I don't use OSX so I have nothing to say there.Īt their core, the main difference between a Linux, MacOS and Windows machine is the kernel in use, Windows uses the NT kernel (created and maintained by microsoft), MacOS uses a modified version of the BSD kernel (which apple calls "Darwin"), and all Linux OSs must by definition run on the Linux kernel.Ī step higher, and we find that the userland of the three types of system vary dramatically. Most commercial GUI-software is written for Windows (related to the above point) Much better for desktop-use in general than Linux
Windows, and even less suitable for gaming in generalĪlmost all PC-hardware have drivers for Windows (the supported Windows-version depends on the release-date of the hardware, though) Not nearly as smooth sailing as a desktop as e.g. servers and server-farmsĮxcellent choice for embedded systems and hardware-developmentĮxtreme scalability, from the lowest-end, 100MHz MIPS-devices to 1000+ core, multi-gigahertz monsters and across a wide variety of architectures Totally customizable, all the way from the kernel itself, the whole boot-process and up to complete desktop-environmentsĮxcellent for cases where you need rock-solid long-term stability and remote-manageability, like e.g. From a very, very general point of view, I'd give Linux the following: I use both Windows and Linux all the time, and yet, I have a hard time trying to distill the differences to just a bullet-list of "key differences." There are so, so many really major differences that such distillations don't really make much sense and that's before we even consider the fact that "Linux" in and of itself is a very broad concept and can literally mean anything from extremely compact, single-purpose embedded designs to humongously parallelized supercomputer-OSes.