Flavors

Both Windows and Linux come in many flavour.

All the Flavours of Windows come from Microsoft and various distribution of Linux come from varios companies

i.e. Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, Xandros, Knoppix, Slackware, Lycoris,etc..

The flavour of Linux generally refferd to as distributions,all the linux distribution released around the same time will use the same kernal..

then the Question is arised..
How the Flavours are different??

Answer:: They differ in the add-on software provided, GUI, install process, price, documentation and technical support. Both Linux and Windows come in desktop and server editions.

Both Linux and Windows come in desktop and server editions.

There may be too many distributions of Linux, it's possible that this is hurting Linux in the marketplace. IBM is a big Linux backer but does not have their own branded distribution. Currently there seem to be many nice things said about the Ubuntu distribution.

Linux is customizable in a way that Windows is not. For one, the user interface, while similar in concept, varies in detail from distribution to distribution. For example, the task bar may default to being on the top or the bottom. Also, there are many special purpose versions of Linux above and beyond the full blown distributions described above. For example, NASLite is a version of Linux that runs off a single floppy disk (since revised to also boot from a CD) and converts an old computer into a file server. This ultra small edition of Linux is capable of networking, file sharing and being a web server.