Comparison: Linux vs. Windows

Both Windows and Linux come in many flavors. Windows has two main lines: "Win9x", which consists of Windows 95, 98, 98SE and Me, and "NT class" which consists of Windows NT, 2000 and XP. Windows actually started, in the old days, with version 3.x which pre-dated Windows 95 by a few years. The flavors of Linux are referred to as distributions (sometimes shortened to distros). All the flavors of Windows come from Microsoft, the various distributions of Linux come from different companies. 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. The difference between Linux distributions will be less obvious to a less technical user and more obvious to a more technical user.