On 7/23/2011 12:56 PM, dvdpst wrote:
> Well yes. But I was talking about financial and all that. Linux does have
> more programs that you can customize
> then windows does. And now the best part. IT'S ALL FREE.....
>
> david
>
What does Free mean in Linux?
1) Free as in 'free beer' ...you don't have to pay for the software.
2) More significant, free as in the source code being freely available
to anyone who wishes to have a copy, or to rewrite/modify the source code
This is a hugely important matter. The code to computer programs in
Linux, are 'open source', which means that programmers can examine and
modify other programmer's code, study it, learn from it, and re-use it
in their own applications.
Also, it means that Open Source programmers have a huge community of
programmers available to examine the code from many different angles,
and find/correct bugs in the code, making the applications much more
robust, over time.
Microsoft uses the Closed Source model. All (most anyway, IIRC, I
believe they have released some code for some apps) of their source code
is a closely guarded secret, and the Microsoft programmers have to sign
confidentiality agreements, that they will not make the source code public.
This limits the number of eyes on the code to a much smaller number,
making, in many cases, the code less robust.
See: http://www.opensource.org/ ...and: http://www.fsf.org/
--
http://www.robertwittig.com/
http://robertwittig.net/
http://robertwittig.org/
.
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