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Case Study - Windows XP vs. LINUX

Flavors
Both Windows and Linux come in many flavors. All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies (i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris, etc. ).
Windows has two main lines. The older flavors are referred to as "Win9x" and consist of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me. The newer flavors are referred to as "NT class" and consist of Windows NT3, NT4, 2000, XP and Vista. Going back in time, Windows 3.x preceded Windows 95 by a few years.
The flavors of Linux are referred to as distributions (often shortened to "distros"). All the Linux distributions released around the same time frame will use the same kernel (the guts of the Operating System). They differ in the add-on software provided, GUI, install process, price, documentation and technical support. Both Linux and Windows come in desktop and server editions.

Cost
For desktop or home use, Linux is very cheap or free, Windows is expensive. For server use, Linux is very cheap compared to Windows. Microsoft allows a single copy of Windows to be used on only one computer. Starting with Windows XP, they use software to enforce this rule (Windows Product Activation at first, later Genuine Windows). In contrast, once you have purchased Linux, you can run it on any number of computers for no additional charge.

The upgrade edition of Windows XP Home Edition sells for about $100, XP Professional is about $200. The "full" version of XP Home is about $200, the full version of XP Professional is $300.

You can purchase assorted distributions of Linux in a box with a CD and manuals and technical support for around $40 to $80 (some distributions may be less, others may be more).

Graphical User Interface
Both Linux and Windows provide a GUI and a command line interface. The Windows GUI has changed from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95 (drastically) to Windows 2000 (slightly) to Windows XP (fairly large) and is slated to change again with the next version of Windows, the one that will replace XP. Windows XP has a themes feature that offers some customization of the look and feel of the GUI.
Linux typically provides two GUIs, KDE and Gnome. See a screen shot of Lycoris and Lindows in action from the Wal-Mart web site. The lynucs.org web site has examples of many substantially different Linux GUIs. Of the major Linux distributions, Lindows has made their user interface look more like Windows than the others.

Networking
They both do TCP/IP. Linux can do Windows networking, which means that a Linux computer can appear on a network of Windows computers and share its files and printers. Linux machines can participate on a Windows based network and vice versa.

Multiple Users
Linux is a multi-user system, Windows is not. That is, Windows is designed to be used by one person at a time. Databases running under Windows allow concurrent access by multiple users, but the Operating System itself is designed to deal with a single human being at a time. Linux, like all Unix variants, is designed to handle multiple concurrent users. Windows, of course, can run many programs concurrently, as can Linux. There is a multi-user version of Windows called Terminal Server but this is not the Windows pre-installed on personal computers.

File Systems
Windows uses FAT12, FAT16, FAT32 and/or NTFS with NTFS almost always being the best choice. The FATx file systems are older and have assorted limitations on file and partition size that make them problematical in the current environment. Linux also has a number of its own native file systems. The default file system for Linux used to be ext2, now it is typically ext3. Other supported file systems includes XFS, JFS, JFFS and Reiser3. Reiser4 is in development.

Shutting Down
Both have to be told to shut down and for the same reason, to quiesce in-flight activity in an orderly manner. You shut down Windows thru the Start button, then select Shutdown. In both the KDE and Gnome GUIs for Linux, you shut the system down by first logging out (equivalent to logging off in Windows). In Gnome, you select the Halt option, in KDE, the shutdown option. Linux can also be shut down from a command prompt using the shutdown command which can either shut the system down immediately or be told to shut it down at some time in the future. Windows XP also has a shutdown command, earlier versions of Windows did not

User Data
Windows allows programs to store user information (files and settings) anywhere. This makes it impossibly hard to backup user data files and settings and to switch to a new computer. In contrast, Linux stores all user data in the home directory making it much easier to migrate from an old computer to a new one. If home directories are segregated in their own partition, you can even upgrade from one version of Linux to another without having to migrate user data and settings.

I got this from written below link:-
Linux vs Windows (a comparison)
www.michaelhorowitz.com/Linux.vs.Windows.html