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## Polls

### Preferred Operating System? - Page 1

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#### Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Angrysmurf
Date: 2009-12-08 14:06:35
I think this topic has been done before, but what do you think the best operating system is (ie Windows vs Mac; doesn't have to be that general) and why?
Today I used Linux on school computers, and it sucked- it was slow, the graphics weren't as colorful, the Ofiice was more difficult to work with, etc. I had a similar experoence last year with Linux too. With that said, I prefer Windows, although I don't know if information garnered on a school's property should be compared to a computer I bought with me in mind, especially when the actual computer it was run on was a crappy little Eee PC (if you don't know what an Eee PC is, google 'Eee PC Asus'. Trust me, they suck.)
Windows? Mac? Linux? Others? (I know I'm missing an obvious one :P) You can also discuss Web Browsers (ie, Firefox vs. IE vs. Opera, etc. etc.)

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Wild MissingNo. appeared
Date: 2009-12-08 14:13:47
I did do a topic/poll about Windows systems. When I was in school we had Macintosh's, and not the ones we got today, it was fast, but all we could do was use one hard drive, to play games, nothing more. I think we only had one game, and that was about it. I hate Windows, but other things we have aren't all that good as a friend of mine and me spoke on Live Messenger about computers, and he said Lunix and Macs suck, which I agree with him.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Ketsuban
Date: 2009-12-08 18:19:18
OS X > OS 9 > OS/2 > Linux > Unix/BSD > slide rule > Windows.
Nuff said.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Missing? NO!
Date: 2009-12-08 18:22:35
Windows XP. I haven't used anything else.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Zowayix
Date: 2009-12-08 18:25:38

> OS X > OS 9 > OS/2 > Linux > Unix/BSD > slide rule > Windows.
> Nuff said.

*points at Ketsuban's OS next to his post*
*laughs*

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Wa
Date: 2009-12-08 19:25:44
My pick is Ubuntu, a form of Linux. On my laptop it works far better than Windows XP, and because Vista/7 would probably be fairly slow on it, I'm sticking with it. After experiencing the crap that is Word (10 minutes to load, and then it crashes before I can even save) I'll deal with Open Office. As for Macs, I can't afford one, and it seems to be a waste of money to buy a new laptop to get an OS I don't trust (whether it be Windows or Macintosh) when I have a perfectly good one (albeit several years old) that works beautifully with Ubuntu.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Angrysmurf
Date: 2009-12-08 19:30:48
I see this is now a poll. I almost put it here, but decided to err on the side of caution (and was too lazy to put up an actual poll :P)
I'd like to see Unix one day. As for Ubuntu, I'd give it a look, but like I said, I've had nothing but bad experiences with Linux. And no matter how long it takes to load Office Word, I'd take it over Open Office.
Also, my short experience with Firefox makes me think IE>Firefox, although I don't think that was the latest version of Firefox.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Ketsuban
Date: 2009-12-08 21:24:57

> > OS X > OS 9 > OS/2 > Linux > Unix/BSD > slide rule > Windows.
> > Nuff said.

> *points at Ketsuban's OS next to his post*
> *laughs*

Unfortunately, my parents are assholes who won't even buy me a used computer, let alone a new one.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Bent`
Date: 2009-12-09 00:09:04
Unixlikes are my favorites of course. I stick with OpenBSD but Linux is an acceptable alternative. OpenSolaris is free too; I may try it out sometime just to see what its like.
Mac OS is UNIX and as a result has a good command line, but I cant stand the GUI. Still probably better than Windows (market share and price and security issues aside).
My Linux dislikes (since I love to hate it) are:

- GNU software, which tends to be hideous
- The GPL, which is not my favorite license
- Ubuntu, which tries to be userfriendly but isnt
- gconf
- GNOME, which is slow and bloated and copies the Windows stupid
- KDE, which keeps adding shiny effects release after release (even when I was on Windows, I turned off menu transparency and dropdown effects)
- Software that is not portable due to stupid assumptions. Typical examples I see are:
- assume [font=monospace]make[/font] is GNU make
- assume [font=monospace]cc[/font] is GCC
- assume everybody has GCC4
- assume [font=monospace]sh[/font] is bash
- when bash is actually needed, assume it is at [font=monospace]/bin/bash[/font]
- assume everyone has a close window button (not a portability issue but still stupid)
- A subset of Linux users who evangelize and try to explain away all the idiosyncracies

.
And then there are web browsers. Not many alternatives here really. In order of my preference, Chromium Opera Firefox IE8 IE6/7. Nobody should be using IE6/7, period (ask any web developer). My preference for Chromium over Opera is mostly because its opensource.

> OS X > OS 9 > OS/2 > Linux > Unix/BSD > slide rule > Windows.
> Nuff said.

Have you even used any of these?
Buy your own computer. Or better yet take a tenyearold PC and put a free OS on there. With a sane window manager it can run at an acceptable speed. My first nonWindows computer was an AMD K6 in 2008.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Abwayax
Date: 2009-12-09 00:41:19
Everyone knows my preferences. I'm not a "Linux fanboy" as some like to claim, although at the moment Ubuntu is my preferred OS (I also tried gNewSense, a Free Software Foundation-sanctioned distro - wouldn't run). No opinion on Open/Net/FreeBSD because I've never used any of them. Mac OS X is ok - I had to use Macs in creative writing and they took a little time to get adjusted to. Windows is… Windows. It's probably my least preferred, but it's tolerable.
Angrysmurf (and anyone else who wants to know something about Linux): There is no one "Linux" OS. "Linux" has many flavors (or distributions, aka "distros"), all developed by different people or groups. Since Linux is free/open source software, anyone can fork it and make a new version of it. Some of the most popular "distros" include Ubuntu, Debian, and Red Hat (although there are many, many more). Each flavor of Linux can have a distinct user experience - this includes the desktop (most popular are GNOME and KDE. If you use Ubuntu or Debian, chances are you're using GNOME. Of course, these aren't the only two), the browser (Firefox or Konqueror), office suite (usually OpenOffice) and other utilities. Unlike Windows (or Mac), where the experience is consistent, no two flavors of Linux are exactly alike.
The post above me (which was posted as I was typing this) is a brilliant example of where free/open source software shines. Proprietary systems simply can't give you this level of choice. With a free/open source system, virtually anything can be replaced if need be. With Windows or Mac, you're basically given the system as it is and most of it is dreadfully immutable. On the other hand, if you're using some F/OSS Unix-like system and think (for example) that the desktop manager is too bloated or fancy, you can junk it and find something else that suits your needs. Windows and Mac systems across the world share the same user-experience, but you can look at two different Linux distros (or even the same one customized differently) and they look, feel, and behave like completely different systems.
The horrible thing about Microsoft's dominance is that it affects even those who try to pull away from it. Pidgin and aMSN are adequate for most things, but for some things I need the actual WLM/MSN client. And, of course, as a web developer I have to make sure things work in Internet Explorer, the bane of web developers everywhere (luckily the shop I work at dropped support for IE6, but 7 is only slightly less of a bitch to make things work on). And of course there's the proprietary Microsoft Office formats. The developers of OpenOffice had to reverse-engineer those formats so that us non-Windows users can read "PowerPoints" and "Word files". Apple tries to pull much the same things (they attempted to sue someone who published specs on the iPod database format to allow one to sync an iPod without using the proprietary iTunes software) - but they're not nearly as powerful as Microsoft.
As for web browsers - the order roughly goes: Opera, Chrome(ium), Firefox/Seamonkey, IE8, IE6/7. Opera has excellent standards support but it's often slighted because of the small userbase (at least in the USA - in some other markets it has as much as 30% of the market), so some pages seem to render incorrectly in it (because the web developer gave it code that worked in IE and/or Firefox). It is an exemplar of software portability (in contrast to most developers who don't even realize that there are more than 2 OSs). Chrome/Chromium uses the excellent Webkit engine, which along with Presto (the Opera engine) shows a great level of support for standards. Firefox and Seamonkey both use the Gecko engine, which is pretty good. Gecko was pretty much the open-source browser engine, but now I think Webkit is more prominent. IE… I don't even consider it, given my OS of choice.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: fivex
Date: 2009-12-09 04:01:34
I actually do prefer linux, however considering I have used windows all my life, and I use quite a bit of stuff that has to run on windows, so I use that. For my ranking on browsers, it would be Firefox > Chrome > IE. I haven't used Opera so I can't say anything about it.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Angrysmurf
Date: 2009-12-09 06:00:21

> Angrysmurf (and anyone else who wants to know something about Linux): There is no one "Linux" OS. "Linux" has many flavors (or distributions, aka "distros"), all developed by different people or groups. Since Linux is free/open source software, anyone can fork it and make a new version of it. Some of the most popular "distros" include Ubuntu, Debian, and Red Hat (although there are many, many more). Each flavor of Linux can have a distinct user experience - this includes the desktop (most popular are GNOME and KDE. If you use Ubuntu or Debian, chances are you're using GNOME. Of course, these aren't the only two), the browser (Firefox or Konqueror), office suite (usually OpenOffice) and other utilities. Unlike Windows (or Mac), where the experience is consistent, no two flavors of Linux are exactly alike.

Yes, that explains a lot. My school just probably threw a distro on to the machine and stuck with it.
I guess I can't really judge Linux than. It'd be cool to find out what distro they're running.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Ketsuban
Date: 2009-12-09 11:01:25

> > OS X > OS 9 > OS/2 > Linux > Unix/BSD > slide rule > Windows.
> > Nuff said.

> Have you even used any of these?
> Buy your own computer. Or better yet take a tenyearold PC and put a free OS on there. With a sane window manager it can run at an acceptable speed. My first nonWindows computer was an AMD K6 in 2008.

OS X: Yes (I worked as an editor on our news program in middle school and we used Macs)
OS 9: Yes (SheepShaver)
OS/2: Yes (VirtualBox)
Linux: Yes (Red Hat 7, Red Hat 9, Fedora 6, Ubuntu 9.04)
Unix/BSD: No (that's why it's down here)
slide rule: Yes
Windows: Yes

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: fivex
Date: 2009-12-09 15:42:39

> > Angrysmurf (and anyone else who wants to know something about Linux): There is no one "Linux" OS. "Linux" has many flavors (or distributions, aka "distros"), all developed by different people or groups. Since Linux is free/open source software, anyone can fork it and make a new version of it. Some of the most popular "distros" include Ubuntu, Debian, and Red Hat (although there are many, many more). Each flavor of Linux can have a distinct user experience - this includes the desktop (most popular are GNOME and KDE. If you use Ubuntu or Debian, chances are you're using GNOME. Of course, these aren't the only two), the browser (Firefox or Konqueror), office suite (usually OpenOffice) and other utilities. Unlike Windows (or Mac), where the experience is consistent, no two flavors of Linux are exactly alike.

> Yes, that explains a lot. My school just probably threw a distro on to the machine and stuck with it.
> I guess I can't really judge Linux than. It'd be cool to find out what distro they're running.

IIRC, ubuntu has a version tab that should display it.Other distros probably do too.

#### Re: Preferred Operating System?

Posted by: Angrysmurf
Date: 2009-12-09 16:05:26

> > > Angrysmurf (and anyone else who wants to know something about Linux): There is no one "Linux" OS. "Linux" has many flavors (or distributions, aka "distros"), all developed by different people or groups. Since Linux is free/open source software, anyone can fork it and make a new version of it. Some of the most popular "distros" include Ubuntu, Debian, and Red Hat (although there are many, many more). Each flavor of Linux can have a distinct user experience - this includes the desktop (most popular are GNOME and KDE. If you use Ubuntu or Debian, chances are you're using GNOME. Of course, these aren't the only two), the browser (Firefox or Konqueror), office suite (usually OpenOffice) and other utilities. Unlike Windows (or Mac), where the experience is consistent, no two flavors of Linux are exactly alike.

> > Yes, that explains a lot. My school just probably threw a distro on to the machine and stuck with it.
> > I guess I can't really judge Linux than. It'd be cool to find out what distro they're running.

> IIRC, ubuntu has a version tab that should display it.Other distros probably do too.

I figured as much. Now I have to get my hands on one of the laptops again so I can find out.
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