Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @05:52AM (#218965)

    I use every OS, and every OS sucks.

    • (Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:23AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:23AM (#219037)

      Joke's on you buddy, my OS blows!

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:22PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:22PM (#219109)

        Well, my OS defies the laws of physics, it both sucks and blows simultaneously.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:33PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:33PM (#219117)

          Mine recirculates in a regenerative suck and blow, conserving energy.

    • (Score: 1) by AnonymousCowardNoMore on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:07PM

      by AnonymousCowardNoMore (5416) on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:07PM (#219126)

      For the record, here is the canonical list of operating systems which suck. [cat-v.org] If you think some newer Windows, Apple OS, GNU, etc. doesn't suck, please look under "Windows NT", "BSD" or "Mach", as the case may be.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 07 2015, @12:30PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2015, @12:30PM (#219536) Homepage Journal

        Linux sucks differently every time a kernel is released.

        That is pretty close to the truth. For instance - every time I attempt to load the 4.2 kernel, I have a kernel panic. I'm fine with every version of 4.1 I've found, but 4.2 seems not to like my hardware. Fek!

        --
        Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
    • (Score: 4, Funny) by ese002 on Friday August 07 2015, @12:00AM

      by ese002 (5306) on Friday August 07 2015, @12:00AM (#219327)

      I use every OS, and every OS sucks.

      But nothing sucks like a Vax [vax.co.uk]!

      I'm going to go out on a limb and you run neither Ultrix or VMS. That means your suckage is not maximized!

    • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 08 2015, @04:29PM

      by Gaaark (41) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 08 2015, @04:29PM (#219906) Journal

      If you use windows, is it both dead AND alive?

      (and yes, i didn't google to check the spelling of Schroedinger, or bother with umlauts, whatever. Excuuuuse me!) :)

      --
      --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday August 23 2015, @02:52PM

        by bzipitidoo (4388) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 23 2015, @02:52PM (#226662) Journal

        C'mon, don't be a party pooper. You should've blamed your OS for the lack of umlauts.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:57AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:57AM (#223124)

      I've been forced to use both AIX and Windows at employers. There is terrible, there is horrible, there is OMFG!, and then there are Windows and AIX.

      It is all relative. After those experiences, what warts even HP/UX has seem minor. And, Linux, and (in spite of Oracle) Solaris are close to nirvana-- and yeah, things about both suck.

    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:23PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Thursday August 20 2015, @04:23PM (#225473) Homepage Journal

      Indeed. A better poll question for us would be "how many OSes do you use" or "have you used?"

      But which one sucks? Yes, all of them, at least the ones I've used (I've by no means used every OS ever developed. I'm surprised that you have a working Babbage machine to test Lady Lovelace's programs).

      Some suck worse than others, and some suck for completely different reasons. But don't forget the guy who used to be Ed Waldo, [mcgrewbooks.com] who said "90% of everything is crud."

      --
      Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by c0lo on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:31AM

    by c0lo (156) on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:31AM (#218972) Journal
    ... but I'd like to use Ripley's Mother.
    --
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
  • (Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:34AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:34AM (#218973)

    If you don't use Linux, you're crap!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:09AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:09AM (#219010)

      Hush, it's GNU/Linux.

      • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:00AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:00AM (#219021)

        And where is GNU on the poll? Nowhere! Because it's crap!

      • (Score: 3, Disagree) by jmorris on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:09PM

        by jmorris (4844) on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:09PM (#219306)

        Unless it is Android/Linux.

        That GNU/Linux thing used to really annoy, it was clear RMS was just butthurt that his failure to complete the HURD and get GNU out himself. Linux/GNU/X came along and the name just happened, and Linux is what stuck and there really ain't no changing it at this point.

        But we do need to think about some sort of naming scheme that can capture the new reality that 'Linux' is now a family of systems based roughly on the Linux kernel. Linux/GNU/X is the OS that was, Android/Linux is the one that is and something is birthing over at RedHat that isn't Android or UNIX but doesn't have a name because they don't want to admit they are quietly replacing POSIX/UNIX/X with Pottering's Folly. It is either the Linux that will be or a disaster... or perhaps both.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @12:53AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @12:53AM (#219348)

          But we do need to think about some sort of naming scheme that can capture the new reality

          Everything is Google.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @04:43AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @04:43AM (#219428)

          Name it after the DE because that's what the user ends up actually using.

        • (Score: 2) by bart9h on Monday August 10 2015, @08:11PM

          by bart9h (767) on Monday August 10 2015, @08:11PM (#220873)

          Damn, it happened again.

          I select the moderation, then hit "End" to go to the bottom of the page, but the moderation combobox had the focus, so it change the value to "Spam" instead.

          Then I try to select the right moderation and moderate again, but the system says I had already moderated on this. Why can't I correct and overwrite the previous moderation?

          • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday August 11 2015, @05:01AM

            by jmorris (4844) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @05:01AM (#221106)

            Meh, stuff happens. Get downmodded all the time, first spam mod though. For the record, THAT one burns karma; looks like one spam mod drains ten whole points. Guess I need to remember to post a couple of non-political posts now. :)

            Have to assume the system has some sort of safety mech to prevent abuse of the spam mod if it is that powerful so hope you don't get hosed too. Probably a rare enough event it likely doesn't make sense to want a way to take a mod back or anything. In the end, it's just mod points on a website, ain't terribly important.

            • (Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 11 2015, @10:26AM

              by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday August 11 2015, @10:26AM (#221199) Homepage Journal

              Yeah, we manually check the spam mods every day. At least I do. Abuses carry a month's ban from moderating but accidental ones we just reverse, so always make sure and say something if it was accidental.

              --
              My rights don't end where your fear begins.
              • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:54PM

                by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:54PM (#224449)

                Given the way this mod happened (and assuming accidental spam mods often go that way), what about adding a second "---" line after the spam mod, so this error results not in a spam mod, but in an invalid mod which gets ignored?

                • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:54PM

                  by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday August 19 2015, @01:54PM (#224971) Homepage Journal

                  Yeah, that's really a pretty good idea. Or put a duplicate Normal entry down there.

                  --
                  My rights don't end where your fear begins.
                  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:14AM

                    by Hairyfeet (75) <reversethis-{moc ... {8691tsaebssab}> on Thursday August 27 2015, @09:14AM (#228531) Journal

                    How about a "are you sure you want to mod this post X" for mods which can cause damage? this would seem to solve 2 problems, the first being accidental downmods and the second being those abusing downmods as it would be harder for them to say "it was just an accident" if they had to click through a second "are you sure" box.

                    --
                    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
                    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday August 27 2015, @12:48PM

                      by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Thursday August 27 2015, @12:48PM (#228561) Homepage Journal

                      Or simply an Undo Spam link beside the comment title. It already exists for all admins and editors, it shouldn't be too difficult to have it appear if you're the one who moderated the post Spam as well. Hmm...

                      --
                      My rights don't end where your fear begins.
          • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday August 11 2015, @10:20AM

            by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday August 11 2015, @10:20AM (#221198) Homepage Journal

            No worries. All fixed.

            --
            My rights don't end where your fear begins.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @12:34AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @12:34AM (#221509)

          Fine. SCO/Linux. Happy now?

        • (Score: 2) by present_arms on Thursday August 13 2015, @06:51PM

          by present_arms (4392) on Thursday August 13 2015, @06:51PM (#222453) Homepage Journal

          I use Linux exclusively, I actually use my own remaster of PClinuxOS and I don't have to worry about any systemd business, although I do use the other creation of Pulse Audio. I have totally ignored every Windows release after 7, and there would be no way I'd use 10. I have used OSX though and after 10.6 it seems to have been down hill. I do like BSD though, it's stable beyond belief.

          just my 2 Cents

          --
          http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
        • (Score: 2, Insightful) by elixir on Thursday August 13 2015, @07:17PM

          by elixir (5502) on Thursday August 13 2015, @07:17PM (#222463)

          I do not think RMS was butthurt, he has a point. Linux is not an operating system, as we all know it is just a kernel.

          I think it is valid to call is GNU/Linux since Linux is the kernel and GNU is the operating system. No need to call it GNU/Linux/X because X is merely a program that runs on GNU/Linux ;)

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2015, @04:01AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 16 2015, @04:01AM (#223445)

      Linux is the kernel, not the OS. OSs are Redhat, Mint, Debain, ... Though we tend to call them distros.

      Pick your version here: http://distrowatch.com/ [distrowatch.com]

      http://www.everydaylinuxuser.com/2014/02/analysis-of-top-10-linux-operating.html [everydaylinuxuser.com]

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:36AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @09:36AM (#228911)

      After recent revelations about Win 10 spyware being also forcefully installed into Win 7 and 8 through updates, I would rephrase that as "If you continue to use Windows they crap on you with your consent".

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Subsentient on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:49AM

    by Subsentient (1111) on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:49AM (#218977) Homepage Journal

    I kinda like OpenBSD, and I admire them for their excellent security work, but I tend to really prefer Linux in my day-to-day workings.

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:58AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:58AM (#218987)

    The OS I use most is the one encoded in my genes, which every single cell in my body runs on. I use that OS 24/7.

    • (Score: 4, Funny) by isostatic on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:55AM

      by isostatic (365) on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:55AM (#219031) Journal

      So BeOS?

    • (Score: 2) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:30PM

      by cubancigar11 (330) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @08:30PM (#221898) Homepage Journal

      Where does SHIT fit in your operating system design?

      • (Score: 4, Funny) by Tork on Friday August 14 2015, @03:47AM

        by Tork (3914) on Friday August 14 2015, @03:47AM (#222668)
        You'll notice he didn't mention stability. Maybe twice a day he generates a lot of logs, or maybe even a core dump.
        --
        Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @01:44AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 28 2015, @01:44AM (#228808)

          That's all behind him now.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @03:25PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @03:25PM (#223966)

        /dev/colon which is periodically flushed into /dev/anus

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:58PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:58PM (#224451)

        dump [die.net]

  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Appalbarry on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:09AM

    by Appalbarry (66) on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:09AM (#218993) Journal

    Though it may be Linux based, it's a separate entity these days, and honestly I use it more than my Linux desktop most days.

    I'd wager that for many, many people the smartphone or tablet OS is at least as important as a desktop operating system.

    And of course there's the OS that runs my TV, and the one that runs my car, and....

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:18AM (#218998)

      Android is Linux with the Freedom removed. You call that Linux? Shame on Google. Dude where's my bash prompt?

      • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:13PM

        by Subsentient (1111) on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:13PM (#219188) Homepage Journal

        I know right? I rooted my phone and I got a fedora chroot on an ext4 partition on my sd card. I use the SDL X11 server app with DISPLAY=127.0.0.1:0 to get a nice XFCE on my phone.

        All this is good and well, but I should NOT NEED TO ROOT IT! And to add insult to injury, it's boot locked.

        --
        "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
        • (Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:26PM

          by mr_mischief (4884) on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:26PM (#219275)

          I have Debian on a chroot for mine. It works without rooting the phone, but with some minor quirks. I apt-get installed my C toolchain so I could natively compile things on it. The first thing I did with that was compile perl because the one provided with the chroot didn't support some of the things I wanted it to do.

          • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday August 07 2015, @04:16AM

            by Subsentient (1111) on Friday August 07 2015, @04:16AM (#219420) Homepage Journal

            Doesn't chroot require root privileges to execute? How'd you pull that one off?

            --
            "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
            • (Score: 2) by mr_mischief on Friday August 07 2015, @04:49PM

              by mr_mischief (4884) on Friday August 07 2015, @04:49PM (#219630)

              Well it's called a chroot by the app author but it apparently doesn't actually use the chroot() system call. There's an app in the Play Store called GNURoot. It gives you a loopback of Debian, Fedora, Arch, Octave, or I think some others that run alongside your Android. It then gives you a shell within that loopback. You can't run setuid-root programs from within it unless you've actually rooted your Android system outside of it, though. It's still pretty handy, but isn't quite a fully functional system without rooting.

              I'm not sure I'm ready to root this particular phone just yet. If there's a hypervisor that lets me run an actual full OS with root inside that without rooting the main OS I'd probably use that. This meets my needs for having a pocketable GNU/Linux userland for the most part, though.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:59AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:59AM (#224325)
      • (Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:48AM

        by melikamp (1886) on Thursday August 27 2015, @03:48AM (#228443) Journal
        Sleazy vendors are allergic to GPLv3, which is one of the best reasons to use it over v2. Their flat-out refusal to port GNU (which would be essentially effortless) is a clear indication that GPLv3 is working as intended.
    • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:19PM

      by Freeman (732) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:19PM (#219131) Journal

      Your TV probably runs on Linux.

      --
      Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
      • (Score: 2) by TheRaven on Sunday August 09 2015, @05:08PM

        by TheRaven (270) on Sunday August 09 2015, @05:08PM (#220313) Journal
        Depends a lot on the TV. Most Panasonic TVs run FreeBSD as do some Samsung ones. A lot of older ones run TRON or some other embedded OS. An increasing number run Android these days.
        --
        sudo mod me up
  • (Score: 2) by KritonK on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:10AM

    by KritonK (465) on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:10AM (#218994)

    I dual boot Linux and Windows, so I can't answer this poll.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:14AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @08:14AM (#218997)

      Still? Throw some RAM in your rig and toss Winblows into a VM already.

      • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:12AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:12AM (#219011)

        That's not an option if you want to actually utilize your gfx/sfx hardware properly.

        • (Score: 3, Informative) by Marand on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:41PM

          by Marand (1081) on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:41PM (#219281) Journal

          Whoever modded this up hasn't been paying attention to virtualisation in years. it is possible if you have hardware that supports pci and vga passthrough. needs a second gpu dedicated to the vm, but it's been possible for years. Not sure exactly how long, but I first saw it done as a demo by Ubisoft with gtx 400 series cards when that was still current-gen nvidia tech.

          Biggest caveat is the cpu+motherboard both need iommu support, and nvidia started artificially restricting their drivers for that use somehow after the 400 series so you need an AMD gpu or high-end (workstation, not consumer/gaming) nvidia gpu. Best setup seems to currently be amd for both the cpu and guest gpu because not all intel cpus have the necessary virt extensions.

          You can also pass other hardware through the same way, usually more easily than the gpu.

          • (Score: 4, Touché) by mhajicek on Friday August 07 2015, @03:54AM

            by mhajicek (51) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2015, @03:54AM (#219407)

            So basically, buy a new computer so you can run Windows in a VM. If you're going to do that, why not run two computers?

            --
            The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
            • (Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:00AM

              by Marand (1081) on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:00AM (#219800) Journal

              So basically, buy a new computer so you can run Windows in a VM.

              First off, I was responding to the AC's absolute that virtualisation is not an option at all if you want to use certain types of hardware, suggesting that dual booting is the only viable option. That statement is outdated and incorrect, so I mentioned the IOMMU extensions that have made VMs a viable dual-boot alternative for users with compatible hardware.

              Second, I never suggested people buy new computers explicitly for that purpose. Some people might already have compatible hardware -- especially if they're primarily AMD buyers -- allowing them to avoid dual booting by adding an extra GPU if interested in avoidingd dual-boot. Others might be preparing to upgrade for other reasons (outdated or failing hardware, for example) and could decide to seek out compatible hardware as an additional requirement, much like how one still has to verify Linux compatibility with hardware.

              If you're going to do that, why not run two computers?

              Instead of putting money into two machines and redundant components -- two cases, two motherboards, two power supplies, CPUs and RAM for two separate systems, etc. -- you can use all that money to make one beefier system and allocate resources accordingly.

              Say for example, a user that primarily uses Linux but also likes to play games. When doing productive things, the VM is off and the full system resources are available to the Linux host and whatever the user needs. When it's time to goof off with a Windows game, he can also fire up a VM that has most of the resources (CPU/RAM) allocated to the VM, play until bored, and then turn the VM back off and get those resources back.

              Of course, this takes you back to the question of whether you would prefer to dual boot or not, because you could also just make the beefy system and dual-boot instead. It's a question of what the individual user finds more convenient in the long-term. Still, it's a viable option and shouldn't be dismissed with a remark of "just buy two computers"

              • (Score: 1) by WillR on Monday August 17 2015, @08:20PM

                by WillR (2012) on Monday August 17 2015, @08:20PM (#224080)
                Or you can just boot into Windows so the games have access to all the resources of your hardware, and not worry about building a specialized all-AMD gaming virtualization station.

                It's not 1998 anymore, we aren't going to judge your short uptime!
                • (Score: 2) by Marand on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:19AM

                  by Marand (1081) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:19AM (#224222) Journal

                  It's not about the uptime, at least in my case; it's about the inconvenience. I've been dual booting for games for a long time and it's frequently a massive pain in the ass, enough so that I decided I want to move away from it in the future even if it requires extra setup.

                  One of the problems is that dual-booting just for games means that you take away access to your primary OS any time you want to fire up a game. So, you either can't do anything else during that time or you have to duplicate parts of your primary environment in Windows too. Plus you can't do something else while waiting on Windows to boot, update, reboot, etc.

                  So, instead of just "boot Windows, play game" it ends up being "boot Windows, wait for updates to apply, get harassed about Flash to update, start browser to check something related to game, have to update that browser," and so on. The more stuff you need or want access to while playing, the more you have to install and manage, and it's still going to be a half-assed environment compared to your main environment.

                  It might not seem like a big deal, but there's a lot of waiting involved and it gets frustrating. It's even worse if the games are online, since you tend to have downtime waiting on other people, or waiting in lobbies, etc. where you could normally alt-tab during and do something else, but with dual-boot you can't without duplicating your environment.

                  With a VM or a second machine (maybe accessed via Steam's remote desktop thing), you don't have to duplicate your environment to access things, you don't have to deal with as much Windows environment generally, and when those Windows parts are updating or you're waiting on players, queues, etc. you can still do something useful with the main or host system. With dual-boot I find myself avoiding certain games just because I know I have to reboot to do it. All said, I find I'd rather do just about anything else instead of another dual-boot system.

                  Of the two options (VM with passthough or a second system), a second system is the easier way, but I've been that route and want to do something different next time, partly "just because" and partly due to space, power use, and heat generation. So, the next update I do, I'm going to try getting a working passhtrough setup. I don't mind doing extra up-front work for easier management later (which is one of the reasons I use Debian) and, difficult or easy, it will be educational.

            • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Pino P on Sunday August 09 2015, @12:18AM

              by Pino P (4721) on Sunday August 09 2015, @12:18AM (#220058) Journal

              One laptop fits in a backpack better than two laptops.

          • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday August 07 2015, @03:12PM

            by wantkitteh (3362) on Friday August 07 2015, @03:12PM (#219593) Homepage Journal

            I've tried building a system along these lines, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone without a lot of time to burn on the initial setup. To say YMMV would be a major understatement, even with AMD hardware end-to-end.

            • (Score: 2) by Marand on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:06AM

              by Marand (1081) on Saturday August 08 2015, @05:06AM (#219801) Journal

              Yeah, it's a wild frontier, but the time investment might be worth it for people that really want to avoid dual booting or duplicating hardware to have separate systems for each OS.

              Of course, if you're only using Windows for gaming, dual booting is probably the safest option because it creates an extra barrier between you and your time wasting habits. Make it more convenient to fire up Windows and a game and you might regret the lost productivity :)

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by throwaway28 on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:50AM

    by throwaway28 (5181) on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:50AM (#219018) Journal

    Linux, but the next time I have the patience to reinstall, I want to try out gentoo. Having lived long enough to see stuff break, I'm starting to think that binaries first, source later is the wrong sequence to fetch software in. The idea of building an entire system out nothing but gcc, a few shell scripts, and a network connection sounds potentially easier to diagnose when shit hits the fan, than a normally built system.

    • (Score: 3, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday August 07 2015, @03:15PM

      by Thexalon (636) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2015, @03:15PM (#219594)

      If you really want to get a good understanding of the components of a Linux system, try building one from scratch [linuxfromscratch.org]. Plus, if you do what I've done a couple of times of turning each package into a .deb or .rpm, you will really understand exactly how to create a distribution.

      And for what it's worth, yes, my Gentoo-based systems have all been quite resilient.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by DarkMorph on Sunday August 09 2015, @01:18PM

      by DarkMorph (674) on Sunday August 09 2015, @01:18PM (#220240)

      nothing but gcc, a few shell scripts, and a network connection

      Sounds like LFS to me. If you choose Gentoo you will have the Portage package manager. Concerns with breaking packages are quite low these days. First we had the tool revdep-rebuild to run to scan our libraries to find broken links but now, Portage is able to identify breaks being introduced and intentionally leaves an older library until you perform a rebuild. It's actually preventing breakage so at no point should you have an application that can't launch due to an upgrade somewhere else on the system. Note that you can still use revdep-rebuild to be sure, and that Portage has the command "emerge @preserved-rebuild" to instruct it to start recompiling all packages that were flagged.

      When an emerge is called either deps are rebuilt on the spot or the above procedure is performed. With these two scenarios covered, it is rather difficult to end up with something broken unless you are trying to break things by uninstalling packages that you know are deps for others deliberately.

  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by isostatic on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:59AM

    by isostatic (365) on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:59AM (#219032) Journal

    I'm reading this on iOS
    I was just using my Linux laptop which is still in the apps room
    My osx laptop is on the desk in the studio (awesome battery)
    The qnap server I'm copying 10T onto is Linux, as is the server I'm copying from
    Then machine in trying to fix for someone while I wait for everyone to gather for dinner is windows

    However Os choice hasn't been a major issue for years. Vim and Firefox are the same whether I'm on osx or Linux, I make the choice on hardware (large laptop, small laptop, phone, depending on logistics)

  • (Score: 4, Funny) by zocalo on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:47PM

    by zocalo (302) on Thursday August 06 2015, @12:47PM (#219057)
    But if anyone has any suggestions for a decent text editor for it...
    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
    • (Score: 4, Touché) by Thexalon on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:09PM

      by Thexalon (636) Subscriber Badge on Thursday August 06 2015, @01:09PM (#219064)

      There is a decent text editor in emacs: run "Meta-X term" and when it asks you what shell to use, enter in "/bin/vim". There is also a way to run emacs within vim, if you want to do that: ":! emacs".

      The fact that both of those are possible is a testament to the flexibility of standard Unix tools that the proprietary world has never matched!

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @03:00PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @03:00PM (#219587)

      Evil? [bitbucket.org]

    • (Score: 2) by engblom on Monday August 17 2015, @01:01PM

      by engblom (556) on Monday August 17 2015, @01:01PM (#223913)

      While the Emacs OS joke is common and well known it is a joke slightly annoying me because Emacs is not a good OS as it is single threaded. Imagine you using Erc for IRCing from Emacs and the server goes down. All the time while Erc tries to reconnect, Emacs is completely frozen. In worst case you sit there a minute or two while it is timing out and you can do nothing.

      Emacs is a typical example of how the GNU philosophy is not Unix philosophy (GNU= Gnu Is Not Unix). The Unix way is to have one tool doing one thing well. Emacs does many things but in most of the cases quite poorly. Really many of the Emacs modules are buggy with big faults.

      In my opinion, the biggest strength of Emacs is how you can make your own IDE for developing stuff... that it is a programmable editor. Almost all of the rest (tetris, snake, erc, etc etc) could be thrown away from Emacs and Emacs would actually have a chance to see a faster progress than now. As it is now, you can not see a big progress as so many old modules still need to work.

      • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:48AM

        by hendrikboom (1125) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @12:48AM (#224176) Homepage Journal

        Emacs was a wonderful OS for an ancient computer with a text-only CRT as its primary I/O device. We don't usually have machines like that around any more, so it's easy to make jokes about it.

  • (Score: 1) by jdavidb on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:06PM

    by jdavidb (5690) on Thursday August 06 2015, @02:06PM (#219078) Homepage Journal
    I use Windows, but I spend most of my time in Cygwin. Between Cygwin and Firefox, I almost don't know what OS I'm in.
    --
    ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
    • (Score: 1) by elixir on Friday August 14 2015, @07:11PM

      by elixir (5502) on Friday August 14 2015, @07:11PM (#222964)

      You should just go full GNU/Linux then.

      • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:10AM

        by jdavidb (5690) on Saturday August 15 2015, @02:10AM (#223112) Homepage Journal
        I should, and I used to, but I am constrained to use Windows at work, so Cygwin makes it bearable. And because of the number of hours I spent in front of Cygwin at work it became the default at home at some point when a Linux box died and I bought another box that came with Windows. Prior to that point I would have prompted replaced the OS on the box with GNU/Linux. I was even doing that with MacOS back when MacOS was not a UNIX.
        --
        ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
        • (Score: 2) by Jerry Smith on Friday August 28 2015, @06:10AM

          by Jerry Smith (379) on Friday August 28 2015, @06:10AM (#228861) Journal

          You mean you bought a mac just to install Linux on it? Don't get me wrong but... don't you think the hardware was a bit too expensive for that?

          --
          All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.
          • (Score: 2) by jdavidb on Friday August 28 2015, @01:48PM

            by jdavidb (5690) on Friday August 28 2015, @01:48PM (#228972) Homepage Journal
            I wasn't very smart. :) I used to love MacOS back in the day and I wasn't 100% Linux then, either. Then I discovered how cheap it was to buy a Windows box and put RedHat on it and discovered I liked that even better than MacOS.
            --
            ⓋⒶ☮✝🕊 Secession is the right of all sentient beings
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @03:16PM (#219106)

    yeah, I'm that guy.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:44PM (#219202)

      I'm that guy too.

      • (Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 08 2015, @04:36PM

        by Gaaark (41) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 08 2015, @04:36PM (#219909) Journal

        I'm some OTHER guy... move along. No one to see here.

        --
        --- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
      • (Score: 1) by elixir on Thursday August 13 2015, @08:57PM

        by elixir (5502) on Thursday August 13 2015, @08:57PM (#222513)

        I am that guy also.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Pino P on Sunday August 09 2015, @12:21AM

      by Pino P (4721) on Sunday August 09 2015, @12:21AM (#220059) Journal

      You don't need to be "that guy" anymore to prefer the term GNU/Linux. It helps distinguish UNIX-workalike Linux systems, such as Debian and Fedora, from other systems that don't attempt to resemble UNIX, such as Android and smart TVs.

  • (Score: 1) by Celestial on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:48PM

    by Celestial (4891) on Thursday August 06 2015, @04:48PM (#219148) Journal

    Windows 8.1 on the desktop (I like to play PC games), Linux on the notebook, and iOS on the iPad.

  • (Score: 2) by gman003 on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:50PM

    by gman003 (4155) on Thursday August 06 2015, @06:50PM (#219206)

    Laptop: Windows 10 (might roll back to 7 due to audio issues), partition for Arch that I never got around to installing, Debian and OpenBSD VMs
    Desktop: OS X (some old version I rarely boot into anymore), Windows 8 (haven't updated yet)
    Shitbox: Old version of OpenBSD, rarely used anymore but it's there
    Server 1: Debian
    Server 2: CentOS

    Only thing I don't run is GladOS, the joke option. I considered trying out SteamOS but both my gaming rigs run Steam anyways, and I use them rather than my TV for gaming so it wouldn't add much.

  • (Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:37PM

    by AndyTheAbsurd (3958) on Thursday August 06 2015, @07:37PM (#219233) Journal

    I primarily use Windows at work, but run Linux in a VM on top of it for things that are way easier on that OS; and primarily use Linux at home but have a Windows VM and an HTPC running Windows (both Win7) as well; plus an Android phone. So since none of the answers actually fit what OSes I use, I chose "Other".

    --
    Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
  • (Score: 3, Funny) by Translation Error on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:06PM

    by Translation Error (718) on Thursday August 06 2015, @09:06PM (#219268)
    I use GLaDOS. She comes with cake. Moist, delicious cake.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:45PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:45PM (#219303)

      She comes with cake.

      That explains why GLaDOS acts like she needs to get laid.

    • (Score: 1, Redundant) by broggyr on Friday August 07 2015, @01:32AM

      by broggyr (3589) <broggyrNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Friday August 07 2015, @01:32AM (#219356)

      The cake is a lie.

      --
      Taking things out of context since 1972.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @09:30AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 14 2015, @09:30AM (#222759)
        Ok, be it like you wish "Moist, delicious lie.". U cool now?
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:12PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2015, @10:12PM (#219289)

    I use QNX.

    • (Score: 2) by jasassin on Friday August 07 2015, @08:46AM

      by jasassin (3566) <jasassin@gmail.com> on Friday August 07 2015, @08:46AM (#219477) Homepage Journal

      I use QNX.

      For what? Just curious.

      --
      jasassin@gmail.com GPG Key ID: 0x663EB663D1E7F223
      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 07 2015, @12:37PM

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2015, @12:37PM (#219540) Homepage Journal

        He just googled that, so he could make a post about some obscure OS.

        --
        Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
        • (Score: 2) by Subsentient on Friday August 07 2015, @08:13PM

          by Subsentient (1111) on Friday August 07 2015, @08:13PM (#219679) Homepage Journal

          I've played with QNX. It's a decent desktop OS.

          --
          "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
          • (Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Saturday August 08 2015, @12:26AM

            by LoRdTAW (3755) on Saturday August 08 2015, @12:26AM (#219733) Journal

            The old demo CD that came out around the time Be inc put out its PE edition of BeOS? What was it called again, Neutrino? I wish I hadn't lost that ISO. Though, the other day I was playing around with the old QNX demo floppy image but it wouldn't recognize any of the Ethernet adapters in virtualbox. Pretty cool stuff.

            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 08 2015, @01:47AM

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 08 2015, @01:47AM (#219761) Homepage Journal

              This is probably not what you're talking of, but you can still get a demo here. 30 day trial, I've no idea how they enforce the 30 day bit. You may have to do a Microsoft style registration to use it.

              http://www.qnx.com/download/ [qnx.com]

              --
              Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
            • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday August 08 2015, @01:55AM

              by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 08 2015, @01:55AM (#219763) Homepage Journal

              You might also be interested in doing a search with qbittorrent.

              --
              Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:02AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:02AM (#221636)

          Not sure about him, but I am using QNX to post this right now [wikipedia.org].

  • (Score: 2) by N3Roaster on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:24PM

    by N3Roaster (3860) <roaster@wilsonscoffee.com> on Thursday August 06 2015, @11:24PM (#219315) Homepage Journal

    This comment was typed on the computer that I spend most of my time using for most of the things that I do on a computer and it runs Linux. Windows gets used when I'm roasting coffee, editing videos, making sure software that I've written works on Windows, when teleconferencing, or when teaching or developing classes. A Mac is hooked up to my television at home (55 inches at 2160p is pretty nice for a lot of things and is only hampered by sub-par window management on the Mac) and gets used for working with photos, making sure software I've written works on a Mac, audio recording, and I'll probably move some of the video stuff over to that eventually.

  • (Score: 2) by Rich on Friday August 07 2015, @01:19AM

    by Rich (945) on Friday August 07 2015, @01:19AM (#219355) Journal

    ...because I do my "handling of organization" on a MacBook Pro ("Late 2006") with Snow Leopard. But I run whatever is suited best for a job (avoiding avoidable jobs requiring Windows...). The Linux gear mostly is on current Mint LTS with MATE, except for one experimental box on Elementary.

    From the "new & cloudy" stuff, I can't stand any. I've got a decked out Retina MBP (that came at the cost of roughly 20 useful used T-series ThinkPads from the 'bay) relegated to occasional compatibility tests and being a surfboard, because I think every OS X since 10.7 has gotten worse.

    Not that Windows would have any advantage here. That always was much worse to start with, but gets even more worse even faster. Not even GNOME 3 or Unity (which I both find unbearable) can match that.

    • (Score: 2) by mendax on Friday August 07 2015, @06:55AM

      by mendax (2840) on Friday August 07 2015, @06:55AM (#219456)

      I think every OS X since 10.7 has gotten worse.

      Amen, brother! Snow Leopard I think was the last truly excellent version of OS X. After that it all went down hill. I really started to notice it when I upgraded from Snow Leopard directly to Mountain Lion on my 2008 iMac with 4 GB of RAM. What was once speedy and nimble thanks to Snow Leopard's full support of the 64-bit architecture turned into a major drudge.

      My new iMac is faster, but only because it's quad-core instead of dual-core, has a higher clock speed, and uses newer technology from Intel. Yosemite is still a dog. Apple promises that El Capitan will be faster than Yosemite. I won't bet money on it.

      --
      It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
      • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday August 07 2015, @03:29PM

        by wantkitteh (3362) on Friday August 07 2015, @03:29PM (#219598) Homepage Journal

        Really? The fact your packing a Core2 CPU, DDR2 RAM, SATA2 storage and a graphics chip 9 generations out of date isn't the problem here? Try running a modern OS on modern hardware.

        • (Score: 2) by mendax on Friday August 07 2015, @06:16PM

          by mendax (2840) on Friday August 07 2015, @06:16PM (#219647)

          Uh..... my point is that it ran great with Snow Leopard, and then something changed. It's called bloat. As far as it being out of date, well, yes, it's out of date. I should have better explained the performance issues with OS X beyond Snow Leopard. When you double-click on a small app like TextEdit and it takes many seconds to pop up when the machine is otherwise idle tells me there is a big problem. And I do run OS X on "modern hardware" now and it's still a dog; it's just a faster dog because the faster hardware makes it look faster But it's a dog, an old lazy one. OS X, a "modern OS", as an allegedly "modern" OS has all sorts of additional crapware that is doing all sorts of generally useless things that just slow it down.

          BTW, I do run a "modern OS" on that old iMac. It's called Linux, Ubuntu Linux to be specific with the awful Unity interface replaced with GNIOME. It's blazingly fast and very responsive.

          So, I bite my thumb at you, sir!

          --
          It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
          • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Saturday August 08 2015, @10:07AM

            by wantkitteh (3362) on Saturday August 08 2015, @10:07AM (#219838) Homepage Journal

            Snow Leopard was good, I liked having a workspace per task on my company mandated iMac that I could switch between with my fourth mouse button.

            TextEdit on Yosemite is an iCloud app, so that start-up time increase is network latency related - fire it up with activity monitor running (network tab, fast update rate) and you'll see the spikes. Not like TextWrangler suffers from the same problem - if TextEdit bothers you that much, just replace it.

            I'm typing this on my Mint Cinnamon-running desktop right now (highly recommended over vanilla Ubuntu) while my MBP idles next to it for lack of a second monitor to attach to this thing. I get Apple's move to the current always-connected always-available paradigm, and I don't mind it; I keep notes and handy copypasta command lines in TextEdit's iCloud storage so I can't lose them when I do a reinstall, but I don't use it for anything else and can't justify spending that much money on an iPhone when I'm perfectly happy as I am. (And I'm going to move those notes into my Mega account when I can be bothered)

            I see your thumb biting and raise you a shrug and an "I agree". ;)

            • (Score: 3, Insightful) by mendax on Saturday August 08 2015, @08:57PM

              by mendax (2840) on Saturday August 08 2015, @08:57PM (#219989)

              Not like TextWrangler suffers from the same problem - if TextEdit bothers you that much, just replace it.

              TextWrangler does suffer from the same problem. So, it's not just because it's an iCloud thing. BTW, I don't use iCloud. I don't use cloud services at all. It's against my religion... and common sense.

              --
              It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
              • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:33PM

                by wantkitteh (3362) on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:33PM (#220000) Homepage Journal

                Hmmm, strange. I get no delay at all pulling it up. Then again, I am using a Core i7 (mobile, Q2GHz) and an SSD with 8gb of DDR3. Pauses like that usually mean it's time to nuke&pave, it seems Mac OS is (has always?) been subject to performance drops over time, just like Windo*ahem*any other OS. Then again, the sheer age of your hardware.... Nothing lasts forever, as much as we'd like it to, know what I mean?

                • (Score: 2) by mendax on Sunday August 09 2015, @08:28AM

                  by mendax (2840) on Sunday August 09 2015, @08:28AM (#220173)

                  My new iMac, bought in June, is a 2.7 ghz quad-core Intel Core i5, with a 1 TB hard drive instead of SSD (I don't trust it quite yet) but with 8 gb of DDR3. I agree with you that the performance problems you noted in that evil boot virus from the devils in Redmond are not uncommon when using older hardware. I seem to recall the howls when folks transitioned from XP to Vista, only to discover just how god awful slow it was. The problems I have with Yosemite on my 2008 iMac are nowhere near as bad as people had with the transition to Vista. It could be faster on app start up. But once the app gets started, its performance is more than adequate... usually. The exception is when I've overloaded the poor thing and it's having to swap. But that happens only rarely and awful performance is expected then.

                  --
                  It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
                  • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Sunday August 09 2015, @08:47AM

                    by wantkitteh (3362) on Sunday August 09 2015, @08:47AM (#220179) Homepage Journal

                    I think that may be your real problem then - if you don't trust SSDs, at least use an SSHD. [hexus.net] I have one of those drives in my Linux desktop, I don't know how the cacheing algorithm figures out what to keep in that 8gb NAND, but I suspect witchcraft myself.

                    • (Score: 2) by mendax on Monday August 10 2015, @03:10AM

                      by mendax (2840) on Monday August 10 2015, @03:10AM (#220532)

                      Well, that is an option, but it's still a recipe for disaster in my book. I just don't quite believe what is quoted about the write wear on SSD modules. Not yet. Think of me as politically liberal and technologically conservative.

                      --
                      It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
                      • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday August 10 2015, @10:11AM

                        by wantkitteh (3362) on Monday August 10 2015, @10:11AM (#220614) Homepage Journal

                        You don't have to believe the quotes - they've been tested already. [techreport.com] The worst drive in these endurance tests got through 728TB of writes before it hard-failed. A couple of the units were up to 1.5PB (yes, PETAbytes) and still going. Obviously your own usage case applies here, but I'd say it's pretty safe to trust SSDs already.

            • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:28AM

              by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:28AM (#224225) Journal

              Are you shittin' me? Textedit is a cloud app? In what universe does that make any sense at all? Another reason to hate Yosemite.

          • (Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Sunday August 09 2015, @06:07PM

            by Non Sequor (1005) on Sunday August 09 2015, @06:07PM (#220341) Journal

            It's your RAM. I had the same deal on a 2010 Mac Mini, and I finally decided to try a RAM upgrade before giving up on it.

            I'm guessing it's the result of an optimization decision that may have improved performance on newer machines with more RAM, but threw the older systems under the bus.

            --
            Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
            • (Score: 4, Interesting) by mendax on Monday August 10 2015, @03:07AM

              by mendax (2840) on Monday August 10 2015, @03:07AM (#220531)

              Well, I'm not going to replace the RAM, not on a machine from 2008. It works just fine in Linux, which I think was one of the points I made. It doesn't HAVE to be slow. Apple just doesn't give a shit, and I'm beginning to think the same way about them, and that should scare them somewhat because I know I'm not alone in that feeling. My latest iMac will likely be my last if I don't see some improvements in the quality of their software and their attitudes toward their customers who buy their overpriced hardware.

              --
              It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
        • (Score: 2) by Rich on Friday August 07 2015, @06:30PM

          by Rich (945) on Friday August 07 2015, @06:30PM (#219651) Journal

          http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Core2-Duo-E8400-vs-Intel-Core-i5-5250U [cpuboss.com]

          For those too lazy to click: 6.5 : 6.4.

          That's 8 year old gear vs. what Apple ships today in the MacBook Air. Better have enough of teh snappy for the old gear, if they want to sell the new one, huh?

          I don't notice any big speed differences, by the way. Not nearly enough to even want to change the spinning platter in my MBP for an SSD. If I have to wait for something, it's usually because some remote "cloudy" crap triggers local blocks, has been developed by graduates of "JavaScript for complete retards.", or both. The Quad-2.6-i7 RMBP helps a bit with the latter - but not with the first. Cf. that to the whiners on LKML where they wanted to get kdbus in and Linus measured the overhead to demonstrate what a steaming pile their app stack is.

          I probably could even live with Mavericks, once I swap out Preview and TextEdit for older versions that don't overwrite my files when I e.g. just pull up the gamma a bit. Oh. And work through one of the guides to cut off the widespread phoning home.

          • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:42AM

            by wantkitteh (3362) on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:42AM (#219834) Homepage Journal

            This is supposed to be relevant? Not sure what I was expecting, seeing as how you couldn't see any difference [youtube.com] between an SSD and an HDD either, but whatever. Actual raw data from your link, rather than the meaningless overall "score" you posted:

            In order: Geekbench 32-bit; 64-bit; overall. Passmark overall; single-threaded. Typical power consumption.

            E8400: 2862, 3092, 4792, 2172, 1257 (52.81W)
            5250U: 4964, 5591, 5591, 3658, 1519 (12.19W)

            Not that this means a damn thing, but the 5250U smokes the E8400 in every test while using less than a quarter of the power. Whatever, it's still a comparison between a passively-cooled ultra-low voltage CPU with onboard graphics and an actively-cooled desktop CPU, but don't let reality stop you being a moron, eh? (Pro-tip: mobile Core2 model IDs start with a T)

        • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday August 14 2015, @02:42AM

          by meisterister (949) on Friday August 14 2015, @02:42AM (#222645) Journal

          Right. Please explain this to my secondary 3GHz P4. You see, little P4-bert there shouldn't be able to run Vista perfectly fine, but it does. (Pentium 4s tend to be too thick to understand that they're too old to run Microsoft's most bloated OS plus full graphical effects flawlessly on integrated graphics. Please forgive it, but once it saw my 1.6GHz mobile Core2 with 2GB of RAM running Mint 17, it just wouldn't leave me alone!)

          --
          (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
          • (Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday August 14 2015, @08:40AM

            by wantkitteh (3362) on Friday August 14 2015, @08:40AM (#222735) Homepage Journal

            Of course your P4 runs it. Windows Vista was released in 2007. The Pentium 4 went out of production 2008.

            Vista may have been a hideously-badly performing POS when it first came out, but SP1 *really* helped sort it's performance problems out (if not any of it's other problems) and Windows 7 was basically Windows Vista SP3 anyway.

            I like Mint too. Typing this on 17.2 right now ;)

        • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:25AM

          by hemocyanin (186) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @03:25AM (#224223) Journal

          I run Debian Wheezy and Snow Leopard (I picked "other"). I have a new macbook pro with Yosemite on it that I got six weeks ago and still haven't transisioned to -- barely even touch it once per week and every time I do, I just get pissed -- it's like the early days of linux when you had to google how configure everything away from some retarded default. Yosemite makes me hate OS X. Seriously despise it. They should have called it New Jersey or Washington DC -- it stinks that bad. Yosemite makes me seriously consider running some version of linux on that computer, but then, over here we have all that systemD crap.

          Change for change's sake -- that's all I see in Yosemite and Jessie.

          Asshole OS devs.

  • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday August 07 2015, @02:37AM

    by darnkitten (1912) on Friday August 07 2015, @02:37AM (#219384)

    At home; Linux (several flavours) by preference-generally dual or triple-booted with Windows as a partition I boot into 2-3x/year.

    At work (the local library); primarily Windows, due to proprietary Win-only ILS software.

    The Public Access Computers we provide; mostly Windows, though the older stuff (and loaners) are being converted to the more user friendly varieties of Linux, with each one having a different Desktop Environment, (to test which ones our patrons adapt to best).

    On my tablet (and eventually phone, when the corporations finally finish fighting over who doesn't have to serve my town, and we have cell service again--we've been been over a year and a half without); Android, rooted and flashed.

    In my head; the factory-installed default (can't remember the brand name, sorry--It's been years since I checked); modified by environment, culture, education, media library and internet.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @09:50AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 07 2015, @09:50AM (#219491)

      the local library [...] loaners

      Is there a page that describes that?

      -- gewg_

      • (Score: 2) by darnkitten on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:26AM

        by darnkitten (1912) on Saturday August 15 2015, @04:26AM (#223137)

        Not yet--we are still experimenting so we can develop policies and procedures (sanitizing a laptop after it has been out for a week is fun) and convince the Board that it's a good idea. Once we have those, we will publish, so others can do it as well.

        Right now, most are running Zorin OS, as Zorin 9 is the only distro that automatically finds the really old proprietary wireless drivers. Once we find the proper drivers and develop process to find the drivers on updates, we then install other distros on a separate partition (keeping the Zorin install for restore purposes), which is then set as the primary partition along with browsers, office suite, Wine and other basic software (and games). We then set it out to be used as a Public Access Computer, and let users know it's available for week-long checkout. When it is turned in, it gets sanitized and restored to base install. We haven't yet come up with a procedure for requesting additional software to be added to the base install.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:44PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 18 2015, @09:44PM (#224605)

          Zorin 9

          An LTS release, supported till April 2019. Very impressive--especially when you realize that it's essentially the work of a pair of brothers.
          Its top cheerleader may be Dmitry Kaglik aka DarkDuck. [google.com]
          He's also had a bunch of guest writers who have raved about Zorin as well.

          automatically finds the really old proprietary wireless drivers

          The Wary Puppy spin [google.com] is another distro that gets mentioned when the topic is support for very old hardware.
          (If every distro included every device ever supported by the Linux kernel, ISOs would get very big very quickly; somebody has to draw the line somewhere.)

          available for week-long checkout

          This is the part I saw as novel.
          As I haven't seen such a thing here in SoCal, I was curious about the location and the nature of the entity sponsoring this tech effort / citizen convenience.
          Maybe a county that has embraced the FOSS ethos because of a concentration of tech employers?
          A sizable college town in Oregon that has discovered how cost-effective/annoyance-free FOSS licensing is?
          A neighborly little New England village that invests in its people?

          When it is turned in, it gets sanitized and restored

          How many units now? How big a support staff? Expected growth?
          Will it be a turnkey thing [google.com] that can be accomplished by e.g. a librarian with no tech chops?

          When this gets into high gear, I'm hoping that page gets built.
          We hear about the schools in Penn Manor running FOSS and about Extremadura converting 80,000 machines of its public infrastructure to all-FOSS in 1 weekend[1] [google.com] and about Munich saving millions by switching to FOSS (as well as getting control over their ridiculous IT infrastructure).
          It's nice when folks document their successes and we have those to point to / learn from.

          [1] There are also accounts that mention converting 40,000 boxes.
          Most of those pages seem to think it was Extremadura's first try at FOSS.
          It wasn't. That was A MOP-UP EFFORT to get the remaining boxes that had been running proprietary apps which were found to be replaceable by FOSS apps or otherwise usable without Redmond's OS.

          -- gewg_

  • (Score: 2) by mendax on Friday August 07 2015, @06:40AM

    by mendax (2840) on Friday August 07 2015, @06:40AM (#219453)

    This poll is faulty. I have machines for several OSes and I use them for different reasons. I have five computers in my office: two iMacs, one purchased in 2008, another in June of this year, a MacBook from 2008, an HP laptop that has that evil boot sector virus called Windows 8.1, and a 10-inch Samsung tablet computer I bought at Barnes & Noble last year because they were cheaper than Costco at the time. The old iMac and the MacBook dual boot OS X and Ubuntu Linux, the new iMac only OS X, and the tablet computer runs Android. And to make things even more complicated, I have VirtualBox installed on all of these machines except the tablet and I have Windows XP and 2000 images for it. So, what do I run? It depends. But most of the time I'm in Linux except when I'm programming; then I'm in OS X.

    Oh, and I have DosBox installed so I can run this one DOS game I love.

    --
    It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
  • (Score: 1) by pTamok on Friday August 07 2015, @10:11AM

    by pTamok (3042) on Friday August 07 2015, @10:11AM (#219494)

    Sailfish OS
    EPOC32 release 5
    Linux
    Windows

    A lot of the devices I use have embedded operating systems, but it is not easy to determine which OS is used.

    • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday August 07 2015, @12:41PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday August 07 2015, @12:41PM (#219541) Homepage Journal

      We have embedded systems that I haven't identified precisely, but Linux and SystemV are most common. And, one lonely WinNT4 SP6 machine. Of course, the NT4 machine isn't "embedded" in the manner that Linux and SystemV are - the damned thing has a board that I could take out, install into any ATX machine, and run it as a desktop. All the apps are there, everything.

      --
      Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
  • (Score: 2) by Techwolf on Friday August 07 2015, @01:43PM

    by Techwolf (87) on Friday August 07 2015, @01:43PM (#219565)

    Android on phone/tablets, gentoo on desktop.

  • (Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday August 07 2015, @07:20PM

    by meisterister (949) on Friday August 07 2015, @07:20PM (#219661) Journal

    I say technically because I use most major OSes, just with varying frequencies.

    By the amount of time I use them (most time first):
    1. Linux
    2. Windows 2000, 8.1, 7, 98, 3.1 (in order of version most commonly used)
    3. Android (though technically I have some sort of android device running nearly 24/7. This has to do with actual usage).
    4. MS-DOS, FreeDOS
    5. Some sort of BSD.
    6. Mac OS 9, 10 (also in order of usage)
    7. Commodore BASIC (if you can call it an OS)
    8. EMACS (if yes to Commodore BASIC).

    --
    (May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
  • (Score: 2) by SuperCharlie on Saturday August 08 2015, @04:02AM

    by SuperCharlie (2939) on Saturday August 08 2015, @04:02AM (#219787)

    For any nerd worth his salt there isnt one OS.. we all fly around between Linux and Windows, Android, OSX and various flavors of all of them with twists of other things mixed in. In any one day I will be in no less than 4 OSs and thats not counting an xbox and even a dreamcast I play pretty regularly lately. A better question would be somethin like.. what is your main OS or even better.. how many Oss do you regularly use in (day/week/month). Hell.. today.. I was in a thin client running Linux, connected to a 2008 terminal server while I had a Windows 8.1 laptop on one side of me I was loading encryption on, a Windows 7 laptop I was setting up RDP's on the other and surfing my Android phone. I came home to my Linux Mint Laptop, My Vista (hay its been good to me) share box and played Xbox on my Roku TV, So How many Oss today.. it is all a click the button blurr...

    • (Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @06:42AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @06:42AM (#220156)

      For any nerd worth his salt

      Male nerds are no longer needed in nerddom. All nerds must be female or else. Get a sex change or kill yourself.

  • (Score: 2) by Bot on Saturday August 08 2015, @02:00PM

    by Bot (3902) on Saturday August 08 2015, @02:00PM (#219864) Journal

    In Soviet(*) proprietary software land, the OS uses YOU!

    (*) it's not capitalism, in the fabled free market capitalism a free barely usable OS would have won like 10 years ago, because collaboration on an open infrastructure would be considered in the best economic interest of most clients.

    --
    Account abandoned.
  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 08 2015, @09:43PM (#220004)

    Anything else, is for sissies.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:44PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:44PM (#222385)

      Now that is no lie. Plan9 is the only operating system I have ever used who's fundamental paradigm does not make me feel like I have taken a time machine back to the 1970s.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @11:04PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 09 2015, @11:04PM (#220464)

    Most used OS, discounting the Windows machine for the emulator. It's good money...

  • (Score: 1) by mechanicjay on Monday August 10 2015, @06:29PM

    • Laptop: openSuse
    • Desktop: Windows 7 (for a couple games), Gentoo
    • Wife's Laptop: Windows 7
    • Wife's Desktop: OSx
    • Toys: VMS, IRIX, Atari DOS

    I feel like I live in a world of wonder with the above list!

    --
    My VMS box beat up your Windows box.
  • (Score: 2) by e_armadillo on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:19PM

    by e_armadillo (3695) on Tuesday August 11 2015, @08:19PM (#221430)

    This made me check status of Gnu Hurd. I had forgotten that it was even a project, not surprising though as when I checked they state that even after about 15 years of development there is still no stable version . . . too bad

    --
    "How are we gonna get out of here?" ... "We'll dig our way out!" ... "No, no, dig UP stupid!"
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 13 2015, @04:48PM (#222389)

      Debian Gnu/HURD is really easy to get going and actually 100% usable. I would say that HURD and Plan9 are the only two genuinely interesting operating systems in today's major line up. Everything else is just better or worse implementations of virtually the same paradigms and it all is mostly unchanged since the 1970s.

  • (Score: 2) by number6 on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:20PM

    by number6 (1831) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @10:20PM (#221958) Journal

    I'm making plans to move to some FOSS operating system.
    What I want to do for now is play around with some FOSS systems booted as VM guests inside QEMU on my WinXP host.

    I need some advice about how to setup a shared folder between the QEMU Guest OS and my Windows XP Host OS; I want to copy files in and out.
    I'm not sure about how to do this using QEMU (my knowledge of how to network stuff is useless).
    Setting up a shared folder using VMware Workstation is easy but I am trying to avoid it; it's a bloated monster and I prefer lean portable solutions....and I am curious to test QEMU's capabilities.
    If QEMU does not end up serving my needs, then I may end up trying with "VirtualBox portable edition" [1]

    I've done some reading on how to setup a QEMU shared folder but I'm still confused; the info I find on the internet is either uselessly dumb or else it drowns me with technical jargon.
    I need a walkthrough step-by-step guide. Do any of you guys have useful info, it would be highly appreciated.

    [1] "VirtualBox portable edition" is a launch wrapper program scripted and compiled in Autoit
          Development(https://github.com/vboxme/Portable-VirtualBox) -- Homepage(http://www.vbox.me/)

  • (Score: 2) by novak on Wednesday August 12 2015, @11:43PM

    by novak (4683) on Wednesday August 12 2015, @11:43PM (#221999) Homepage

    I mostly use linux, crux on the desktop and slackware on the server, but I sometimes use openBSD (or, in the past, debian) for servers. I use pfSense on firewalls. I have a windows box but I mostly ignore it.

    --
    novak
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @02:15AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @02:15AM (#223721)

    I'm browsing on my TRS-80 Lvl1

  • (Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday August 17 2015, @12:01PM

    by WizardFusion (498) Subscriber Badge on Monday August 17 2015, @12:01PM (#223880) Journal

    I use The Cloud.
    :)

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @01:07PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @01:07PM (#223917)

    I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/LInux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX.

    Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called “Linux”, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project.

    There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called “Linux” distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @03:21PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 17 2015, @03:21PM (#223964)

      Ha Ha! RMS reads soylent :)

  • (Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Tuesday August 18 2015, @01:09AM

    by hendrikboom (1125) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @01:09AM (#224183) Homepage Journal

    Just ripped out my old hard drive with Debian, and put in a new one and installed Devuan. I'm simply amazed by the speedup at startup and shutdown.

    I thought maybe it's the lack of accumulated crud that did it.

    But really, it couldn't have anything to do with the fact that the new hard drive has an SSD cache, could it?

    -- hendrik

  • (Score: 2) by pixeldyne on Tuesday August 18 2015, @05:00AM

    by pixeldyne (2637) on Tuesday August 18 2015, @05:00AM (#224252)

    At home:

    BSD - SAN/NAS
    Linux - Hosting VMs, tinkering
    Windows - work, games
    Android - testing my crap code (I don't consider Android to be the same as Linux)
    OS X - watching movies
    iOS - phone, SMS and calendar

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @07:37PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 25 2015, @07:37PM (#227753)

      I am similar

      Router - linux asus derivative
      TV - linux busybox distro
      Phone - Android/linux
      4 laptops with windows (apparently work wants me to have LOTS of laptops)
      XBMC box - windows, to be maybe switched to linux not sure yet it is kinda in the 'it works' state
      Torrent/squid/dns/tinker box - linux
      NAS - linux
      PS3 - BSD

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @06:06PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 19 2015, @06:06PM (#225106)

    At home - Win7 & FreeNAS

    At work - Win XP - 7, WinSvr 2k3 - 2k12, RedHat ES, Centos, Ubuntu, FreeBSD, and what ever the hell ver. of linux Smoothwalls are painted over.

    Not the best poll question I'm thinking.

    - And to that guy busting on VAXs - *SNIFF* At my last employer we had *SNIFF* a VAX *SOB* it was ROCK *SNIFF* *&%$##!*&^$%$ S*SNIFF* SOLID *SOB* Sad to see that thing finally put to rest.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:44PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @09:44PM (#226052)

    Seriously, some of the listed OS's release patches more frequently than this site releases new polls . . .

  • (Score: 1) by kramulous on Sunday August 23 2015, @07:39AM

    by kramulous (255) on Sunday August 23 2015, @07:39AM (#226593)

    Cool. OK.

    Now, check the logs and see who was lying.