LeaningIntoTheMuse said:
Some companies run on Linux servers. I know of a few that I have either worked at, or applied for the position.
The main problem I have with Linux is that it is easy as hell to screw up the installation. Mess with the terminal once, and you'll have to reinstall the whole OS. It's not that easy to screw up Windows or MacOS, although Windows fails more than Mac (which is why I love my Macbook more than my Windows 8.)
The plus side of Linux is...no viruses. Mac has a few viruses, but very few. Windows is literally infested with viruses, spyware, and malware.
MOST servers run with Linux because of it's stability and diverse coverage of preferences, function of hardware/software and is highly configurable. This all depends on what the person wants, Linux is much more user friendly than it once was, people would fear the DOS like commands and complicated (aka "different") syntax for most things. Linux is what I call a "bare" OS, what I mean by that is that it runs so much more efficient than Mac or Windows, and actually gets
more out of your hardware at the same time, IMO. The problem with Linux lies with the masses, it always goes the same way; if you were a game designer which console would you make games for? The answer would be whichever one people used more, this is true for Linux, Windows is much more commercialized and comes as standard on most laptops, PCs, tablets and phones. Yes, Linux doesn't have many 'viruses' or vulnerabilities, but this is because in most cases people
use Linux to create these things because of the variety of tools available, also any problems or vulnerabilities can easily be found and even fixed due to it being open source, in fact, you could practically do
anything with Linux if you put your mind to it and have the skill, the same cannot be said for Windows or Mac OS.
Unfortunately for me I've always been around Windows, I have used Linux, and still do, sometimes, but I'll always be with Windows. I know it so well, I program for it, and it's not too bad. There are many things I still don't like about it, though. They make things too complicated on Windows, there are too many things depending on other things in order to function; everything is written so nitty-gritty and awkward. You only have to take a look around MSDN to notice how things are written or function to see how they make the simplest of things complicated, and unfortunately this is how Windows is, I kinda think they do this on purpose, though, so it cannot (or is very difficult) to reverse engineer their software. Another thing I don't like about Windows (and is the reason it's so 'successful' with the masses) is the sheer volume of wizards. I remember when XP first come on the scene and it was branded 'Wizards paradise', or something, which isn't surprising; I dunno about you but I like to manually configure things myself, I like to know how something's set up or installed and these stupid wizards are an annoying part of Windows. I think there should be some soft of 'Advanced mode' you could enable so it wouldn't use these things; of course there would probably be a wizard for that sort of thing. Although Windows has much success getting round, it's targeted a lot by all kinds of malicious softwares because of this. This isn't so much a problem for me, or anybody else who knows what to look for, but I honestly believe that you only need to know very few basic things in order to be aware - ironically the things that
don't have wizards or are easy to get access to.
I'd like to say stuff about Mac OS but this is the least of the OS's I've experienced, and what little I have of that isn't very good at all. Mainly because they were iMacs at the time (Yes, THAT long ago) and apparently 'muli-media machines'. Though in my case they weren't 'multi-ing' anything, because the way iMacs worked was that the RAM in those machines worked with DMA (Direct Memory Access) which was hideously flawed, it would either freeze or just randomly close things that caused memory violations. There's also a load of little things I don't like about Macs, but they all add up. I'm sure Macs are much better these days, although they spend a little too much time on the looks of the thing IMO, I remember reading Steve Job's autobiography and he was one of those annoying arrogant perfectionists, and he
ordered that all his electronics in his devices (Macs at the time) be appealing to the eye, so all the chips on the boards were in line and all wires carefully routed round hardware so you wouldn't see them - as he hated wires and buttons, you know, the things that actually
work the devices? Of course all this caused massive engineering problems, but he didn't care about that.
Wow... I seriously rambled on there, well that's my 2p anyway.