What is it that Linux can do but not Windows?

After years of using Linux only I recent took on a new job that required me to use a Windows machine. I constantly come across thing that are trivial under Linux but are frustrating with Windows. For example maximise a command line window in Linux and it goes full screen, do the same with most Windows command line windows and goes full height but no wider. Too bad if the data you are looking at is more than 80 characters wide.

However one early experience stands out. When I moved from Windows 2000 to Windows XP my video capture card stopped working. The driver model had changed and the card manufacturer was not supplying new drivers for my ‘old’ card. I was expected to buy a new card to replace a perfectly good card.

Not long after that I upgraded the system to Linux and the card only partly worked, the video in worked but the tuner would not tune. This was the early days of Linux and could not find a solution online so I decided to get my hands dirty and see if I could fix it. Being open source I was able to find the source code for the card’s driver.

Reading it to understand how it worked I realised that it supported multiple tuner types but defaulted to one type if the tuner was not specified. Understanding how it worked I realised I simply needed to provide a tuner type for its configuration and it would work. I didn’t even need to change the source code, a one-line configuration change and it was back to full operation. Yes it took time and effort but it was possible to use it with Linux whereas to Windows it was junk to be thrown in the bin. I knew then I never wanted to go back to Windows, where usability was a function of money, not the inherent possibles of the hardware.