nux is open source (code) and multiple source (vendors). NT is proprietary. Open Source allows all and any aspects of Linux to be altered and improved by any competent programmer. The competition between vendors keeps customers happy by allowing market forces to motivate excellence. If the source code is on hand, a bug in Linux can be corrected with the GNU compiler. NT's Blue Screen of Death is fixed only by applying a service pack, when and if it comes out and if it solves that particular problem. NT crashes constantly; more than once a week is not uncommon. Linux 300-day uptimes are common. The best performance I have personally achieved on my NT Server is 12 days uptime, and when it crashed it was usually while doing nothing (and yes, the latest service pack was applied).(Author's note: I was afraid I would have to retract that statement. My NT server had been humming along flawlessly for the previous 10 days and, just as I was finishing a coding project for a client, the NT machine rebooted for no apparent reason.)Overall, Linux is less expensive. NT requires per-user licensing. Linux does not. Linux tools are often free and, generally, less hardware is required to run Linux, and it is often reported that it runs faster. Benchmarks show Linux at or ahead of NT in some tests and well behind in others. Generally the results are mixed and a bit confusing; there does not seem to be a clear winner. Linux is the more popular in many areas despite ambiguous performance results. Installed Web server surveys have Apache (Web server software) on Linux at over 60%, while NT is at about 20%. There is a question as to the stability of NT and its replacement, Windows 2000 Server. The application programming interface (API), the method of writing programs that use an operating system, is largely a new reworking of past versions as opposed to an evolved product. The Linux API is based on Unix, a decades-old standard, and proves itself stable, on a...
