Linux (Thinking as Windows)

Users and Groups

Both Linux and Windows are multi-user operating system supporting many different users, and gives each user a separate environment and resources. Security is controlled based on user’s identity. Resource access also can be controlled by group membership, making it easier to work with rights for large numbers of users without having to touch each individual account.

Users and groups can be centralized into single repository, allowing multiple servers to share the same user and authentication data.

File System

Both Linux and Windows can work with varieties of file systems. File resources can be shared with varieties of clients through NetBIOS, FTP and/or other protocols. Individual file systems can be flexibly incorporated, allowing the administrator to choose where and how they will be accessed.

Ports and devices

Physical devices ports such as parallel, serial and USB are supported. Various controllers, such as IDE and SCSI, are also supported. Linux supports a good deal of standard hardware, and most of that out of the box (meaning, you won’t have to install driver later).

Networking

Linux and Windows both support a number of networking protocols, such as TCP/IP, NetBIOS etc. Both support a wide varieties of network adapters. Both provide the ability to share resources, such as files and printing, through the network. Both provide capability to perform network services, such as DHCP and DNS.

Services

Linux and Windows both have services, application that run in the background to provide some function to the system and to computers that remotely call the service. These programs can be controlled individually and be started when the system boots.(In Linux systems these applications are often referred as daemons)

I’m Different(Linux)

Even though there seems to be similarities between the technologies, there are some differences that makes Linux supreme.

Networking rather than Printing

Ever since windows was built, the key focus remained on the pretty looks and easy printabilty. It is obvious as the ear when the windows first appeared, it was a paper world. This beginning has always affected Windows and its development.

Similarly, Linux was affected from its beginning. Linux from the beginning was build to survive networks. It was inspired by Unix System, so there was a simplicity to design its command. Since plain text works great across network, text always has been the base for Linux configuration and data.

But with time Linux has shaped itself to the trend. Nowadays great looks and styles have been developed for Linux making it perfect for Desktop utilization.

Freedom of Choice

Linux, developed under GPL, provided users with great flexibility to chose what they prefer. Almost every components in a Linux system is optional and can be added or removed as per user’s requirement. It provides users with various choices for a single task. However, don’t get confused by the choices. Most probably, the distribution you choose will have specific set of tools for you.

Sixth Sense

Unlike Windows, Linux doesn’t recognize the files by its extension. Rather it reads the header content of the file to identify the type. You can still use extensions for human-readability, but Linux doesn’t care. But still, some applications like Web servers, may still use naming conventions to identify fie types, but that is a factor of the individual application.

Obey Nature’s Laws

If you are a Windows user and have been using Windows for a long time, you must have been accustomed to rebooting the system for many reasons, from software installation or to solve a service failure problem.

But Linux obeys Nature’s laws. Linux tends to be rather Newtonian in nature. Once a body is set in motion, it continues in state of motion until it is acted upon by an external force, such as hardware failure. In fact, the system design of Linux prevents application from corrupting the kernel, which is why it doesn’t need frequent reboots (in contrast to Windows system design). So except for the Linux kernel, you can install, start, stop and reconfigure software without having to reboot the system.

Sensitive

File names in Linux are case sensitive which means Afile.txt and aFile.txt are two different files unlike Windows. Also, all linux commands and options are case sensitive. For example, -d is different from -D, and may perform two different things. Console command sare almost always lowercase. We’ll be covering console command in the coming articles.

Hope you enjoyed this. Leave comments, feedback and suggestions. Please come back for more.

We are assuming that you have already installed a Linux distribution and if you haven’t then go to Linux.org and find out which Linux distribution suits you the most. I have divide this article into various piece that I’ll be updating almost everyday or two to help you people out there making a move to Linux.