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Arwin Neil Baichoo
Arwin Neil Baichoo

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If Operating Systems were cakes.

A few days ago a close friend of mine from a finance background, but with a sound enough interest in tech asked me “But whats the best OS?”. This conversation spawned a fun little analogy that I’m going to share with you, to be taken with a grain of salt.

– “There is not necessarily a best, but here’s a way to compare them. Think of operating systems like cakes:

Windows would be your typical cake, all ready-made and sold in your local grocery store. You don’t see it being prepared, though you get to know the ingredients. Most people buy it and are usually happy enough with it.

On the other hand, Linux would be like the recipe to a cake, handed out free. If somebody liked their cake with a little bit more sugar here, or a pinch of salt there, they could just tweak the recipe and bake their own cake. That’s what they call Linux Distributions.”

– “What about macOS?”

– “macOS would be a 100% Organic non GMO bio cake. It comes with a price tag bigger than the other cakes. People who eat it either really know the benefits of it, or are rich. Whether it tastes better is really subjective.”

Top comments (3)

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Ben Halpern

I feel like macOS might be a bit more mainstream than "Organic non-GMO bio cake", I also feel like its benefits are a bit more subjective. I feel like it's more like a boutique store cake. Rich and delicious, but depending on your palette, really not worth it compared to Windows. Also probably not what you want to buy if you want to feed a whole birthday party's worth of guests at a reasonable price.

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Arwin Neil Baichoo • Edited

I agree with you on 😄, boutique store cake might better represent macOS. From my perspective, I come from a tiny island , where macOS definitely isn't that mainstream.

Greetings from Mauritius!

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Michiel Hendriks

Linux might be a just the recipe, but in the end we're all eating our production cake from this recipe.