Microsoft Windows (also Winshit, Windoze, Winbloat etc.) is a series of malicious, bloated proprietary "operating systems" with preinstalled malware. AVOID THIS SHIT.
Windows has these advantages:
Windows has these disadvantages (this is just a few things, we can't possibly aspire to recount them all):
Some "people" still decide to use it. Why? For a single reason: it comes preinstalled on the computer they buy. If it didn't come preinstalled on every single computers, exactly 0.00000000000% people would be using it.
Not that you should never use Windows programs but even if you WANT that you can do it with Wine under GNU/Linux, sometimes the programs even run better under Wine than on winshit itself lol. By this there is zero (or maybe even fewer) reasons to ever use windows, it's literally just for faggots.
In 1999 GNU/Linux users organized a Windows refund day on which they tried to refund Windows they got shipped with laptops they bought and which of course they didn't need -- according to Windows EULA this was their right, however Microsoft of course tried as much as possible to deny this to the users and just shat on their heads. They made it practically impossible to get the refunds.
Should we compile our programs for Window$? Free software supporters regularly debate this question, some say we shouldn't make Window$ versions of free programs so as to not support the platform. Nevertheless even such purists as GNU make Window$ versions of their programs with the justification that providing Window$ useds with the taste of freedom may convince them to leave the system (though their critics may equally see it as mere populism, i.e. just making their program more popular). It is probably true that making some free tools available on Window$ makes a transition to a free system easier just by making the transition more gradual: the used first learns to use free tools, then switches the underlying system, as opposed to making one giant leap into a completely foreign environment. { This is how it worked for myself anyway. ~drummyfish } Nevertheless our LRS point of view is yet a bit different -- we oppose any kind of censorship, artificial scarcity and so on, including actively breaking compatibility (which includes not making something compatible if it is trivial to do), we simply refuse to be overlords strategically dictating whether something should work or not, that would be the evil way. For this our advice is: if it's easy to make your program work somewhere, make it work there. Never put extra effort into lowering compatibility or accessibility. If you just don't care about some platform or it would present too much trouble for you to make it compatible, it's fine to not do it, but at least make it easy for others to do for you. So yes, you can (and probably should) make a Window$ version of your program, but it is also OK to have a bit of fun while doing so -- for example Anarch on Window$ warns the player that his operating system is malware :) How to compile shit for Window$ when you don't have Window$? There are several ways: for C (or C++ etc.) programs you may comfortably use e.g. MinGW (mingw) (basically the GNU compilers + binary tools compiled and packaged for Window$) -- this you can either run natively under GNU/Linux (look for mingw packages) or you may run the Window$ versions of it under wine or in some VM such as qemu or virtualbox (where you may additionally also test the compiled program); you may also theoretically e.g. make a web browser version of your program (with stuff like emscripten) which will run on all OSes.
TODO
All are shit.
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