Separation of the GUI and the Kernel

Taking a cue from the Macintosh design concept, Windows developers integrated the graphical user interface (GUI) with the core operating system. One simply doesn"t exist without the other. The benefit to this coupling of the operating system and the user interface is consistency in the appearance of the system. Although Microsoft does not impose rules as strict as Apple’s with respect to the appearance of applications, most developers tend to stick with a basic look and feel among applications.

On the other hand, Linux  has kept the two elements—user interface and operating system—separate. The X Window System interface(GUI) is run as a user-level application, which makes it more stable. If the GUI (which is very complex for both Windows and Linux) fails, Linux’s core does not go down with it unlike that of the windows. The X Window System also differs from the windows 2000 GUI in that it isn’t a complete user interface in itself but rather It only defines how basic objects should be drawn and manipulated on the screen.

NOTE:-
Unfortunately, Due to the lack of tight integration of the X Window System into Linux has a downside. While the operating system is very robust, X Windows is somewhat more sensitive to problems with certain hardware or graphics settings. The Linux version of the “three-finger salute” is CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE, which kills X.

The most significant feature of the X Window System lies in its ability to transmit windows across a network and display them on another workstation’s screen. This allows a user sitting on Host A to log in to Host B (remote connection), run an application on Host B, and have all of the output routed back to Host A. It is possible for two people to be logged in to the same machine, running a Linux equivalent of Microsoft Word (such as OpenOffice, WordPerfect, or StarOffice) at the same time. Even when using Terminal Services, Windows 2000 and Windows XP users are limited to a single user at a time running a given application and using the display.

In addition to the X Windows core, a window manager is needed to create a useful environment. Most Linux distributions (including Red Hat) come with several window managers and include support for GNOME and KDE, both of which are available on other variants of UNIX as well. When set as default, either GNOME or  KDE offers an environment that is friendly even to the casual Windows user.

So which is better—Windows 2000 or Linux—and why? That depends on what you are trying to do. The integrated environment provided by Windows 2000 is convenient, and because it is more standardized, it is less complex than Linux, but it lacks the X Windows feature that allows applications to display their windows across the network on other workstations. Windows 2000’s GUI is consistent but cannot be turned off, whereas X Windows doesn’t have to be running (and consuming valuable memory) on a server.