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this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2025
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Linux
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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Up until 95, Windows was mostly a desktop environment for DOS. From 95 to ME, Windows was an OS that used DOS as its bootloader and compatibility layer. Not sure how to put it, but it was simplistic and fundamentally different from Linux.
The thing with NT-based Windows (including modern editions) is that the underlying system is joined at the hip with the GUI. Whereas Linux with your choice of coreutils is a perfectly capable OS without the GUI, many features of Windows are only accessible through the GUI.
Given enough time and resources, pretty much anything exclusive to Windows could be ported to Linux and vice versa. A lot of the difference just comes down to history and the ensuing conventions, workflows, and file hierarchies.
Even if we stripped out all the cruft and spaghetti code from Windows, there would be lots of nasty idiosyncrasies in its design, informed by its OS/2 and VMS (see Dave Cutler) heritage, profit maximization, revolving door of devs and interns, and years of bending over backwards to accommodate legacy programs.