Which OS

[Beliel]

I don't know how could so many people prefer Windows XP as they never touched to anything else, come on guys, XP is just slowing up your PC, fucking up all your work and give you a really boring aspect of the informatic..Just try (in a complete free version and full of programs free and unlimeted as good as Microsoft Office like Open Office Org, etc, etc) Ubuntu Linux, that's a great OS, approaching the greatness of OS X^^

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No informatic knowledge is required but you can go further with the Terminal and everything. (you can get free cd-no shipping fee here : Premium Link Upgrade )

 

[Barry1980]

I use XP. I know all the arguments for the different OS's, also the freeware that is floating around such as OpenOffice. The thing is, and the poll at the top shows this, is that if you go with Windows, everything you find is likely to be compatable with your OS. Not just that, but if you buy a pc the most likely OS you will find on it is Microsoft Windows. I have never seen a new pc come bundled with Linux.

It's like choosing between Winzip and Winrar. Everyone uses Winrar, so if you download something as a RAR file, you know you will be unable to unzip it.

If someone sat me in front of a computer with Linux installed, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I'm sure that it can do all the things that Windows can do, but there must be some compatability issues with a lot of software out there. All the software companies tend to make their software Windows compatible, just because so many people have it.

You can argue against the tactics that Microsoft have used to create their monopoly on the software market, but like many other people, I am lazy. I don't care who makes the software I use, as long as it works. I personally have never had a problem with any of my software, just the odd spyware ******.

I also plan to upgrade to Windows Vista, as soon as I see reports on it being a stable platform.:2 cents:

 

[renegade7]

Like the majority, I use XP.

 

[D-rock]

I don't know how could so many people prefer Windows XP as they never touched to anything else, come on guys, XP is just slowing up your PC, fucking up all your work and give you a really boring aspect of the informatic

I don't think as many people prefer it to the fact they just use what is on their computer in the first place. Most people aren’t technical gurus, and a lot of them only use their computer for simple things so they never realize their is something better or it just doesn't matter that much to them. For some people it is sort of like asking them which car is going to perform better when they have absolutely no idea how they function in the first place. They just start the ignition and push on the gas to make it go. Now if would be nice if their were a big variety of options out there that people used all the time so they could see the difference with virus and so on, but most of them just get XP and that’s it.

 

[pussypoppa]

Xp!

 

[Member2019]

I use XP. I know all the arguments for the different OS's, also the freeware that is floating around such as OpenOffice.

OpenOffice.org is not "FreeWare," it's Open Source -- huge difference! Open Source doesn't have spyware, so you want to prefer it over FreeWare. StarOffice is the commercially supported version.

Furthermore, the StarOffice suite (StarOffice 5.2 is what the original OpenOffice.org was based on, now StarOffice 6+ is built from OpenOffice.org) was the 2nd every office suite (ApplixWare was the first, on UNIX no less) and has a history that is older than MS Office. I can still read my old StarOffice 3.0 documents from the mid-'90s perfectly, but I cannot say the same about my old MS Office 95 documents. StarOffice also did HTML export years before MS Office. There are many other advantages.

There is a reason why MS Office is not used by Law and Medical offices -- longer-term incompatibility. WordPerfect and StarOffice have much, much better document compatibility histories than MS Office. Gartner estimated that over $2B is lost per year in old MS Office formats due to newer versions that are not backward compatible. I personally had it when MS Office 97 would not import many of my MS Office 4 (and even a few 95) templates and documents and made the switch then.

I always ran Windows NT in the '90s, and I ran largely Open Source or standards-based software on it for a reason. I wanted document longevity. Ten years later, I'm damn glad I did.

The thing is, and the poll at the top shows this, is that if you go with Windows, everything you find is likely to be compatable with your OS.

Not from years earlier. Yes, I can go to the superstore and buy anything, but that's largely because Microsoft now controls the superstore channel as well. Even Apple isn't a guarantee anymore, and Microsoft got Best Buy and others (short of CompUSA) to remove MacOS X software not because of lack of consumer demand (I know several distribution managers at Best Buy).

Not just that, but if you buy a pc the most likely OS you will find on it is Microsoft Windows. I have never seen a new pc come bundled with Linux.

That's because Microsoft controls the PC distribution channel. PC OEMs get charged for a copy of Windows regardless of whether Windows goes on the system. This is the per-model licensing policy, which is a re-hash the per-CPU licensing policy of the '90s -- ruled a practice of ******* trust, but they still do it.

That's why there is a "naked PC" option from most PC OEMs. But then Microsoft markets that as "piracy" because it doesn't come with an OS. This is very difficult when you're trying to buy 100 PCs with Linux for a major enterprise. Luckily HP has been very helpful since 2000 for those of us that like to buy high-end Linux workstations. Don't get me started on the Dell fiasco of 2000 (what do you mean Linux only supports 128MB of RAM?)

It's like choosing between Winzip and Winrar. Everyone uses Winrar, so if you download something as a RAR file, you know you will be unable to unzip it.

Huh? Do you even know the first thing you are talking about? Not all of us do porn. Although Linux is pretty safe for that too.

If someone sat me in front of a computer with Linux installed, I wouldn't know what to do with it. I'm sure that it can do all the things that Windows can do,

Correct. It's really about "familiarity." It's not "harder" in the least bit. A good friend's ******** went off to college and she only knew UNIX/Linux. She instantly started throwing fits about how "stupid" Windows worked, because she had never used it. It's not intuitive if you've never used MS Windows.

Even if you're used to GNOME on UNIX/Linux platforms.

but there must be some compatability issues with a lot of software out there.

Correct. Linux is based heavily on open standards and interfaces. Windows is not even largely based on proprietary standards, but often temporary/non standards. Even other commercial software is typically better.

Understand I used to be a core Microsoft insider -- an original NT 3.1+ adopter. A major problem with Microsoft in the professional industry (e.g., engineering, law, medicine, publishing, etc...) is that their software writes file formats that are only good for 1-2 versions back. After that you start getting incompatibility, and by 3 versions, the documents are typically useless or have to be heavily edited.

That's not good when you're trying to maintain longer-term documentation like for engineering specifications, legal proceedings, medical documentation, publications, etc...

All the software companies tend to make their software Windows compatible, just because so many people have it.

But compatible with what? 90% of consumers assume that anytime they buy a new PC, peripheral, OS or software and one of the other 3 are out-of-date by 2+ years, they just assume they have to upgrade all 4. And that's exactly what 90% of consumers do -- upgrade every 3 years.

Given the advantages that a Microsoft partnership offers in the distribution and, more recently, retail channel, why would anyone support anything else? I mean, with Microsoft, I can keep my hardware interfaces proprietary and my software code closed -- so I can ***** consumers to buy a new product by not releasing newer drivers for the next Windows version or not documenting my file format.

Under Linux, everything is exposed so anyone can modify the software for older/newer versions. That's bad news if I want users to buy new hardware or upgrade new software.

You can argue against the tactics that Microsoft have used to create their monopoly on the software market, but like many other people, I am lazy. I don't care who makes the software I use, as long as it works. I personally have never had a problem with any of my software, just the odd spyware ******.

It's easy for home users to just press a button a restart, or just avoid dealing with things.

When you're an enterprise administrator, UNIX/Linux is a heck of a lot easier to manage. Again, I managed Windows systems too -- and was even an early NT proponent back in 1993 (I thought Linux was a toy at that time). But by 1994, Microsoft made some really stupid choices (despite some good, core architects who had no say) and the rest is history.

I

also plan to upgrade to Windows Vista, as soon as I see reports on it being a stable platform.:2 cents:

I'd avoid it. Incompatibility and no better security -- just a few more useless nags and prompts that make you "feel more secure."

BTW, I'm an American and I could care less about the DOJ lawsuit against Microsoft. I think PC OEMs and retail channels created their own mess with Microsoft by assuming "a free lunch" (i.e., Microsoft used to give their software away to PC OEMs and the retail channels, even paying "rebates" so vendors wouldn't ship competitor's products they had bought). The US government should think more about getting their way as a consumer, instead of a regulator.

Computing and the Internet works on Open Standards. Every single, major innovation has never been invented by Microsoft. Microsoft bought the 3rd best product and then just bundled it so it was the default -- including Spyglass Explorer, now known as Internet Explorer. Even MS Office is still so kludgely hacked together that it's not well integrated.

Even Gates' 1975 "Most of You Steal Your Software" anti-piracy article was actually him bitching about people who "stole back" his changes on the code he originally stole from his peers and then modified. Talk about hypocrisy! Microsoft has never written one thing (not even Basic, which was stolen from Digital, illegally) -- and in several cases -- they were caught red handed for stealing without any license or legal agreement (IBM settled out-of-court for US$800,000 on Microsoft's behalf for MS/PC-DOS 1.0, which was an ******* rip of CP/M done by Seattle Computer Products which Microsoft licensed from for US$50,000).

I purposely love it when a core BSD UNIX or Linux library has a security hole. Because 9 times out of 10, it's also a security hole in Windows. Libz and libpng were perfect examples. You're running UNIX/Linux if you're running Windows -- WIndows has far more SCO UNIX code in it than any Open Source BSD UNIX or Linux, and has since MS-DOS 2.0.

 

[Member2019]

MacOS X is a great platform

Unix is not an OS, Mac is not an OS, Mac OS X is one and it rules everything, already twice better as Windows Vista, just imagine MAC OS X.5 which will come out at the same time as Vista. So my vote is for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4.x).

I was writing a long response and lost it.

Simply put, MacOS X is Darwin, which is a FreeBSD-derived version of UNIX based off of Jobs' previous NeXT work. Because portions of MacOS X is proprietary and controlled, and has 5% of the consumer base (unlike Linux, whose desktop adoption is largely corporate-only, and exposes hardware/software standards) they can get the hardware and software support.

I have both MacOS X and 9 systems. I absolutely love MacOS X. I'm going to get an Intel-based PowerBook soon and triple boot, but largely stay in MacOS X most of the time. Linux's problems are market-created, not technical problems with Linux itself. That's unlikely to change (although corporate adoption is not slowing down anytime soon). MacOS X is a great UNIX platform with vendor support because of Apple's partnerships.

 

[Member2019]

I don't think as many people prefer it to the fact they just use what is on their computer in the first place. Most people aren’t technical gurus, and a lot of them only use their computer for simple things so they never realize their is something better or it just doesn't matter that much to them. For some people it is sort of like asking them which car is going to perform better when they have absolutely no idea how they function in the first place. They just start the ignition and push on the gas to make it go. Now if would be nice if their were a big variety of options out there that people used all the time so they could see the difference with virus and so on, but most of them just get XP and that’s it.

The distribution channel is the key. Microsoft controls it. It's hard to install an OS -- especially when the hardware might not be fully compatible (including older or newer Windows versions than the hardware). So 90+% of consumers really don't have much choice.

 

[Member2019]

Ntfs

Here's one idiotic situation. Win XP will allow you to make a "rescue" disk, to boot from to help you get back into windows if the boot track goes down on your HD. Sounds good?
Win XP however uses the newer NTSC file system, downward incompatible with the older FAT32 system.

Actually, NTFS pre-dates FAT32 by 5 years. NTFS is based on HPFS, which is actually 5 years older than NTFS. The core design of NTFS is flawed (long story), and even IBM dropped HPFS in the mid-'90s for JFS (another story).

NTFS cannot be used for removable media and it has ties to the Windows registry (again, long story). You can run into issues if you create a NTFS filesystem on one system and then use it on another. The purpose for the NT domain model (including ADS today) has to do with limitations with how NTFS operates and possible corruptions (again, very long story).

Microsoft has put in some protections in NTFS 5 (NT5+/2000+) that prevents you from accessing some of these corruptable NTFS areas. E.g., it uses hidden areas on Dynamic Disks (newer LDM Disk Label, partition type 42h) to store SAM/SID info that a NTFS filesystem needs. In NT5.1 (XP/2003), if you try to mount a NTFS filesystem created by another NT5.1 installation, and it's a Basic Disk (Legacy BIOS/DOS Disk Label of only primary/logical partitoins) and it typically refuses.

There are countless, stupid tricks like this to using NTFS -- it's based designed was flawed. It was supposed to be addressed in NT4.0 "Cario" with the new "CarioFS" but that got pushed back, then became vapor. The NT6.0 "Longhorn" (now Vista) WinFS was supposed to fix it, but now that's been pushed back, and likely headed to vapor as well.

The idiot part of it is that even though you format the floppy using XP, (with NTSC), what you get is an Me compatible disk using FAT32 that won't boot, or even see Windows as installed.

Ummm, you're not creating the correct disk. That's for creating a MS-DOS 7 (Windows 9x) boot disk for booting the system outside of the Windows NT kernel. You might need to do that for a firmware/BIOS update.

Floppies are always formatted FAT. You typically create a recover disk from the Control Panel / System interface, and then that floppy is used with the NT5+ (2000+) install CD to recover information. But in reality, there is so much to NT5+ (2000+) that you can't store it on a floppy. The floppy just tells the recovery procedure in NT5+ (2000+) CD where to get at backed up files.

But in 9 out of 10 times -- actually more like 99 out of 100 times -- you're screwed anyway at that point.

You can blame Gates personally for that one too. OS/2 could do everything from inside it's CMD.EXE command shell. Gates personally decided that NT (based on OS/2 and VMS) would not be able to boot into the CMD.EXE command shell and fix the system -- you'd have to boot the full GDI (graphical display interface) first. Back in NT 4.0 and earlier, you were really screwed. Today in NT5+ (2000+), the "Recovery Console" is still a joke.

If Windows self-toasts and won't boot, or won't come back up as before, you're screwed.

Which is why most major enterprises I've worked at never install Windows Server 2000 or 2003 "bare." They install it on a mainframe or Linux-hosted virtual machine, so if the Windows system self-corrupts, it can be re-imaged in less than 15 minutes. I've gotten a lot of work from EMC Corporation using Linux to save Microsoft's butt, and IBM as well using OS/390 and AS/400 to do the same.

Brilliant! Maybe in the next $100 upgrade with all new bells and whistles they will address this obvious problem? I'm not optimistic.

Well, what does $100 buy you? Think about it. It really just buys you partnerships and not much else.

But yes, I agree, NTFS is quite broken in many regards. But FAT is far worse. Yes, it was easier to recover when you were running MS-DOS 7.x (Windows 9x/Me), but it was also a major issue because of the same. Had Microsoft never created Windows 95, Windows NT 4.0 might have really made a huge difference by the mid-'90s (and I might not be running Linux today). But then again, Gates personally made stupid decisions and spurned most of his architects.

After the lack of adopting .NET security for NT 6.0, it wasn't surprising when the mass exodus started in 2004 -- with Microsoft's core architects leaving for Google and other companies. Microsoft has been long removed from any serious software design in how their products differ from their (actually good IMHO) base APIs and designs. But now they don't even have a good foundation of talent anymore.

 

[nickja154]

I don't much about Linux but computer programmers and people who know allot about programming they love it. Apple Mac is probably the most user-friendly OS there is... I think. Windows XP is good but get a firewall and a good anti-virus that removes spyware too. I recommend Panda.

I don't know Unix and the older versions of Windows pretty much stink. Windows has come out with Windows Vista. Just to support it you need a pretty powerfull PC. Like every new Windows it has TONS and TONS of bugs.

 

[reidman]

my firefox rarely crashes, plus you don't have the downthem all or flashgot thing on IE7. IE7 is only available as beta. I don't trust the beta version, heard many problems. I don't know I am more accustomed to firefox. I tried windows vista but I truely **** it.

Yes IE7 is only in beta, and I haven't had any issues at home or work with it. I can't use firefox at work anyway, it dosen't support the web apps that I have to work with. The only thing I like about firefox was tabbed browsing, and IE7 has that and dose it much better than firefox. Just my opinion.

 

[Perfect]

Windows XP

 

[Barry1980]

I was pwned by the prof :ban:. Prof you seem to be the oracle on this topic. If I switched to Linux (maybe on a dual boot setup), would I still be able to use all of my software? My computer games, antivirus and everything?

Thanks

 

[Tachi]

It's all about Mac OS X! As a couple of people have pointed out earlier, OS X IS the operating system, not an application like Windows. There are sooo many reasons why OS X is better than Windows XP, but I don't want to upset anyone... with the truth

 

[niptuck]

I would like to address a few questions to a more technology savvy crowd, I would appreciate any comments:

1. Does the current generation of Intel based Macs support Windows in case you need to run a Windows based application?

2. If it does not, how well do the various emulators work? Do they strain the system substantially?

3. This one goes more to Prof: Will various anti-virus and firewall solutions solve the everlasting Windows security troubles?

 

[Member2019]

I was pwned by the prof :ban:. Prof you seem to be the oracle on this topic. If I switched to Linux (maybe on a dual boot setup), would I still be able to use all of my software? My computer games, antivirus and everything?

Under Windows, yes. But not under Linux. Linux will never be a better Windows OS than Windows for Windows applications.