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Here seems as good a point as any to start reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Multi-user[^]
Concurrent multi-user and ability to modify shared libraries used by all seem like 2 important points of distinction.
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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What a contrived example. Has that been useful to you?
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If you've a better example, applicable to a larger audience I'm all ears.
Yes - I've saved a machine more than once by nuking the account that had installed incompatible and unstable libraries.
Used to use the concurrent multi-user abilities on DEC Alphas.
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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enhzflep wrote: If you've a better example, applicable to a larger audience I'm all ears.
Why should I be providing better examples, when I'm the one who's befuddled by a claim that Windows doesn't have "real" multi-user support? It's not up to me to prove somebody else's point.
enhzflep wrote: Yes - I've saved a machine more than once by nuking the account that had installed incompatible and unstable libraries.
Sounds drastic. What happened, a user installed an app that changed system libraries that affected OS stability?
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it works pretty much but the same, but linux is free and you can compile it yourself!
For some it's daunting.. For some it's like... I just made my freaking OS, I'm a genius! sky is the limit!
Apart from that it can make sense from device manufacturer point of view, why pay for windows when your device will work just as well on linux...
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Super Lloyd wrote: your device will work just as well on linux
After you have spent the past week searching for a video fdriver that actually works.
Yes, I know that does not happen so much now, but you do need to be more than reasonably computer literate to build and install it.
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You misunderstood me.
Your device (as in you, Richard MacCutchan) won't work as well.
But CompanyX deviceY with customized linux (by companyX to manage deviceY) will work just as well. Though they will have to spend R&D tailoring the linux distor, it might be less that writing a Windows driver + buying the Windows license for each device.
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No I didn't misunderstand. I worked extensively on Linux systems in the last few years of my professional career, and know from first-hand experience some of the difficulties associated with adding third-party devices to the system.
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OK, ok, I feel your pain! 
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The pain stopped as soon as the company decided they no longer needed my services. 
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Super Lloyd wrote: For some it's like...I just made my freaking OS, I'm a genius!
No they didn't and no they're not, unless of course they coded it themselves. It just proves they are masochists 
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So what's your point?
You tell them! I don't care and I know!
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There is no market for Linux. Fat rich clients want Windows and Windows Server.
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So how does RedHat make their money then? With a printer perhaps?
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Is there supposed to be a point to your link?
I asked you how RedHat makes its money and you link me to a site that gives a market share report for desktop browsers.
Perhaps you copy/pasted the wrong address?
"When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." - John Lennon
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Vaclav_Sal wrote: Where can I get a "real scoop" on HOW Linux architecture / operation etc differs from WIndowze?
Windows: Apps that you download just work.
*Nix: Apps that you download won't work unless you compile them for your machine, but first you'll have to sudo apt-update to get the latest stuff for your operating system, then download all the new dependencies for the software you want to install, then cross your fingers and toes and dick and pray that the code compiles, and if you're really lucky, then you can run the app.
That's the difference.
Marc
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You are likely confusing the OS with the UI.
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From the kernel perspective the two operating systems are remarkably similar.
From user mode they are more different, thought I don't know enough about Linux user mode to really comment, but the 'everything is a file' mentality on Linux seems to be the dominant one. So the entire structure of say the device tree is file based.
At a philosophical level Linux is more pragmatic, windows more idealistic, so while you might admire the structure of the windows OS, Linux is more obvious, and easier to work with.
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OK, some of the other answers are the typical: "Let me try and sell you on my favourite" ... but that's not what you asked for is it? Well, let's look at the exact scenario you're referring to: Event loops (at least as I understand it the interactive message loops like in a GUI). In both Win&Lin the basic idea is similar (for that matter pretty much the same thing in UNIX and OSX too), the program/process awaits some message sent from the kernel to indicate that something happened. Both (and basically all mainstream) OSs are event driven in that they read "events" from some IO process and then pass them on to whatever processes are waiting for them.
It's just in the details where this differs. E.g. in Windows the process must call the GetMessage function, which simply blocks until a message has been received, at which time it sends that to the process and the process continues with its internal loop. In Linux you'd most basically attach in a similar manner to any one of the XWindows Library's XNextEvent set of functions (depending on exactly what type of "event" you're expecting).
Though note, mostly (at least these days) you'd not go into that sort of detail. E.g. some of the GUI frameworks would abstract away this "looping and waiting" idea by you simply attaching any of your process' functions to an event opened by that framework/toolkit. It would then (behind the scenes) perform the message loop and call your function if the event it is attached to compares to the current message. This pretty much happens in all newer GUI frameworks, both Windows (e.g. with DotNet's WinForms/WPF) as well as Linux (e.g. GTK).
Actually this is one of the notable exceptions from the usual idea of Unix (and derivatives): Everything is a "file" and can be accessed as if you're reading/writing a file. E.g. do some searching about POSIX's select and pselect calls (or perhaps reading per byte from select and then writing that into a pipe which is then read by another thread in your program as a file). At least if you're going to go into the very kernel-level message handling, usually though you'd not need to go that far for basic server/desktop programs. BTW, if you use GTK+ as your GUI toolkit you're basically just opening a "file" to show that your program is interested in "that event" - thus your loop reads the file for any new data (basically same principle as Windows' GetMessage call).
Well, that's a very long discussion on something rather trivial, not to mention usually not even necessary to think about (at least not when using some toolkits). I'd highly recommend you do some serious web searching / research on the exact things you're interested in. You could probably do an honours degree on just the basic differences between Win and Lin (especially if comparing such in this level of nuance).
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Thank you,
pretty nice explanations. I'll do some more reading on the subject.
My main concern is how applications developed in and for Windows ( Atmels Studio "based " on Visual Studio) will work in Linux.
But I need to hit the books first.
Thanks
Vaclav
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Usually a specific program is designed to work through the libraries & entry points of a specific OS. Atmel is an IDE with a copy of the GCC compiler to compile C/C++ sources. The main issue would be the interface (i.e. GUI) which is probably some sort of WinForms interaction, this tends to be the biggest headache: how to get the GUI to work on another OS which doesn't have those same libraries / entry points. Usually if it's just a CLI tool it's a lot easier - at worst just a re-compile with minor tweaks for stuff such as default paths and CLI argument formatting.
However, Atmel does seem to have a toolchain specifically compiled for Linux: http://www.atmel.com/tools/atmelavrtoolchainforlinux.aspx[^]. Though it doesn't seem to include the GUI portions - i.e. it might only be command-line tools and you'd then use some external editor to actually write your source code.
However, you may just be in luck. There's two possibilities you could try: (1) through WINE (which basically adds those same libraries & entry points onto Linux, at least to the extent where the guys from Wine could figure out just what and how Microsoft did); or (2) if the editor is written for DotNet (e.g. C#) you could possibly run it through Mono (at least if it's written to use WinForms instead of WPF).
Sorry, I've never used Atmels before - can't say much about it myself.
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You're already a fanboi, given your consistent misspelling of 'Windows'. Go figure it out yourself, and leave the grownups here alone.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Some times I'm not coding. (Really it does happen!) I just want to watch a couple of cat videos and check my email. I've done that in Linux and Windows, sort of so what there. There was not a huge difference in the experience. At work I have to code C# on a Windows machine; at home I use Linux to program my Arduino with my Raspberry Pi. It's just about tool for the job. Not being a religious person it doesn't make sense to worship Gates or Torvalds.
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