Favorite OS?

[Feba]

Re: Favorite OS?

Linux only came bundled and only worked with set hardware, such as Mac OSX, then they can be seperated easily.

Look up compatibility lists and compare- then you're almost sure to get something that will work. http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ is a good place to look for laptops.

You can also buy computers with linux preinstalled, such as from System76.

being hardware-friendly and user-friendly goes hand-in-hand.

Disagree. If push comes to shove, a hardware manufacturer can shove a round chip into a square driver, and as long as everything works alright in Pretty-Graphics-Land, and the End User doesn't have a clue, it will all be fine.

Such as in Windows. When I tried to install it (before I got sick of it and chucked it), I had to install graphics drivers to play games. This involved a whole bunch of needless effort and drama, which lead to my getting sick and chucking it. However, if the end user wasn't trying to run games- such as the Grandma-User scenario, it never would've come up.

[HairdewX]

Re: Favorite OS?

To be fair, this is a question of hardware being Linux-friendly more than Linux being user-friendly.

In regards to the platform that Linux runs on, being hardware-friendly and user-friendly goes hand-in-hand. If Linux only came bundled and only worked with set hardware, such as Mac OSX, then they can be seperated easily.

Even then, having to know about command line arguments, having 20 different programs that all do the same things which can confuse people, having to compile things to use them, having to mess with the kernel, etc is not even close to user friendly.

If you're targetting desktop users and you only care about reaching a majority of them, proper Windows drivers will get you 92% or so of the market. Less if you don't manage to make them fairly version-agnostic. This is every bit as much a natural function of a such a near-monopoly as the kind of mass-vulnerability we see in systems where you can co-opt thousands of home PCs to perform Distributed Denial of Service attacks and new worms spread quickly through the Internet in waves upon release. Try looking up the term 'monoculture'.

What does this have to do with what we are talking about? We are talking about what is our favorite OS and why, not about any security vulnerabilities and possibilities of the masses getting affected.

Do users get frustrated because of things like missing drivers? Hell yes. But users get frustrated because of a lot of things. I couldn't even give you an estimate of how many things frustrate me a month on all sorts of systems. It's merely a question of which frustrations people simply learn to accept, and to a lesser extent where they put the blame for the rest.

Tolerating is one thing, but if another product does what I want it to do and better than the one I am using now, then I am going to switch to the other product.

Driver compatibility is an issue to me. I want an OS on my laptop that can utilize my wireless internet card. I want an OS that can play the games I want. I want to browse the internet, watch media, and listen to my mp3's. Linux cannot satisfy all my wants, so I simply will not use it and I'll use something else that can.

It's not even a matter of learning to accept frustration. Why should I do that when it comes to something as simple as my computer?

Lack of analysis in the latter may be common and natural, but it isn't useful.

Lack of analysis? hehe, you probably don't want to know what I do for a living...

[Lunaryn]

Re: Favorite OS?

Linux has never been as user friendly as Windows, even with a shell like KDE. Need the latest drivers? Better wait a few months...

To be fair, this is a question of hardware being Linux-friendly more than Linux being user-friendly. If you're targetting desktop users and you only care about reaching a majority of them, proper Windows drivers will get you 92% or so of the market. Less if you don't manage to make them fairly version-agnostic. This is every bit as much a natural function of a such a near-monopoly as the kind of mass-vulnerability we see in systems where you can co-opt thousands of home PCs to perform Distributed Denial of Service attacks and new worms spread quickly through the Internet in waves upon release. Try looking up the term 'monoculture'.

Do users get frustrated because of things like missing drivers? Hell yes. But users get frustrated because of a lot of things. I couldn't even give you an estimate of how many things frustrate me a month on all sorts of systems. It's merely a question of which frustrations people simply learn to accept, and to a lesser extent where they put the blame for the rest. Lack of analysis in the latter may be common and natural, but it isn't useful.

[Mhurron]

Re: Favorite OS?

If you want to get pedantic, Linux isn't a kernel. The term microkernel was actually invented to combat the language imprecision that resulted from large monolithic system code like Linux and the system-space equivalents of earlier UNIX systems being incorrectly called kernels.

You really don't know what you're talking about. Linux is very much a kernel. A monolithic kernel to be specific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microkernel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monolithic_kernel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_...ter_science%29

Linux is just the kernel. The C libraries, compiler and build tools, cli shell and most of the userland apps in a distribution are GNU software, KDE, GNOME and XFCE are desktop environments. WindowMaker, blackbox and the like are window managers. X11 is a windowing system. These are what they are. You can call them anything you want, but anything other then the above is wrong.

And, BTW, why does some crazy bearded man keep calling it GNU/Linux?

[Lunaryn]

Re: Favorite OS?

Nope and nope. Linux is a kernel, nothing more. GNU is a project that encompasses a whole lot of different applications. GNU/Linux is called such because most of the user land are GNU applications over the Linux kernel. However you can get all these GNU components on Solaris for instance, and some ship by default, but you don't call it GNU/SunOS/Solaris.
GNU is working on their own OS called the Hurd. It will not use Linux as a kernel.

If you want to get pedantic, Linux isn't a kernel. The term microkernel was actually invented to combat the language imprecision that resulted from large monolithic system code like Linux and the system-space equivalents of earlier UNIX systems being incorrectly called kernels.

Linux does the job of getting the hardware functioning, constructing a user-mode exectution environment supporting the nice things we all expect like preemptive multitasking, exports system calls to do the tricky low-level system I/O and cope with the requirements of actual devices. It meets the hardware developer's definition of Operating System.

The GNU System does the job of providing a complete toolset and development environment to support the needs of the user (end-user or developer) to interact with the system and perform useful tasks. It meets the application developer's definition of Operating System.

Arguably, to meet the average end-user's definition of Operating System, you do have to get into stuff like GNOME or KDE. But the term Linux is iconic here, and most distributions try fairly hard to make sure things look close enough to Windows that no one thinks too hard about the differences from one UI to another.

The GNU system is arguably the more confusing point in this chain because it was created with the notion of coopting any piece of a working system which was sufficient to the task and free software, so a complete GNU system is comprised of many many non-GNU packages. If Linux had been around when 'kernel' development was contemplated, it would likely have been coopted at least in part. (Richard Stallman has admitted that the Hurd departed significantly from the GNU Project's normal approach of trying to get a replacement written as quickly and easily as possible by going with known methods and techniques, instead shooting for an elegant but previously unrealized design which has proven to be very difficult to implement.) The reasons Linux is not recognized as a GNU System kernel are primarily legal in nature, as Linux employs licensing practices that the GNU Project finds of questionable legal status (The GNU Project/Free Software Foundation actually has a General Counsel to keep track of issues like this, unlike most individual free software projects).

[HairdewX]

Re: Favorite OS?

This is kind of where my computer peeve comes in: if you want to play games for the computer, you therefore want to play games for Windows.

Nobody really makes anything for anything else that isn't on an emulator or a truly dedicated game console (where MMORPGs, for example, are almost nonexsistant; FFXI is obviously excluded, but that's a different disscussion all together).

Apple is partly to blame for not allowing very many hardware upgrades that the user can put in and use for games. With thier higher prices it also prevents fast market penetration (see recent iPhone sales...) Also, they didn't allow other computer vendors to pack in Mac OSX with their hardware. Only computers made by Apple could have the OS, so that limited the market penetration even more. Add the fact that boot camp allows Windows to boot up on a Mac and there is even less incentive to make games for Mac OSX.

Linux has never been as user friendly as Windows, even with a shell like KDE. Need the latest drivers? Better wait a few months...

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Favorite OS?

I also like to play video games, so the Windows OS (XP/Vista) is my favorite by default.

This is kind of where my computer peeve comes in: if you want to play games for the computer, you therefore want to play games for Windows.

Nobody really makes anything for anything else that isn't on an emulator or a truly dedicated game console (where MMORPGs, for example, are almost nonexsistant; FFXI is obviously excluded, but that's a different disscussion all together).

[HairdewX]

Re: Favorite OS?

eh I don't care for or like Linux at all.

Mac OSX looks nice, but there really isn't anything major it can do that I can't already do on XP/Vista.

I also like to play video games, so the Windows OS (XP/Vista) is my favorite by default.

[Mhurron]

Re: Favorite OS?

(Incidentally, I say GNU/Linux carefully here in knowledge of an inherent conflict. These are two things that don't necessarily have much to do with each other except that they are very often installed together. Linux is an Operating System. GNU is an Operating System by a different valid definition.

Nope and nope. Linux is a kernel, nothing more. GNU is a project that encompasses a whole lot of different applications. GNU/Linux is called such because most of the user land are GNU applications over the Linux kernel. However you can get all these GNU components on Solaris for instance, and some ship by default, but you don't call it GNU/SunOS/Solaris.

GNU is working on their own OS called the Hurd. It will not use Linux as a kernel.

In a stretch, you could even suggest that GNOME and KDE are different competing Operating Systems of a larger sense of the latter definition, that just happen to use a lot of the same underpinnings.

Well you could, but then again I suppose that you could call a horse and buggy a BMW. it wouldn't make it true though.

Throw in BlueOS (a BeOS clone that uses Linux

No it doesn't, BeOS was essentially written from scratch, but did ship with some GNU applications.

and MacOS X (a proprietary OS that uses free, BSD-based underpinnings

Pet-Peeve #1532: OS X is not BSD based. It is Mach based through the purchase of NeXT. There is a BSD subsystem in the kernel that, like all Mach kernels, handles the networking. A lot of OS X's cli userland is gathered from the 3 main BSD projects.

[Lunaryn]

Re: Favorite OS?

To be fair, I seriously doubt most respondents to a poll such as this have worked with more than one OS. Aside from the progression from one major release to the next which can change a lot. Most people are going to feel the best OS is the one they learned first for reasons already pointed out: familiarity = ease to a substantial extent.

For my part, I started way back on the Apple ][ series of computers, which has had a substantial impact on my own preferences. I have always valued flexibility and a conciseness to the interface. I have always been comfortable using the keyboard extensively. I have generally found switching to the mouse to be obtrusive and outside of paint programs have generally resented mouse-only interface elements (not to mention I wish more drawing programs had LOGO or AutoCAD-like command features). It's easier to be concise and accurate when typing; with the mouse there's a limited amount of information you can convey in a single action, and you have to worry about the size of the target onscreen, particularly if one has somewhat poor manual dexterity (probably a familiarity bias again, but I find overshooting an icon or accidentally dragging instead of clicking a lot more annoying than typos, particularly with line-buffered interfaces that allow easy editing of what's already typed, as I'm well-attuned to typos and can usually notice them as I make them).

I used DOS back when Windows was getting popular, in large part because my hand-me-down systems lacked such niceties as Extended memory (640k onry). When I did finally get a 386 notebook that supported Windows 3.1, I used it occasionally but had rather mixed feelings about it; I liked the ability to multitask (rather than merely switching from one loaded program to another as enabled by dosshell), but I disliked the need to carry around a mouse to use some programs (two games in particular I had, Minesweeper and Hearts, did not work at all without a mouse; a utility that allowed Windows programs to be launched from a DOS window also had to have that ability enabled from a mouse-only interface, though that was simple enough to automate with a Recorder macro (anyone know why that utility was taken out of Windows 95?)). The Program Manager and File Manager shells each provided enough flexibility to get around the system well enough without a mouse, so I was fairly okay with them, but I still spent 80% of my time in DOS.

Windows versions past 3 have all had significant improvements coupled with things that invited distaste. I had a fair bit of experience with Windows 95 not on my own systems, but on High School computers I helped to maintain, as well as my family's computer at the time. I was annoyed to find that the Explorer shell was far less keyboard-navigable than Program Manager, though still not entirely unfeasible, and fortunately things don't seem to have gotten any worse in that regard during successive changes to the UI. The 'classic' windows look and feel has been tolerable, with I think Windows 2000 being the best example of a fairly 'clean' interface. I can't comment on Vista as I am deliberately avoiding it, but Luna (UI for XP) is frankly hideous. I personally think Aqua (Mac OS X) is too bright, but it looks nice, even pretty. Luna misses the mark pretty thoroughly on this, the color scheme clashes terribly, the window border size is excessive and makes the title bar look deformed. Changing it to a more muted color scheme helps, but honestly, I'm just glad I can change back to a 'classic' UI theme on my one XP system.

My preference has been GNU/Linux for some years now, for many reasons, some of them at least partially ideological, but stemming from more practical concerns. I use my computers extensively for many things and they are a part of how I live my life. In many ways I consider the workings of one of my systems and its user interface as every bit as much a part of my personal space as my own bedroom or workspaces. I live there, I rely on it extensively, I have an incredible investment in it. I don't just want to pass the job of determining what the system does and how off to someone else and hope I can live with the result, I want to take an active part. I want to understand the system, I want to control the system, and make it something that will suit me. It's not a question of whether I value my money or my time more; investing time pays off better than investing money, when it comes to this.

GNU/Linux gives me a system that is very modular, where processes usually don't demand resources they don't need (I've run into one or two handy utilities that want an X server even though their purpose is not interactive. This is a rare exception.), where the GUI is a distinct front-end that doesn't pretend to be the whole system, and where many of the pieces work independently as well as in a larger whole. It gives me a system that I can examine and change and understand as much as I have the time and effort to put in. It gives me a system where the interface I use is replaceable, in case I feel like using a text shell one time, a simplistic GUI another time, and a highly complex integrated GUI with a clipboard, an object model, a fancy windower, a software audio mixer, etc. another time.

All that said, I have a low tolerance for most distributions. There are some with nice default configurations I'd recommend for a newbie, and I could live with them short term. In the long term I'd end up tearing out the distro packages and replacing them. Not because they are more frustrating than the things I don't like in Windows, but because I actually can do something about those frustrations.

Given that, and my aforementioned preferences which call for simplicity (in the sense of not many moving parts, not in the sense of second-guessing me so I don't have to think), my usual quick-and-dirty install distro is Slackware (installer very much sacrifices ease for beginners for the sake of flexibility and simplicity of design, don't pursue this one if you aren't looking to do some studying), which I install with a relatively minimal selection of packages. My preferred long-term solution is the LFS Book, which I initially started as an experiment and learning experience since I wanted to try out the then-brand-new Linux 2.4 and a new major version of KDE (forget now if it was 2 or 3) and none of the distros had integrated either yet. The control freak in me has latched onto this method of making systems and will probably never let go. Of course, it helps tremendously that I actually am a C/C++ developer. Though it took me a long time to get used to C, for various reasons, and I actually come from a BASIC background originally, having learned Object-Oriented Programming on an LPMud and then transitioning to C++ (I did learn a bit of C first, but only the syntax; the early environments I messed with lacked most of the C library, so I could do more in Basic than in C back then).

My case is rather extreme, but I think that if you're more inclined to fix the things that bug you than try to adjust to them, free systems have a very powerful draw.

(Incidentally, I say GNU/Linux carefully here in knowledge of an inherent conflict. These are two things that don't necessarily have much to do with each other except that they are very often installed together. Linux is an Operating System. GNU is an Operating System by a different valid definition. In a stretch, you could even suggest that GNOME and KDE are different competing Operating Systems of a larger sense of the latter definition, that just happen to use a lot of the same underpinnings. Throw in BlueOS (a BeOS clone that uses Linux but (I think) not GNU) and MacOS X (a proprietary OS that uses free, BSD-based underpinnings, and probably bears less resemblance to classic MacOS in infrastructure than Windows NT does to Windows 9x), and the matter just gets more complicated. There is no right terminology to clarify all this, so it's probably best to just combine the two names in the hopes of at least getting across the idea that both things are in there. )

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Favorite OS?

. . . Heh, I walked right into that. Good one, Mhurron.

[Mhurron]

Re: Favorite OS?

In all honesty, I'm thinking of learning to build my own Operating System. That's how Linux started, after all, last time I checked. Really, I'm just your average joe who knows relatively next to nothing on the matter . . .

I'm going to build a base on the moon, but I don't know anything about it. It can't be that hard, after all a bunch of Ph.D's can create one in orbit.

[Pai Pai Master]

Re: Favorite OS?

This thread's been moved to the Computers forum.

[Yellow Mage]

Re: Favorite OS?

Is there a "None of the Above" option?

Because, in all honesty, there isn't an OS out there that I'm particularly fond of: there's only one reason I'm using Windows at the moment, really, and that's because a family member is one of those Microsoft Certified Professionals. I'm not too fond of Microsoft, myself

Anything Apple makes is made of 100% suck, especially iAnything.

Linux . . . I've never really touched. I like its motives, but I don't know what I'll be able to do with it as a system without emulators.

In all honesty, I'm thinking of learning to build my own Operating System. That's how Linux started, after all, last time I checked. Really, I'm just your average joe who knows relatively next to nothing on the matter . . .

[Legal Fish]

Re: Favorite OS?

I really enjoy using XP and almost never have any problems with it. I don't use SP2 or bother with any updates.

Mac is nice, but I haven't spent enough time for it to grow on me(until recently, the fact it couldn't play FFXI or most games scared me away); Linux I've never touched.