January 12, 2009 at 4:27 pm | In Uncategorized |
Microsoft has released Windows 7 beta to the public for free download. Those who avail of this free download and install Windows 7 beta can use it till August 2009 - nearly for a year. Initial reviews of Windows 7 are overwhelmingly positive. Almost all people who have tried out Windows 7 say it has a whole lot of new user friendly features built in and it is a lot more stable than Windows Vista. But as an avid Linux user, I am forced to ponder - All these purportedly new features that Windows 7 touts as revolutionary has already been there in Linux, more specifically in GNOME and KDE desktops.
Let’s take a glance at the new features of Windows 7. Microsoft says it is more energy efficient and has driver support for lot more devices. On the user interface front, Windows 7 sports a redesigned task bar, Jump lists which allow you open documents and quickly switch between them, thumbnails of applications when you hover your mouse on the task bar, a redesigned action center which provides notifications of updates and system status, an improved and more powerful User Account Control (UAC), just to name a few. Of course, all the reviews we can find on the net claim that Windows 7 boots very fast, some say under 20 seconds, when Windows Vista takes over 45 seconds to boot up.
While I do commend Microsoft for rolling out a robust operating system in Windows 7 - albeit still a beta version, I am forced to ask this question. Why should a Linux user shift to using Windows 7?
GNOME / KDE Linux users are already enjoying all these features in one form or other. Lets compare side by side the Windows 7 features as listed on the official Microsoft Windows 7 webpage and the equivalent features in Linux.
Improved Taskbar and full screen previews
The following are the taskbars of Windows 7 and KDE 4.
Windows 7 redesigned taskbar
KDE 4 Taskbar in Linux
… And here are the notification balloons of Windows 7 and Ubuntu Linux.
Improved Notification balloon for Windows 7
Ubuntu GNOME Notification Balloon
Redesigned Start Menu
The start menu in Windows 7 has been redesigned. Check out the equivalent start menu of KDE 4.
New Windows 7 Start menu
KDE 4 Start Menu
New ways to work with windows
In Windows 7, the special effects have been refined to make them more user friendly. For example, Microsoft states on its Windows 7 website - and I quote :
To see all your desktop gadgets, just drag your mouse to the lower right corner of your desktop. That’ll make all the open Windows transparent—making your desktop, and the gadgets on it, immediately visible. Want to minimize all your windows? One click and it’s done.
Linux has been at the forefront for special effects on the desktop for some time now. There is Compiz and KWin which provide even more functionality than Windows 7, by bringing all the eye candy and user friendly special effects that make working on your desktop a really enjoyable proposition.
Web browsing - Internet Explorer 8
Internet Explorer 8 has made marked improvements from its predecessors. Some of the features of IE8 worth noting are instant search, accelerators and web slices which provide upto date information at the users fingertips.
But then Linux has an equally robust collection of web browsers in Mozilla Firefox 3.0 and Opera 9.5 which are standards compliant. More over you can extend the functionality of Firefox to behave anyway you want it to, using third party addons.
Windows Live
Windows Live provides a set of utilities which allow you to use your computer in a more productive way. Windows Live Essentials are a set of free applications provided by Microsoft for Windows users. The essential tools consist of Windows Live Messenger, Photo Gallery, Mail client, Writer, Movie Maker and so on. In effect Windows Live provides the same features for the web that Google provides for free such as Google Chat, Picasa, GMail (which can function as a local client if you have Google Gears installed), Google Docs and so on, which are available for Linux users too. More over, Linux has a diverse collection of open source software to accomplish all these tasks.
Better device management
In Windows 7, Microsoft has consolidated all the devices into a single location. And depicting each device is simplified using corresponding beautiful pictures of the devices that are detected. Come to think of it, the last time I opened KDE 4.0 in Linux, I found more or less the same feature in KDE too. Linux may not support the sheer number of devices supported by Windows 7, but Linux does detect a huge number of commonly used devices which puts it at par with Windows 7.
HomeGroup
HomeGroup translates to easiness in setting up a network between two or more computers running Windows 7. Microsoft says HomeGroup makes it easier to connect to other computers and devices on a wireless home network, so you can share files, photos, music, and printers throughout your home. A really nice and useful feature indeed.
But you can accomplish the same in Linux too. The network manager GUIs which many main stream Linux distributions sport makes it childs play to setup a home network. More over, you are not tied to one particular Linux distribution rather you can share files between multiple PCs running different flavors of Linux distributions.
Minimum Hardware Specifications
To run Windows 7 flawlessly on your machine, Microsoft recommends a machine which has the following specifications.
- 1 GHz 32-bit or 64-bit processor
- 1 GB of system memory
- 16 GB of available disk space
- Support for DirectX 9 graphics with 128 MB memory (to enable the Aero theme)
- DVD-R/W Drive and
- Internet access (to download the Beta and get updates)
Come to think of it, Linux, with all the above mentioned features run flawlessly on a machine which has half the specifications listed above.
So what is the verdict ?
Yes Windows has come a long way from the BSOD days of Windows 98. Windows 7 Beta is no doubt a very robust operating system. But all things said, why would anybody go out of the way to buy any operating system when you have access to Linux which has all the features mentioned above, and you also get it at an unbeatable price - Free as in Freedom and free as in beer.
