Windows, Mac or Linux (hereunder also BSD)

[Zylark]

Get a computer nerd religious about anything, and it is operating system. And we all know there are heathens out there. Oh yes. Insidious fundamentalist heathens.

Now basically, I believe in the old gods of yore. That is Unix and an ingenious early bastard child known as AmigaDOS and accompanying Workbench GUI. Many proclaim Linux to be the heir to the thrown of geekdom that Amiga once held, and I do not blaim them. In enthusiasm and pure naivite, linux fits the bill perfectly.

But it miss two points. First is the suit of creativity software, that macs are particualry good at fronting. Though they are not exclusive, as they wish to think. Secondly is marked position, which neither linux nor mac got.

Amiga once held both accolades, and was why I was and still is a fan. Though, now, I'm more of an interrested follower than worshipper so to speak.

Yes, the evil empire of microsoft got me. Not saying it is the best OS, it isn't. Nor the most effiecent, not by a long shot. What it do have is a catalogue of software supporting it, that allows me to do all I think is productive and fun. Not a subset of software, and not getting at it by manouvering jumps and hoops.

Just install and have fun.

And that is windows and the millions of great large and little apps and fun that it runs.

[raherakty]

Depends what you want to do with your operating system. I dual boot between XP and Ubuntu Linux. Both are good at different things. For surfing, chatting, writing programs, and updating websites, I use Linux, because I don't feel like hunting down the dozens of tools I would require to do the same in a safe, secure, and private manner on Windows. Thanks to apt, any program I need, be it an editor or a webserver, can be installed with one command -- in that regard, I feel Linux has a great advantage over Windows.

For gaming, watching movies, or doing advanced sound editing, I boot into Windows, mostly because equivalent programs either don't exist for Linux, or the drivers for my hardware just aren't working well enough to allow it.

I'd hate to be a slave to just one operating system, the same way I'd hate to only be allowed to own one pair of shoes. I never understood people who get all fundamentalist about their choice of operating system.

[Zylark]

Yes, I agree, use the OS that do what you need it too. If you're a developer or running some web/database operation, Linux would be my choice too. But it is an awfully small niche. Small, powerfull and loaded in money. For the grinders, as there is no big kahoona running the entire show.

Infact, I hope one day, some open source OS will be the standard. It must be as it is infrastructure. And as we do not want private companies owning our roads, and charge for its use, we do not want anyone owning our OS.

We all want to own it on equal terms. As we all want to use roads on equal terms. And thus use on equal terms.

But that is not todays world. Sadly. In todays world, Windows is king. Not a malevolent whimsy one, but a trying though remedial one. With immense power. And loads of new clothing *cough*.

[raherakty]

Windows is king of the desktop operating system, true, but the Internet is powered by Linux. Windows has been unable to grab much more than a tiny slice of the server market. Linux, meanwhile, is starting to become an increasingly attractive option for the desktop: free, free support available from the community, paid live tech support available for many distros.

Some of the latest distributions, such as Linux Mint, focus on being usable, something that's escaped the Linux community at large for a while now. On Mint, things like java, flash, videos, third party drivers, etc., all work out of the box with no tweaking. OpenOffice can do anything Microsoft Office can do, and the GIMP Image Editor compares favorably with Adobe Photoshop for all but the most advanced types of image editing. So, for people who want to do things like surf the web, chat, write papers, upload/download/retouch photographs, Linux is close to becoming a very viable and very attractive option.

It's an exciting time in the operating system world. Choices other than windows are starting to become available for the casual home user.

[bonbonbondia]

Originally Posted by raherakty

Windows is king of the desktop operating system, true, but the Internet is powered by Linux. Windows has been unable to grab much more than a tiny slice of the server market.

I don't know where you get that idea. Windows Server is huge and leads the server market nowadays.

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-O...indows-Server/

In 2000, Windows comprised about half of the server operating system market, followed by Unix and Netware at about 17 percent each and Linux reaching towards 10 percent, she said, noting that today Windows owns about 70 percent, Linux about 20 percent, with Unix below 10 percent and Netware barely registering.

About 10 years ago I had a lot of customers running unix on big servers for their databases and what not. But not anymore, now almost every business I come across is running on Windows servers. W2k3 + SQL Server 2000/2005 + IIS is a combination that has become really tough to beat. Add the .NET devel platform and tools, which after being aprogrammer on all kinds of systems for the past 12 years I can say are top notch for RAD and I see windows continuing to take more server market share.

I developed on the *BSDs, solaris, linux and all for years, but I cant see myself ever going back to those again.

[Digit]

Originally Posted by Zylark

Get a computer nerd religious about anything, and it is operating system. And we all know there are heathens out there. Oh yes. Insidious fundamentalist heathens.

Now basically, I believe in the old gods of yore. That is Unix and an ingenious early bastard child known as AmigaDOS and accompanying Workbench GUI. Many proclaim Linux to be the heir to the thrown of geekdom that Amiga once held, and I do not blaim them. In enthusiasm and pure naivite, linux fits the bill perfectly.

But it miss two points. First is the suit of creativity software, that macs are particualry good at fronting. Though they are not exclusive, as they wish to think. Secondly is marked position, which neither linux nor mac got.

Amiga once held both accolades, and was why I was and still is a fan. Though, now, I'm more of an interrested follower than worshipper so to speak.

Yes, the evil empire of microsoft got me. Not saying it is the best OS, it isn't. Nor the most effiecent, not by a long shot. What it do have is a catalogue of software supporting it, that allows me to do all I think is productive and fun. Not a subset of software, and not getting at it by manouvering jumps and hoops.

Just install and have fun.

And that is windows and the millions of great large and little apps and fun that it runs.

yeah granpa, but have you got the 3d desktop working on it?


jk.




but seriously,
do you?


i've a stack of over 100 cds of different distributions.

i choose to use Sabayon Linux.

[Digit]

Originally Posted by raherakty

Windows is king of the desktop operating system, true, but the Internet is powered by Linux.

...

Windows has been unable to grab much more than a tiny slice of the server market. Linux, meanwhile, is starting to become an increasingly attractive option for the desktop: free, free support available from the community, paid live tech support available for many distros.

starting to become??
i say it BECAME sometime before 2003 when i got onboard.

Some of the latest distributions, such as Linux Mint, focus on being usable, something that's escaped the Linux community at large for a while now. On Mint, things like java, flash, videos, third party drivers, etc., all work out of the box with no tweaking. OpenOffice can do anything Microsoft Office can do, and the GIMP Image Editor compares favorably with Adobe Photoshop for all but the most advanced types of image editing. So, for people who want to do things like surf the web, chat, write papers, upload/download/retouch photographs, Linux is close to becoming a very viable and very attractive option.

cool, i tried mint a while ago, will have to give it another whirl.
the full sabayon has everything outta the box too. luscious innit... not having to hunt for codecs.

It's an exciting time in the operating system world. Choices other than windows are starting to become available for the casual home user.

again with the starting. man,..... it's been years.

u can even visit a website and click a button on it to install a linux distribution with more power than windows and more bells and whistles* too these days. how easily do you want the better option handed on a plate?

*if bells and whistles mean software and games and applications.

[BurnOutYeah!]

OS X has Boot Camp, so that, by default makes it great, I dual boot XP for COD4 and a couple other games and thats it. Otherwise Im all Leopard.

I might make it a complete comp by quad booting with a linux distro.
Anyone know a really good distro for media?

[bkadoctaj]

Yeah, I like Mac OS X. It's interface is pretty relaxing. Yeah, sure, someone is making money off me. But I use my computer so much and have had essentially 0 problems with either the hard- or software... I can't complain. No, I am not saying it's the best OS ever. It just fits me.

[raherakty]

Originally Posted by bonbonbondia

I don't know where you get that idea. Windows Server is huge and leads the server market nowadays.

My bad, I was thinking of the stats for IIS vs. Apache, though I see even that's really started to change in the past few years. Interesting. I have to think the competition will be good for both sides. I should say that the Internet is powered by open source... for now.

starting to become??
i say it BECAME sometime before 2003 when i got onboard.

Depends on your criteria, I suppose. Around that time, I tried to get on board, but I had nothing but trouble with it. It took a long time to get the drivers straightened out, and then the system crashed constantly regardless. Finally, a few years ago, I was able to get linux working without too many hassles, simply by purchasing hardware that I knew to be well-supported. That's the point when Linux became a viable option for me. However, that's not what I'd call a viable option for a casual user.

Even a few years ago there weren't any distros that supported WPA encryption out of the box. Getting it working required some serious mucking about with wpa_supplicant in the terminal. No problem if you know what you're doing, but a casual user is just going to give up and go back to Windows if having decent wireless encryption matters to them. Only now has it really reached a point where there's enough polish on some distributions for an ex Windows user to be able to install Linux without doing some serious reading. Even now, getting linux working on my girlfriend's laptop requires disabling a bunch of kernel modules, and then there's some weird video flicker that just cannot be fixed, even after completely recompiling the kernel and the video drivers. Granted, it's not Linux's fault that hardware manufacturers are making things difficult, but a casual user just wants the computer to work -- they don't care how or why.

But yeah, give Mint a whirl. I was certainly impressed. Even my girlfriend was jealous of my rotating desktop and all the other neat eye candy and widgets, all without me having to pencil in an afternoon for setting up and customizing my Linux install!

[HighGrowMan]

I've never really got into linux. Not to say I don't like it, but I just haven't bothered with it yet.

I do a lot of software development, and lately I've been trying to make sure everything I write is Mono friendly.

I think eventually you will just emulate the OS that you want, and be able to be in 'linux', windows and mac at the same time, without loosing performance.

I see it coming.

[Mindcore]

I like both mac and PC. Oh crap!

I like PC for editing and Mac for recording.

I like PC for HTML, I like Mac for surfing the web.

Buying a Mac after owning a PC has forced me to learn more about computers.

Its been a great ride all in all.

My PC is my pack mule, my Mac is my valiant steed.

Steeds are no use for carrying weight.

Mules are no good for speed.