My own experience is that XP does not crash much and requires very
little maintenance. And is not particularly insecure, in spite of the
wide spread rep. As I said, I am talking about MY experience with XP
not anyone else's. I find that trying to become as familiar with Linux
and Mac as I am with XP is more of a problem than to me on my Mac and
Linux machines than any security problem with XP.

> so you are building on a faulty base, but I post it for the few who
> cannot part with Windows but want to try Linux. Here is something to
> try:

The question here is HOW would you virtualize Linux on Windows?

The comments were made to contrast with Linux which can crash, but seldom does
if you are using stable releases. Linux does not need routine maintenance such
as defragging the hard drive or cleaning the registry which Windows boxes do. As
for security, it may be improved but it is still an ongoing headache for Windows
users who are forever patching, rebooting, running all kinds of resource hogging
antivirus, antitrojan, antimalware, antispyware programs in the background which
are by and large unnecessary in Linux. Certainly if you do use anti-anything in
Linux it is discreet and requires little effort once it is setup. And in Linux
you never need to reboot a Linux box unless you do a major upgrade and even then
it is optional and you are never pestered every ten minutes to reboot.

Therefore my comments stand. It is preferrable to run Windows on a Linux box
than to do the reverse unless you have good reasons for doing otherwise. Also
keep in mind that Linux can read and write to NTFS and FAT partitions while
Windows is still pretty blind and dumb when it comes to reading EXT or Rieser
formats. It can be achieved through third party programs, but the OS itself is
not capable. It has been a long time since MS promised greater operability
between Linux and Windows platforms, but they have failed to deliver on their
promises.

I posted the article as an aid for those who want to try it out. It is not a
panacea. There will be problems which ever way you choose to go. I prefer the VM
route for many reasons. The best one is that you can clone them and start over
if Windows becomes infected or the registry corrupts.

I'm fascinated by this comment. Why would a Linux system not require
defragmentation of the hard drive? Does Linux do this automatically?

I would think that any machine would eventually fragment the hard
drive as files are modified, deleted, etc.

How is Linux different? I'm not nearly so foolish to say it ain't so.
I'm just wondering how?

Indeed, Linux defragments itself. And it checks itself upon startup every
20-30 start ups.

I think we all may be wondering about that claim and await with
eager anticiapation for Roy to tell us how linux does that better?

Linux uses a different approach to file systems. There are several different
formats for Linux. Ext2 and ext3 are most common. There is an ext4 in
development. There is also ReiserFS which is what I use with Reiser4 in
development. I am no expert, but this is my understanding.

Basically Windows files systems start at the beginning of the drive and add
files continuously from there. As files are added the old files have no room to
grow so they add fragments in other locations using the first available
location. One file can therefore become spread in several different locations
which causes the system to slow down over time as the drive continually is
seeking various parts of the file. Defragmenting is needed to pull all of the
parts together into one contiguous block. Of course the process of fragmentation
begins all over once again.

Linux file systems do not place new files right next to previous ones. It
spreads them out, allowing each file room to grow. As files grow closer together
they can be moved into larger available blocks. Linux manages this in the
background for the most part. Drives can become fragmented as the drive
approaches 80% its capacity as there is little physical space to put large
files. As mentioned by someone else it does periodic checks at boot up to
maintain overall integrity. Linux uses a journalled file system (Reiser, ext3,
but not ext2). This means that changes to files are logged so that if the power
goes out the file system is less likely to become corrupted.

Linux does not need to worry about the registry either because it does not have
one. Instead files are stored in a hierarchical file system where the
directories have significance and the individual programs have their own
configuration files. Linux knows where to look because of what directory the
files are stored in. If a config file is corrupted, and it can happen, it does
not affect other programs or the OS in the same way that a corrupted central
registry can.

Linux is different. Notice that I did not say better. You can mess up any file
system no matter how good if you are not careful. And with diligence Windows
file systems and registry can be kept in good shape. The problem is that many
novice Windows users do not exercise diligence.

Windows has had to make compromises in order to keep backward compatibility with
previous versions. Their FAT file system is very old, some would say venerable
as it is still in use. NTFS suffers from fragmentation as any XP user can
attest. Vista was supposed to have a new FS called WinFS, but it was one of the
things they cut. Again it is hard for MS to make a break because Windows users
want backward compatibility. The next Windows OS called Windows 7 should be
different. I hear on the blogosphere (or rumor mill) that it is being fast
tracked due to problems with Vista. It is said to be modular and people are
likening it to what Apple did when they moved to a BSD based OS. We shall see.
As we learned from Vista, MS will cut things at the last minute, especially if
they are pushing up the release date.

Here is an interesting blog from a KDE developer griping about the kernel and
how it slows KDE down: http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/2270

It is all a matter of perspective. If we think that Linux is perfect then it
can't get better. There are always things to improve upon.

Here is a fairly untechnical description of the ext file system:
www.nondot.org/sabre/os/files/FileSystems/ext2fs/