This is a non-biased and incomplete comparison of Linux and Windows. It can serve as an introduction to Linux for Windows users. I created it while learning about Linux as a sort of personal cheat-sheet. The topics are in no particular order.

TOPICS: Flavors, Graphical User Interface, Text Mode Interface, Cost, Getting Linux, Low cost laptops, Installing, Running Linux Without Installing It, Application Software, Crossing the OS Boundary, Viruses and Spyware, Users and Passwords, Bugs, Is It Soup Yet?, He's Dead Jim, Supported Hardware Devices, Hardware the OS Runs On, Clustering, Multiple Users, Networking, Hard Disk Partitions, Swap Files, File Systems, File Hierarchy, Hidden Files, Case, Modems, Scripting, Printer Drivers, Help, User Data, Shutting Down, 11 Linux-only Things, Choosing Linux vs. Windows, My 2 cents, Related Links

Flavors

Both Windows and Linux come in many flavors. All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris, etc. ).

Windows has two main lines. The older flavors are referred to as "Win9x" and consist of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me. The newer flavors are referred to as "NT class" and consist of Windows NT3, NT4, 2000, XP and Vista. Going back in time, Windows 3.x preceded Windows 95 by a few years. And before that, there were earlier versons of Windows, but they were not popular. Microsoft no longer supports Windows NT3, NT4, all the 9x versions and of course anything older. Support for Windows 2000 is partial.

The flavors of Linux are referred to as distributions (often shortened to "distros").

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