The OS War

[Rouni Kenshin#1]

I've been intrested by this for a long time so here goes. What do you run on. I run on Win XP but that is not my choice.

other questions
Is apple really better than windows?
Why?
is Lynuix good(it is free and as they say you get what you pay for)?
why?
Does any body run on any other than these three "major names"?

[Lion]

gaming PC: windows xp. if you are a pc gamer, you pretty much have no choice but to run this.

main desktop: mac (mini, running tiger). the learning curve after 8 years of x86 was steep in coming to this, but now I find myself enjoying it more and more. I work in IT so coming home to a closed box "it just works" machine is relaxing. plus it looks pretty by default, whereas with windows I had to hack away at it for a while to get it looking a way I was happy with. Nothing tops expose for task switching and the native apps all tie in with each other beautifully

file storage machine: linux (gentoo). next time I build this machine it'll be freebsd, but generally I am just more familiar with linux (especially gentoo). the improved networking performance makes it ideal for this over windows.
I have previously run linux on my desktop, and a nicely set up linux box is a pleasure to use on the desktop. only problem is how long it takes to get that way, and even then it just doesn't feel like a complete system, it ALWAYS feels like a bunch of pieces brought together. I no longer consider it worth the effort.
that said, I think XFCE4x with all gtk2 apps is a great operating environment

my next machine will be an apple intel laptop (assuming they have at least 2 mouse buttons) as I want to be able to travel with it, dualbooting xp or vista with osx would allow some gaming whilst still offering the it-just-works feeling the rest of the time.

[Shem]

IMO, the problem of one OS being better than other is no other than it's popularity. Windows XP is by far most popular, but it has so many bugs waiting for anyone to use them to hack your computer, that it is just riculous how XP patches are comming out on a regular basis. On the other hand, if Linux was as popular as XP, i'm sure that it would be affected by viruses and hacker attacks as any other OS there is. The same with OSX. I think that it boils down to the OSs' reliablility. So far, i've been using XP, and it crashed only a few times, as long as I remember. Although, as 'crash' would be defined, I'm not counting the moments in which i had to reinstall it, because of some ridiculous problems, that XP explained to be 'critical'.

Anyway, for your question Rouni, although i'm not a PC head, I think that OSX is considered better, because, that OS is not popular, hence there's no actual purpose in infecting computers with that OS, if you have the option of infecting a PC with a system that's full of bugs, and many other people are using it, it just much more popular (XP). I think that Apple's OS is stable, and realiable nontheless, much more than XP. I think that If Micro$oft stopped monopolyzing the market, and 'allowed' OSX to be more popluar than XP, it is possible, that OSX would be considered the same as XP is now. But nobody can really tell how it would turn out.

As for Linux, the thing is that it is open source, it's free, and pretty much customisable. It can emulate Windows, but is has it's own equivalents of Windows software. But still, the software support is not that big. Is it any better? Probably it is, if you're looking for some change in your life.

I go for software, and the only thing that i am pissed about is that the software I would like to use is created especially for Windows. And Windows isn't that reliable in my opinion. If OSX had the same selection of software as XP has, I bet that people would abbandon XP for OSX.

[Rouni Kenshin#1]

Well i under stand about how popularity affect each but some handle differnently like tiger and xp (having not used a apple since ever i use xp).


and i herd about a program that just came out that would allow you to run multipul ox at once.you know the best of both worlds. has any one heard of or seen this program.

[jospicy]

there are many dual boot programmes around the one i have heard of is called Hyper OS whchc runs within the operating system, allows you to partition your HDD for each systeam and store disk images of the OS Cd so it ca be re-installed at any point. my experience with this was in a company where i was developing and testing software so i guess the licence for it is not cheap but all distros of Linux come with a boot loader so when installing you can create an extra partition you can install another OS onto i.e. my now redundant old computer is running a second install of Win 2k(well same key as my main machine) SuSE linux V10.0 (Why SuSE i hear some people ask well i need to get used to a Linux environment and the Uni labs are pretty busy unless you go down at 1am and SuSE was the first distro i found so i'll give some others a try and settle on one at some point) and OS Tiger (ok cracked but only very occasionally used for testing websites in Safai) each of them can then be chosen form the boot loader so basically Linux will happily run dual boot on most systems if you install properly

[Lion]

you can run multiple OSes on any PC easily if you want to multiboot.
install MS OSes oldest first through to newest (I have had 98se, 2k, xp on one box)
then install any linux/BSD distros
then install whatever else you have (I have run BeOS a few times)

if you mean simultaneously, you can run multiple OSes in virtual machines using microsoft virtualPC (or virtual server) or one of the vmware products.
vmware is excellent, i use it at work a fair bit now

if you have mac hardware then you can install MacOS, linux/BSDs, (and on older macs) BeOS in multiboot too. or Microsoft Virtual PC is part of office for mac now. you can install windows in that

[Jittery-Joe]

In my opionion, Mac's are easier to use, more user firendly, don't go wrong as often and are easier to put right when they do. Downside is that Mac makes all the hardware as well, so prices are high, and most software is for Windows.
Never used Linux (but might have to if my PC remains broken), and I find Windows annoying, especially the older ones that bluescreened every five seconds (3 if you had, like me, WinME) and XP seems to me, through experiance at school, doesn't seem to let you do half of the things the older, DOS based systems did...
edit: And I've used VirtualPC on my old iMac (Win98 running of MacOS8.6) and it never struck me as being any good whatsoever.

[jospicy]

like all systems these days they are trying to dummy proof them XP is a pain in the arse IMHO i have yet to find half the things i can do with 2K Pro (i.e Advanced Network options which are especially useful on htis uni network :pirate ) but they all require a hell of a lot of tweaking before the take any semblance of running smoothly it's taken me 3 weeks and i'm still coming accross things that i missed when setting up and i use my comp for more than 12 hrs most days

[Lance]

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my favourite Windows OS actually is ME; i've found it far more stable than 98SE or 98, easier to work with than XP. it has 'restore', just as XP has, but with a simpler organisation that works better for a solo user. also has the option of viewing all picture files as thumbnails in any folder you select, which in my case is all of them. makes it so easy to search for individual pics without having to start a picture viewer. and it's way faster than the bulky and turgid XP while being only slightly slower than 98.
yes, i realise that the general opinion is that ME is the least stable of all Windows OSs, but for me it has been the most stable one. i suspect that most of the people who had trouble with it had it as their first system before they figured out what spyware is and how to set IE so it wouldn't allow websites to muck up the computer. or better yet to avoid IE and Outlook altogether
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[Jittery-Joe]

You must've been using a different WimME that me, lance, mine always seems dead set against me and plotting my doom...
Seriously!

[Lance]

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mine is an upgrade CD that i applied over my original 98SE, and it apparently doesn't have the complete stand-alone ME system on the disk, only the additions or alterations that 98SE doesn't have.
.

[Lion]

most MS upgrade OS cds will allow you to do a totally clean install of the new OS but will ask for the old one to be inserted momentarily to verify that your use of an upgrade is valid.
I ran all of the betas of WinME and found it quite nice. it wasn't until the final came out that I had any issues. and I think that most of them were hardware related anyway...
I stopped using ME though when after a windows update it decided to try mount a linux partition and destroyed my entire partition table. Made me sufficiently angry that I haven't touched it since.

as I tried to show in my earlier post, I think that the 3 main OSes out there at the moment all have their place in the home, and I am glad I have all three

you think XP hides too much from you? try using a mac for a while. more is hidden, but you don't need to get to it. linux does the opposite but the range of knobs and levers is bewildering at first
you think XP takes too long to get to where it feels right? try setting up a linux box from scratch. it takes a hell of a lot longer. my mac on the other hand is damned near default in most of it's setup.

[Rouni Kenshin#1]

Yeah, we had ME and upgraded to Xp and i liked ME better. but has anyone heard anything about microsoft Longhorn new other than it's a complet revamp down to eliminating the windows and little X's to quit a program.

[Lance]

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it will be called Vista. beta version has already been released. final version is supposed to be available in 2006, maybe mid-year. [it was originally going to be ready in 2004, but you know how these things go.]
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[jospicy]

and as the test i ran confirmed will be a power guzling monster that requires a hell of a lot of CPU and GPU power basically if your running anything short of P4 3.4 with HT or 3200 Clawhammer\Venice and 1GB DDR don't even bother. my mates 3700AMD64 Mobile with 1GB DDR runs it but has a rather large heat output, this just may be that it needs a hell of a lot of tweaking but it cretainly seems to be a power guzzling monster

[Lance]

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that would simply be a continuation of MS OS development patterns since the late 90's. always trying to do more crap instead of doing the necessary faster and more efficiently. it's all about features features features, as though they were trying to sell directly to 'consumers' who want to have everything instead of actually just making the home OS for OEM computers that the 'consumers' will buy without choice of OS.
hm.. although that may be the object, to get the buyers to get a new more powerful computer so that the sales keep going. in many markets, just about everyone who wants a computer already has one, so the manufacturers need to create some incentive for the customers to buy more new ones. it's a corporate conspiracy, dammit. :)
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[jospicy]

you sound scarily like one of my mates from school in that last post :o

[Seek100]

Indeed, the beta version of Vista installs at a whopping 7 gigs or so at the moment. This is compared to around 4 for XP IIRC. I remember our first PC at my house in '98 only had a 6Gb disk!

My only rig at the mo is running XP but I'm running a prog called object bar over the top which gets rid of the whole Windows taskbar, and replaces it with whatever you want to put, mine's currently mimicking the appearance of AmigaOS4.0 (yes that's right AmigaOS is still being developed and it has a max footprint of about 450Mb) and also a theme set and icon package that mimick the AOS4.0 theme and icons. Not the real thing but I need XP for gaming as others have mentioned.

We did try to run a couple of classic Amigas (a 1200 and a 4000/030) but after the 4000 destroyed it's SCSI harddisk when we attempted to replace the 68EC030 processor with a 68040 processor we kinda gave up on that one, the 1200 is fairly useless for use as a modern pc aswell. I really want to get one of the new PPC based AmigaOne computers that run AOS4.0, but they're very expensive for the spec. at this time (latest run on a 930mhz G4 and ATI cards up to 9800 IIRC) Of course the most important thing is... there's an Amiga version of wipE'out"2097 :D

P.S. Lance, it's kind of a known secret that the companies that sell systems do actually pressure Microsoft to produce new OSs periodically, otherwise they'd have nothing new to sell to the average user who doesn't care about the latest uber-tech.

[Lance]

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i have a full-sized installation of Win2000 Pro that installed at only 0.75GB. no bundled software.

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Joe, was it the 'corporate conspiracy' part that did it? ;)
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[Rouni Kenshin#1]

Okay, so Vista is huge but has anyone used it?
if so can you elaborate on it and how it works abit.

[Lion]

I installed beta1 a while ago.. it's a little over 2gb iirc (not anywhere near 7 [XP was about 1.2Gb to my memory]) and it didn't much like the hardware I put it on... didn't have drivers for half my stuff.
installed it on a dual P3 1GHz w/1GB ram. VIA chipset and 3com network card. no sound. gf2gts 32mb
it didn't have drivers for the 3com NIC and the xp/2000 drivers didn't work, the nvidia drivers for vista don't support cards that old

changes I noticed: the altered behaviour of the start panel makes sense, but is annoying at first. the new shutdown menu is the worst part of that
I didn't have any pretty transparencies due to the aforementioned video driver shortcomings, though on seeing it on my flatmate's PC it would have annoyed me anyway (too much transparency)
the ie7 implimentation of tabs is weird, but hey, at least they are doing it now.
the lack of networking stopped me from really trying much with it or attempting to set the rest of it up.
should install it on my main box and see if I can get it to a state I feel comfortable with

to use it feels about as different from XP as XP was from 2k. nothing drastic, but enough small changes that it throws you at first.
the technology under it they have made some good decisions... windows are now textures that get handled by your video card rather than being composited and sent to your video card as a full screen by the OS. with the right drivers this will make windows feel a bit more responsive.
apparently now it can restart portions of itself... change the machine name? networking restarts.. massive reduction in system reboot scenarios

I need to spend some time with it on hardware that it's happy with to really make up my mind about it, but at the moment it's not terribly compelling. if previous versions of windows that I have used betas of are anything to go by, the betas are a new technology playground, and they don't become usable day-to-day until they reach the release candidates... vista rc1 is a fair ways off yet (like 4-6 months off)

[Jittery-Joe]

Oh great, my spangly new PC's gonna be made obselete before I even get it. Bloody Microsoft...