madness. Though I will complain that Windows still seems to do this even in situations where the PC has a lot of RAM and large amounts of it aren’t being used.
The Linux kernel, on the other hand, doesn’t do a lot of this like Windows does. Which is fine so long as you have enough RAM. But in a situation where there isn’t a lot of free RAM and suddenly the user launches a big application, the kernel suddenly has to do a bunch of swapping to free up memory and that can take a bit, especially if the drive is slow.
The Linux kernel does have a “Swappiness” setting that can modify its behavior, but I’ve never really played around with that myself.
Thank you for thoughtfully engaging. I appreciate your knowledge.
Their main goal is to extract maximum revenue, not to provide good products. Also, they’ve grown fat on the monopoly profits they enjoyed for decades. It’s very hard to pivot back to competitiveness from that and as of now, they’re not really compelled to do that.
This is it. For profit companies exit to make a profit, not a product. Any time you ask “why did they do this thing that makes the product worse?” remember that the product doesn’t matter to them, only the money it makes. If a change makes more money, they’ll do it.
Some might think a worse product means worse sales and less profit, but they’d be wrong. Enough people buy products regardless of their qualify that it’s often more profitable to simply make the product as cheap as possible while maintaining just barely enough of the most basic functionality to meet the definition of what they’re trying to sell.
true but to do that they have 100s of layers of variously documented backward compatibility and work-arounds. all their stuff is a mountain of deliberate technical debt that will affect the quality of their software
Aren’t most for profit companies like this tho?
Not the ones that face actual competition. Younger people have probably never experienced this but markets in general used to be much more diverse and less concentrated.
Oh damn
Linux is safer than Windows
Yes and no. Security through obscurity doesn’t innately mean its more secure. The recent AUR debacle proved that all it takes is a competent and malicious actor with the time and dedication to make something to target Linux. And why has nobody done it? Because the Linux market share is still absolutely pathetic compared to Windows, and is even abysmal when compared to MacOS. The returns on hacking a single Linux distro simply aren’t worth the investment.
I would also argue it is far easier to unintentionally brick your system with Linux, and if people don’t know what they’re doing (see: most end users) they can and will very easily leave themselves more exposed in the long run than by using the spyware that is Windows/MacOS/iOS/Android.
This pretty effectively explains all your other bullet points with minimal extrapolation; everything else you listed requires significant know-how for the systems to function properly. These are the super-deep superusers. Some of them probably tossed a few bones to Microsoft and their end-users, but as others have pointed out individuals and companies have vastly different motivations.
Between those main ideas… Yeah…
Linux is safer than Windows
Yes and no. Security through obscurity doesn’t innately mean its more secure.
Linux cannot leverage security through obscurity, since its source code is open, so this point is not pertinent.
Aur isn’t Linux. Aur is a feature of a distro and not Linux code.
But I get your point: Aur is a product of dark-pattern app coding that flies in the face of established best practice, of ISO, and of SLSA. Had we not fired our mentors and documenters 20 years ago we would not have had such a Lost Boy generation of system engineers growing up in that wasteland without mentors to tell them why something is a really dumb idea.
Supply-chain exploits are preventable, but only if coders are led by proper system engineers who follow and enforce standards; but this is boring and costly so neither VC money nor the kids building these really bad tools are gonna magically support such a notion.
Obscurity as in there are how many flavors each with their own repos and dependencies? And which one are you using? So which vulnerabilities work on you? And are you even aware of them?
Hiding among the weeds obscures you from view.
And while AUR isn’t Linux code and I definitely understand that, it is very much what you’re talking about; if anybody bothered to RTFM, they’d have had as many AUR issues as I did when the shit hit the fan - precisely none. And I’m only on Arch because Cachy is basically iOS for Arch if you can read and utilize copy/paste functions, a dazzlingly high bar for entry that somehow even I am capable of.
Then again, I also know enough to have a clue as to how much I really don’t know. Most people just assume magic box makes pretty pictures happen and anybody who knows how to change operating systems are literal wizards.
And so I would argue that being on Linux and the variety of flavors is, again, a form of obscurity in and of itself. Yeah, its all open source. Did you plot an attack for that distro? That file structure? How about a missing dependency? It simply isn’t worth it to plot Linux malware at this market share just like 20 years ago it wasn’t worth it to put malware on Macs; their use is still too obscure. Once critical mass is achieved, watch Ubuntu and Mint malware variants increase by an order of magnitude. Until then, the whales are all on Windows and Mac.
All scientific supercomputers use Linux
This is not true. Supercomputers do, but in my research centre there are still lots of people using Windows and Mac. Linux usage is definitely way higher than the broader populace, but it’s not “all”.
Because their management structure is horrendously overbloated and their internal culture is horrific.
I used to work for them. Every manager, every team lead, at every level, is viciously trying to climb to the top of the crab bucket, and pull every one else down at the same time.
Look at Asha Sharma’s recent statment on reorganizing Xbox.
14 levels of management. 14. You have have a boss, who has a boss, who has a… up to fucking 14.
… the entire company is like this, not just Xbox.
Thats why everything is insane broken nonsense.
Oh, that and extreme over reliance on contractors to most of the actual work. This results in a situation where half of any project in the new contractors just trying to understand the code the previous contractors made.
Nothing is actually properly documented, there are very, very few people who actually understand a codebase and have been maintaining and growing it for 10 years, no, its 10 years of 10 different sets of contractors, and maybe 3-6 different managers ‘overseeing’ this.
This is the answer. I work in a big company which has a similar issue. The boots on the ground devs like me know how bad some cascaded orders and ideas are but when you try to bring it up it’s like trying to talk to a brick wall with 13 other brick walls in the way
Its so cathartic to read this after dealing with the exact same bullshit with my own employer. Management has no clue what is actually going on, but refuses to listen to us peons because they’ve ‘made it’ to middle management so obviously they know better than all of us always.
Scott Adams went MAGA bonkers, but the Dilbert Principle is still a valid corrolary to the Peter Principle.
… the narcissistic sociopaths that are most managers simply don’t care, because they are right and you are stupid.
… which is also why the love the overly confident lying know it alls that are LLMs… they are a perfect source of many elements of narcissistic supply.
it’s like trying to talk to a brick wall with 13 other brick walls in the way
I’m gonna have to use that saying, lol
Amazingly, Windows 11 still has some settings menus directly from 1992’s Windows 3.1
… jesus christ.
I did not know it was actually that bad, that it went back that far… god damnit.
still has UI menus from Win 7, possibly fucking XP, if you dig deep enough.
Yeah, those are the good ones.
I laughed, then cried, because I still have to use this heap of shit operating system at work.
Same :(
Yeah that’s the worst bit tbf
If you’re not going to make better UIs and you’re going to keep the old ones around anyway… Why not just… add new items to the old ones?
Instead, you have like 3 or 4 different generations of control panel and they do different things so you go to the correct one based on what you need to do…
I’m just happy to not own any Windows machines anymore, not even dual boot. I actually liked 7. Like really liked it. 10 felt like a downgrade (I suspect because the UI was uglier and it had an extra layer of control panel added in either 8 or 10 that was more dumbed down so you’d usually want to go to the old one, which gets you thinking “why exactly did we need a new Windows version”). 11 is shit even on a brand new machine, even if it looks pretty-ish. It’s slow, the reduced context menu is annoying… Yeah I could change a lot of things via registry keys and whatnot, but KDE Plasma just gives me a single system settings application that configures almost everything I’d want to configure on my machine, the rest is application specific stuff for which I’m fine just editing the conf files
To be clear I’m just venting because I’m frustrated with Windows, not because I think you like it lol
Registry keys to change this shit is fucking bonkers, too. Is that considered stable between updates? You know — the updates you’re pretty much forced to do every time you turn on the PC.
Star Citizen was ahead of its time lol
Microsoft has billions of dollars
Exactly.
Wait… why is this a question…? I guess it’s the same as when people ask my why Adobe is so terrible, why HP is terrible or why Apple is so terrible.
Companies eventually get so big and powerful they only care about companies.
Stop paying for Microsoft, pirate is Stop using Microsoft office, Get libre office Stop using HP, get Lenovo or Dell instead Everyone everywhere should stop using apple.
As much as I hate Apple/OoS and I do truly hate Apple… Adobe is the worst company on earth.
Easiest way to explain it is that Apple and Microsoft exist just to steal all your money Adobe not only wants to steal all your money but they wanted take it all then make you pay so they can lazily explain why they took your money. HP is in the corner breaking all your furniture so they can charge you a fee to fix it and put Microsoft, apple and Adobe trash on it.
It’s a lot easier to fins bugs when literally the whole world can review the source code.
Is this a real question ?.One is about maximising profit extraction, one is not.
Money can’t buy love. Fuck Microsoft.
Money won’t buy quality either
If the free software foundation got 1 billion, it would do many times over what 300billion has done for windows, but not just the OS but the entire software ecosystem around Linux. And it would all be ours to keep.
Linux was built by engineers and professors based on idealistic values like progress and collaboration. Windows was also built by talented nerds, but at the direction of suits with the goal of making money.
And now they’re ripping all the shit the talented nerds made out and replacing it with AI slop and ads.
Yep! Like every other tech company.
Engineers want to make something work with the stability to last a long time.
But lasting a long time cuts into profits.
I agree with all your points. The quesion is why is Windows still dominating in market share?
The answer is user awareness, brand loyalty and fear of the unknown. Windows is the devil you know, most of the people I game with are scared of the instability of Linux, despite it being roughly equal if not better.
I think standardizing the user experience, making things less scary and generally more welcoming are major hurdles, but the good news is that should come with time and a larger userbase.
Windows just works. I installed Linux on my older laptop and it couldn’t see any of my network shares. “Where do I click the button for sharing?” God, that would be too easy. Nope, start editing config files to configure samba. I just want to access files.
Samba is indeed an annoyance, at least in the initial setup. In good faith though, does windows just work? Because there’s a habit for windows updates to break file sharing pretty regularly, not to mention permissions issues.
There’s a lot of work people put into windows that they just don’t realise because they’ve been in the ecosystem for that long. Having been on both sides for a bit now, Linux requires a hell of a lot less regular maintenance than windows needed. Sure I’m a power user, but I think that Linux is getting better and better all the time for general users.
Office, the fucking office suit everyone and thier grandma uses that does not work with alternative that run nativity on Linux… ugh…i mean office works bearly between two windows machines…so its not like the open source community did not give it a try, but the random proprietary standard in .doc/docx etc …just locks us in…
Windows is better in compatibility with many commercial products, but the gap is quickly closing, and I think Microsoft is feeling the pressure.
Microsoft and the like are doing a great job to prove they don’t have to release anything quality and people will still throw them buckets of money. It’s wild to watch, but hey it’s better they stay there than come to Linux in the masses to encourage the enshitification of stuff that’s still good.
Priorities and objectives.
