| CRITERIA | WINDOWS | LINUX | FreeBSD |
| Reliablity | Windows NT is not very reliable.The screen of death is synonymous with NT usage.But Microsoft has been marginally successful in addressing the reliablity problem with the Win 2k. | Reliablity is the main selling part of Linux.Servers on the Linux are known to stay up for years.However,disk I/O is non-synchronous by default,which is less reliable for transaction based operations.File System can be easily corrupted by system crash or power failure.But overall its quite dependable. | If it can run Yahoo!, its is definably reliable.There are numerous testimonials of servers with uptimes measured in years.The disk I/O is now optimised with the new file system and this OS is ideal for running transaction-based applications like databases. |
| Performance | Windows NT is adequate for routine workstation like applications,but it is unable to handle heavy network loads .But organisations like Dell are happy with NT,though even Microsoft uses FreeBSD for hotmail. | Linux performs well for most applications and is excellent as a network server ,though it has yet to prove its reliability in mission critical applications like FreeBSD has. | FreeBSD is the system of choice for high performance network applications.The world's busiest site ftp.cdrom.com, uses FreeBSD to serve more than 800GB/day of downloads.FreeBSD is used by Yahoo ! Xoom.com and many others as their main server operating systems. |
| Commercial Applications | No other application comes near Windows when you talk about applications.There are quite a few applications out there in the market that only run on windows. | Commercial Applications available for Linux are growing and many prominent companies like IBM,SGI,DELL have declared their support for the project. | The number of commercial applications avaliable for FreeBSD are very few and they cannot math the Windows application base.FreeBSD can also run programs compiled for Linux, SCO Unix and BSDi. |
| Developmental Environment | Developemental environments for Windows are available from many companies which include IBM, Inprise and Oracle.But the most popular ae from Microsoft itself.Practically all of these environments are almost always too costly for a programmer to buy for home use. | Linux includes all the same developmental tools as FreeBSD with compilers and interpreters for every common programming language,all the GNU programs ,including the powerful GNU C/C++ compiler. | FreeBSD includes lots of developmental tools and all of them are free.You get a complete C/C++ development system and Unix development tools for Java,HHTP,Perl,Python,Tcl/Tk,Awk.Sed.All come with the complete source code. |
| Support | Although support is available for Windows NT,you should br prepared to spend money.Because of the closed source nature of Windows NT there is no informal,free support available and bugs are fixed on Microsoft's schedule. | Since Linux became a buzzword many organisations have started offering professional support and there are many sites on the net where Linux questions are answered for free.Of course if you are good at coding you can tweak the source code directly. | Professional support for FreeBSD is largely free and Internet based.Many newsgroups and mailing lists offer informal support.Nowadays organisations such as www.freebsdmail.com offer wide range of support options. |
| Price | Win2k Pro Rs 8,250 Win2k Server costs you Rs 30,500(for 5-user license)
| Linux distributions can be downloaded for free. | FreeBSD can be downloaded for free on the Net or order a CD for about Rs 199. |