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Which Is Better - Windows or Linux?
The answer, judging by a quick survey of industry headlines, seems obvious: It must be Linux. Every week brings a new announcement of yet another Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT - news) security fix. To best describe the number of security bulletins the software giant puts out, the word that jumps to mind is "blizzard."
So it comes as quite a surprise that Linux is far more prone to problems than Windows -- at least, judging by one side-by-side comparison (described later in this report). In any case, answering the question of which OS wins the dubious "Bug" award requires plenty of twists and turns.
It Might Be Microsoft
"There's a perception that the development process that Microsoft uses has not been a sound one in terms of potential back-door types of security breaches," Gartner analyst George Weiss told NewsFactor. The company's "ability to address and fix the problems in a very timely manner" also has been questioned, he said.
And IDC analyst Dan Kusnetzky pointed to "a perception that Windows 95 and Windows NT were buggy. Microsoft says Windows 2000 (news - web sites) and its follow-on products are significantly better," he told NewsFactor, "but when we do surveys, people seem to still hold on to the old perception: They class Windows NT and Windows 2000 roughly the same for reliability. "Which I think is more of a marketing problem for Microsoft than a reality," Kusnetzky said.
Then Again...
Indeed, the question of what is "reality" versus what is a "marketing problem" is just one of many issues that cloud the discussion of which OS is buggier.
The two OSes come to market in very different ways. Windows is run by one central company; Linux -- while based on a single central kernel -- has many different distributions produced by a variety of companies and groups.
So, as Linux proponents point out, bugs may show up in two different distributions -- say, in products put out by Red Hat (Nasdaq: RHAT - news) and SuSE -- but those two reported problems are in reality just one bug in the central kernel. In the Windows world, two bugs really are two different bugs.
Also, "the Linux-Unix (news - web sites) OS is largely in the server environment, where the vast majority of Windows installations are in the client environment," IDC analyst Chris Christiansen told NewsFactor. The difference in technical skills in those two user bases could greatly influence perceptions of OS stability.
"The scrutiny of the operating systems [is] different," Christiansen said. "There's a community within Unix-Linux that has grown to increase its stability, where finding the bugs is considered a positive thing. Whereas, with Windows, there's a rather aggressive community trying to find bugs to denigrate Microsoft and Windows."
It Might Be Linux
To perform an apples-to-apples comparison, it is necessary to take a look at examples of the two OSes that are essentially equivalent. Red Hat 7.2 and Window XP Professional were released at about the same time and perform similar functions. Red Hat has the resources to hire top programmers and create quality product and so can be considered on par with a well-financed company like Microsoft.
A count of the problems reported for XP Professional is available on the Microsoft Web page that lists all of its security bulletins. Use the pull-down menu to find the bulletins for Windows XP (news - web sites) Professional. The list starts in November 2001. In the 18 months since then, 27 bulletins about security flaws or other bugs have been posted for Professional XP.
To count the fixes and bugs for Red Hat Linux 7.2, go to the company's errata page and begin counting from November 2001. (The list starts two months earlier, but for the sake of an apples-to-apples comparison the first two months can be excluded.) From November 2001 until now, the company has issued 158 security bulletins or bug fixes (not counting the enhancements listed on that page).
Compare the results: Professional XP with 27 fixes; Red Hat Linux 7.2 with 158. Based on that count, Linux is substantially more problem-prone than Windows.
Quality of Measurement
Not so fast. "A list of reported bugs and their fixes really isn't satisfactory as a mechanism to report on the quality of the code," Kusnetzky said. "That's just one of many metrics."
A bug count is limited, Weiss echoed, "because you have to look at it on a qualitative basis ... what those bugs might mean in terms of, say, security, or performance, or other issues." You have to consider whether "they were minor in nature, easily fixable, or whether they had significant ramifications that opened up the user to major breaches," he said.
A single operator controlling an OS has the discretion to list bugs, though it might not be desirable to expose a problem until there is a solution for it, Forrester analyst Stacey Quandt told NewsFactor.
"You have to define bugs," said Joseph Eckert, communications director for leading Linux vendor SuSE. "If you're talking viruses, there is no known, official ... 'virus' for Linux," he told NewsFactor. Furthermore, Linux has "a lot of the inherent stability, security and robustness that people have come to expect from Unix," he pointed out.
Multiple Variables
Voicing an opinion found throughout the analyst community, Quandt noted that "it's difficult to say which OS has more problems," adding that many variables come into play when comparing OSes.
"It's hard to say," agreed Kusnetzky. In the basketful of variables, there is the fact that "in the case of Windows, the only company that can respond is Microsoft. In the open-source community, it's a whole community that potentially could respond, which means, at least in theory, response may be faster," he said, but "it may not be better."
Christiansen went so far as to say the question of which OS is more bug-prone is irrelevant.
"It's difficult to make that judgment unless you're making it in the context of a specific environment, a specific set of applications and a specific user base," he said. However, "the lack of logic has never stopped people from making the comparison."