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© FUOC • P07/M2101/02709 173 Free Software
9.9.2. Comparison with other operating systems
There is the proverb that says that all comparisons are odious; this is especially
true when comparing free software with proprietary software. The detailed x-
rays taken of Red Hat Linux and Debian were possible because they are exam-
ples of free software. Having access to the code (and to the other information
that has been provided in this chapter) is essential for studying the different
versions' number of lines, packages, programming languages, etc. But the ad-
vantages of free software go beyond this, because, in addition, they make it
easier for third parties, whether they are research teams or simply people that
are interested, to analyse them.
In proprietary systems in general, a study such as this would be completely
impossible. In fact, the figures provided below were obtained from the com-
panies behind proprietary software development themselves, which means
that we are not in a position to guarantee their truthfulness. To top this off,
in many cases we do not know whether they are talking about physical source
code lines, as we have done during this chapter, or whether they also include
the blank lines and comments. Furthermore, neither do we know for certain
what they include in their software, which means that we do not know whet-
her certain versions of Microsoft Windows include the Microsoft Office suite
or not.
In any case, considering all that we have discussed on this matter in previous
paragraphs, we believe that it is interesting to include this comparison, as
it helps us to see the position in which the different Red Hat and Debian
distributions are in, within a wider context. What is unquestionable is that
both Debian and Red Hat, but especially the former, are the largest collections
of software ever seen by humanity to date.
The figures cited below come from Mark Lucovsky [168] for Windows 2000,
SUN Microsystems [171] for StarOffice 5.2, Gary McGraw [169] for Windows
XP and Bruce Schneier [200] for all the other systems. Table 23 provides a
comparison, from smallest to greatest.
Table 23. Comparison with proprietary systems
System Date of publication Lines of code (approx.)
Microsoft Windows 3.1 April 1992 3,000,000
SUN Solaris 7 October 1998 7,500,000
SUN StarOffice 5.2 June 2000 7,600,000
Microsoft Windows 95 August 1995 15,000,000
Red Hat Linux 6.2 March 2000 18,000,000
Debian 2.0 July 1998 25,000,000