Windows XP vs. Vista, vs. Linux

Windows Vista has been out for 15 months now, and in spite of its “sales” (read: bundling with new PCs), it lags in popularity. People don’t like the new interface, the hardware requirements are too steep, etc. ad nauseam. In November of last year I purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad T61p (15.4″ wide-screen version) and it’s a phenomenal little machine, but I was in a bit of a quandary as to which operating system would work best for me. The laptop came with Vista, but a few snags made me less content with this otherwise very appealing OS. I ran into some compatibility brick walls with Vista. For example, my podcasting microphone wouldn’t work, with no help on the horizon from the manufacturer. Also, the stock partitioning the ThinkPad came with, combined with the hefty disk space requirements of Vista, left me with less than half of my 80GB drive to work with once everything I needed was set up. With such an unpopular current desktop offering from Microsoft, I doubt I was alone in looking for alternatives. I figured that since I tried almost every viable current operating system on this machine, I was qualified to write a comparison.

Windows Vista

Vista is not bad. XP’s release was far worse with regard to stability and security. Any new OS is going to endure some initial bugginess. Every time a Linux distribution comes out with a new release, there is a flurry of forum activity as enthusiasts try to get the new software to work with a variety of hardware setups, and over time the originally buggy system develops into a rather hardy platform. The same hiccups are present with any Windows release. The progression is always the same, and if Microsoft gives Vista the attention it needs, in time it will grow from unstable newcomer to old reliable. But it’s not there yet, and won’t be for a while.
Pros

• Comparatively future proof: New hardware will work on it, and Microsoft will support it with updates.
• Well-organized: The “start” menu is the best yet, the Control Panel is logically organized and the overall interface is quite nice.

Cons

• Some incompatibilities with older hardware.
• Hefty system requirements are not ideal if you want the best in performance.

Linux

This was the second OS I tried on my T61p. First was OpenSUSE 10.3 and then after glancing at Fedora 8 I went with Ubuntu 7.10: Gutsy Gibbon. Resources like ThinkWiki made setup a lot less frustrating. The Linux experience is at once fun and annoying. The software management is second to none — so long as you never venture beyond the “supported” category of software. But sticking to what’s “supported” is the hard part. The kinds of features and functionality the average desktop needs requires some non-free addons to a Linux system, and if you want to use bleeding edge hardware like the T61p, you’ll have to make some tough choices. If you go with the unsupported nVidia drivers, there is no logical way to roll them back. There are a dozen little tics about a Linux system like this. To properly manipulate the system, you must do a lot of reading on message boards and mailing lists to learn how to do it.

The Linux desktop has made some serious leaps forward in usability, but it is still too easy to break, too hard to fix, too complex, and too arbitrary. Linux is what you should use when you enjoy learning the system, love the technology and value the Open Source philosophy, all for their own sakes. If I had time for a Linux hobby on top of all the other things I want to do, I probably would have stuck with it. For the time being, it is just too unpredictable on hardware this new.

Pros

• Very enjoyable user experience once you finally get it all working, and avoid doing anything you don’t already know how to undo.
• Extremely flexible: Matches, if not surpasses, Windows Vista visually, but can also be scaled down.
• Worked with my microphone when Vista didn’t.
• Can do anything… if you read long enough.
• Improves the longer you use it.

Cons

• It Takes your technical proficiency for granted and won’t corral you toward the tool you want, the way Windows does.
• Getting something as simple as sound figured out can take hours of research.
• A lot of work goes into getting a Linux system just the way you like it. Effort that could be better spent on something productive.
• Too many hacks involved in getting extras like certain Java applications, or video codecs you just took for granted before, working right (ex: TalkShoe) when they should take no extra thought. Lots of this isn’t the fault of Linux, but the fault of third parties refusing to support it.

Windows XP Professional

Finally, I went back to Windows XP. I remember how things were around 2001-2003, while XP was still new. The stable old workhorse all the smart people were using was Windows 2000, while the newborn XP was foisted on all the unwitting guinea pigs who bought new computers. Technophiles mocked the new look and moaned about the interface changes and “bloated” system requirements. Not unlike what we’re seeing in reaction to Vista. Windows XP has the advantage of age: it’s been tried and tested for the last 7 years and there are known fixes for just about everything. It supports all the things I want, and it has an even smaller system footprint than most default Linux desktop installations. I actually have over 2 gigabytes of RAM left over while running several browser tabs, my email program, GIMP and Audacity all at once. Nothing slows your machine worse than when you run out of RAM and the OS starts using the pagefile or swap space.

Pros

• Almost nothing is incompatible with it
• Extremely fast if you have Vista-capable computer.
• Stable, finally.
• Did I mention the smaller system footprint makes it incredibly fast?

Cons

• Not exactly future-proof as it is no longer the “current” Microsoft OS. (But then, if you have programs and hardware that already do everything you want, why worry?)
• Lackluster UI if you care about eye candy.

Conclusion

For broadest compatibility, fastest performance and stablest environment, Windows XP is still king. The opportunity for the Linux desktop to make some inroads is bigger than ever, because it can almost match Vista for interface usability and eye candy, while not being much worse in the way of hardware compatibility. If you have faith Microsoft will finish the product they started, and want a usable, well-organized, modern and future-proof OS now, Vista is for you. If you prefer to tinker, yet still want something that gets the job done, go with Linux. You’ll learn a lot about your computer. Almost any flavor will do, though Debian-based ones, like Ubuntu, are rather nice right now.

Tags: windows xp vista linux vs

This entry was posted on Monday, April 7th, 2008 at 11:17 pm and is filed under Electrons, Linux. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.