Differences between Fedora & XP

Three basic differences:

1. Linux is Unix-compatible. Windows is not. Linux uses many terminal commands that can also be found in other Unix-like OS's, like Mac OS. For example, sudo fsck /dev/sda1 will check the file system on your first hard disk. That command will also work on Mac OS, with the exception of /dev/sda1 being changed to simply /, or /Volumes/external-disk-you-want-to-check. There is no such command in Windows. And before you ask, that command is routinely mocked on many Linux web sites.

2. Fedora uses the GNOME desktop environment, but using a console command will let you change to another desktop environment, such as KDE or XFCE. In Windows, you have the WIndows desktop environment. That's it. There is no way to change it.

3. Linux is under constant, heavy development. All around the world, people send changes to the Linux kernel to different subsystem maintainers, who in turn send it to core kernel developers, like Alan Cox, Andrew Morton, or Sreekrishnan Venkateswaran. They send it to Linus Torvalds, who merges the changes (called 'commits') into the next mainline kernel release. This lets pretty much anyone who wants to make a change to the Linux kernel. In fact, recently, someone made a 220 line patch to the scheduler. Though the commit has yet to make it into the mainline kernel, (it's coming next release) Linux Torvalds himself congratulated the person who made the patch. Benchmarks are showing anywhere between a 10-60X increase in performance. That's the kind of thing that doesn't happen with Windows, and if someone makes something small, unobtrusive, and functional, Bill Gates doesn't congratulate the person who created it. That's the biggest difference between Linux and Windows- Linux is open, while Windows is largely closed.

P.S. can anyone get the numbering to work right? Damn you, markdown!!!!!