Posted: 11/7/2007 6:34:32 PM EDT
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What is your preferred operating system of choice for your most frequent computing? Fedora for me! |
| I recently upgraded from XP to Ubuntu. Have been (mostly) MS free at home for the last couple of months. It's working quite well, but I did have to give in & install 2K in a VM for the occasional thing which requires Windows that I didn't want to run under Wine. |
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I use XP almost exclusively at home and work, with Server 2003 running on my servers. I'm holding off on the Vista upgrade because... well... it sucks. I'll have to upgrade eventually to get ready for the new batch of MCSE tests, but I'm going to wait as long as I can. -James |
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XP is my new 98SE I rode the 98SE train until a few months after Microsoft stopped supporting it. Then I reluctantly loaded XP. I will hold onto XP until they stop supporting it. When my stuff works and I am happy, I see no point in upgrading to something that people are screaming about problems with. |
Me too. I really liked Windows NT, and held onto that as long as I could |
Damn right. My machine is running Windows 2000, and I will stay with it as long as I possibly can--especially now that MS has put it's own intrusive spyware in XP and Vista. Except for games, all the other software I am running is open-source. If I could find a way to reliably run my game programs, I would use an open-source operating system as well |
It is not the cost of Solaris itself. We have an ELA with Sun, so the OSs with hardware are included, maintenance and upgrades are free. It's all the other 3rd party software for Solaris that is $$$$$$$$$. |
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Typing this on an Ubuntu 7.10 laptop at the moment, and I'd like to look into FreeBSD. I like Windows just fine. Linux satisfies my natural love for tinkering with computers, but there really isn't a damn thing wrong with Windows. Linux is what I use to enjoy myself (hobby), and Windows is what I use when I need to do boring stuff like work. OS wars are stupid, and evangelism is even worse. Use what you want. I don't feel any particular calling to espousing the virtues of Linux to the unwashed masses. If you love computers, and you have more fun understanding how and why things work more than you do actually *using* them productively, then you probably already run Linux (or BSD, or...). This is definitely one of those "If I have to explain it, you wouldn't understand" kind of things. All of this evangelism is getting old quick. Why do so many Linux users insist on getting people to switch from Windows? Why do they give two shits? I sure as hell don't. Mac users are just as bad. I don't get it. |
| Ubuntu at work, XP (for games) at home. If it wern't for the games, I'd have switched years ago. |
Man Versus System! Now that's a real OS!
Quoted for truth. I actually enjoy using OS X at home for email/browsing/photos/movies. It's a nice change from the Windows world on the weekends. I always enjoy tinkering with Linux and Ubuntu is doing amazing things for "consumer appeal" Linux. |
Sez the peepz that don't have Vista...
DOS worked well too. Good thing they didn't stop there. ETA I'm not saying XP isn't great. I'm not saying everyone should switch to Vista. I'm just saying that Vista isn't the evil OS that XP fanboys want to make it out to be. Try it before you knock it. |
I've been looking at it for a week now, and I like what I'm reading. Most of my gripes with Linux distributions (mostly organization, lack of cohesion, poor documentation, etc) are resolved in FreeBSD. The underlying philosophy is more to my liking. It's a well run project, and I *LOVE* their system of culling release branches from the CVS main line. Way cool. And, how do I put this politely...I'm less frustrated by the user community. There's less bullshit, mostly because you're not dealing with people who's primary focus is in finding a free alternative to Microsoft. You're dealing with geeks, not "normal" people. After a while, I get tired of "How do I do such-and-such like I used to in Windows?" types of questions. |
Yup. You'll like it. It's an actual ORGANIZED software effort, instead of Linux's fly-by-night approach. The result is that FreeBSD has fewer of the bleeding edge drivers, but what it does have tends to be very solid. And the broken code is clearly marked as so, instead of being PART OF THE DEFAULT LIBC!@#!@# "man 3 malloc" on a linux box and read the BUGS section for a laugh. It amounts to "Oh, and sometimes malloc lies to you and causes your software to crash. There's nothing you can do about it because it's our stupid ass bug. We prefer it this way. Even though we know how to fix it, and in fact there's a kernel option to fix it, we default to the broken behavior because we're FUCKING LINUX AND WE'RE DEVELOPED BY KIDS AND CRACK-ADDLED CHIMPANZEES!" Can you tell I hate linux? |
| Whatever version of Windows we're using at work, which right now is XP Pro on the desktop, and Server 2003 on the servers. I know my way around it, and it works. I used to be interested in alternative OSs - in my defense, it was before Windows 2000, which really marked the coming-of-age of Windows as a usable platform. 9x and NT were deeply unsatisfactory, albeit in different ways. So were all the alternatives, though. Also, I was young, stupid, insecure, and liable to get into pointless Apple/Windows/Linux discussions. Now, I don't care. |
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It all depends on what needs to be done. Home workstation/file server/media stuff - xp/server2003 home router/fun box - ubuntu/fedora core/rhel servers at work - solaris I've used linux on the desktop, and while it is very close to being good enough, there are always 2-3% of things that annoy me. Don't get me wrong, windows annoys me as well, its just that I've worked around those annoyances for so long that it doesn't phase me and I can still get things done. For the past 10 years I have tried linux as my main OS, but something always gets under my skin with it. At work, we host and admin a few systems, the main being the servers for the online banking. Considering Solaris 8 came out in mid 90's, and is still rocking in our environment, makes me hope Sun can get back in the game someday. We have 16 v490's and 4 v1280's for just one portion of the site. Getting alerts for memory errors, cpu errors, and disk errors, and being able to disable the reported component is very important. |
For me, it's mostly an issue of seeing so many people wasting so much time, effort, and money on antivirus crap. They lose data, their credit card numbers get stolen, they suddenly learn that someone is applying for loans in their name, or their computers get hijacked and used to distribute spam and child porn. And every single time, they're running Windows. Knoppix, or any other Linux liveCD, is impossible to infect permanently. Even a temporary (until the next reboot) infection is rare -- I *might* have had two in the last (roughly) five years, and if I did, the second was probably because I'm still running a four(?) year old copy of Knoppix 3.7 (later versions have problems on my ancient computer). I'm a suspicious bastard, so I might be wrong about having had even one such event. MacOS? Meh. Probably as good, but the price is pretty high. Not being one to dump a grand on a midrange computer, I haven't tried it since the mid-1980s. Windows? Because of a network problem, which I thought might just barely possibly be a Knoppix issue (it wasn't), I booted Windows and let my computer run it while on the net. It took less than five minutes before it got a virus rammed in through a security hole (that stupid backdoor in MS's database software). Turned out that the network problem was because one of my neighbors in the building was trying to hack into every machine on the planet (everything from my little machine on up to servers for most of the net biggies like Google). Evangelism, hell. I'm just trying to help protect people. For 99% of what people do, there is essentially ZERO difference between Linux and Windows. Point browser at web site, view page. Open email and read it, forward latest bunch of jokes and urban legends to everyone on mailing list. Download porn. Is there ANYTHING on this list that takes a decade of study to do on Linux? Nope. At MOST, for this sort of stuff, people have to get used to the screen looking a little bit different. The corners on the windows are rounded instead of square. The "Start" button has a graphic logo on it instead of "START". And in exchange for getting used to that, they get additional flexibility if they're willing to learn how to use it, and they eliminate the need for constant paranoia and vigilance against the billion kinds of viruses and other "malware" that Windows lets take over their machines, destroy their data, ruin their lives. But, hey, I don't try to cram it up their asses. If they like living dangerously, they're free (other than paying for, or pirating, Windows, anyway) to run Windows. And you're whining about this being "old", and, by implication, pointless?  ETA: I own page 3.  My life now has added meaning.
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I really like the Ubuntu Distros. I'm just trying to figure out how to use them  I pulled 2003 Server from my server at home and tried using Ubuntu Server but unfortunately I just don't have the time right now to figure it out. However, the laptop that I keep with me does have Kubuntu 7.10 on it. |
Unless you're my mother or my wife, both of who run Linux. I support them (that's why they run Linux), but it's NOT for 99% of the people out there. It is fundamentally different from Windows in every way, and the fact that there are people trying to make it something it's not is what's screwing most implementations of it up. Want to run a Lexmark printer/scanner/copier? Bummer. No SANE support for scanning, and most of the printer functionality isn't supported by CUPS. Went to Best Buy and picked up a web cam that ran GREAT under Windows? Suck to be you, because everything looks red and there are artifacts on the top and bottom of the video - AFTER 3 hours of reading forum posts. Picked up a cool USB video capture device for $50? Bummer. Nobody's developing any modules for it. Want to run Family Tree Maker? Bummer. No OSS equivalent. Want to run Quickbooks? I hope they don't get pissed off when you try to tell them GnuCash is just as good (it is, but try explaining that to the "average" person). Got a neat Sprint EVDO card like me? Fantastic. Now explain to me how the average user is going to edit chat scripts, configure if-up/if-down scripts, compile loadable kernel modules and make sure modprobe loads it automatically. I don't mind, but you're kidding me if you think a regular user will accept that. The exact same card and software in Windows can be setup by a 12 year old, and the instructions are printed in 3 steps on a glossy 3x5. Linux is NOT for the average user, and it never will be. It shouldn't be. The fact is, the amount of effort required to get off the shelf components to work (without hours of research) is beyond the ability of most people. You can think it's ready for 99% of the users out there (and I used to think the same way), but the devil is in the details. I'm CONSTANTLY telling my wife or my mother: "Well, almost." "Yes, but..." "Pretty close" "It's not THAT bad, but sure" "Buy this one instead, because this one ain't gonna work" "Let me make sure it's supported before you buy it" "I'll see if I can get it to work under Wine. No promises". You know something? It's MUCH easier to keep a Windows machine virus and spyware free, than it is to shoehorn Linux into a role as Grandma's PC. It's actually taking me LONGER to support my family, because I have to figure out a way to do all the shit they used to do in Windows. You and I might think these things are stupid, but the reality is it's important to some people. They don't want to hear excuses every time they try to do something, and can't. |
