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Your Operating System of Choice:
| 4% | 26 votes |
| 18% | 102 votes |
| 9% | 54 votes |
| 3% | 20 votes |
| 12% | 66 votes |
| 11% | 65 votes |
| 26% | 147 votes |
| 12% | 67 votes |
[ Voting Booth | Other Polls | Back Home ]
- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Tuesday May 27 2014, @03:55PM
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Tuesday May 27 2014, @03:57PM
I think they mean "Which OS do you use the most for your every-day activities". :)
You are thinking too much
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Tuesday May 27 2014, @05:34PM
No, that's probably not what "of choice" is.
Given my druthers, I'd be running a custom Linux roll, where the defaults are sensibly chosen and everything just works in the right way.
Out of necessity, I'm running Windows 7 at work (policy), and out of practicality (since I don't have the time at the moment to do an LFS just the way I want it) I'm running xubuntu on my personal machine.
A pedant could merrily argue that these are both choices, but they are choices that have been heavily constrained by outside influence - coerced choices, if you will.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:26PM
This is a strange place to hear "You are thinking too much". That's what we nerds do!
Rather than trying to guess what what was said, what's wrong with assuming that the poster meant exactly what he wrote? The OS I probably use most isn't my favorite, It's Windows 7 but only because I've been too busy (and lazy) to upgrade it to Linux. Windows user-hostile, feature-poor, and slow. I use it but it's certainly not my favorite.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:18PM
Office Creative Suite? Nonsense, I write my books in Open Office. Nobody but gamers and spreadsheet users (Excel is way, way better than Oo's spreadsheet) need Windows on a home computer or laptop, and buying an operating system when there's a superior OS for free is, IMO, even dumber than buying bottled water.
As to the poll, I should have chosen "The poll creator is dumb for not including my OS". The poll creator has never heard of a mainframe, I suppose. He or she must think insurance companies keep giant databases in a tablet or something. JCL wasn't bad for a mainframe OS.
If you're running a supercomputer, it's an easy choice; the ten fastest computers in the world were running Linux the last time I checked.
I have W7 on this notebook only because it came pre-installed and I've been too lazy to upgrade it to Linux. My main tower is kubuntu, and I have another tower not connected to the network running XP (there's an app I use that doesn't have a good Linux equivalent; that machine isn't fired up very often).
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:46PM
The supercomputer is dead. All we have now are PCs with high-speed interconnects.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @03:05PM
I doubt you'd find a single scientist or mathematician who would agree with you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TOP500 [wikipedia.org]
Let me guess... you're from Norway? [wikipedia.org] Or joking.
You may have had a supercomputer at your university [wikipedia.org]; quite a few colleges have them.
Of course, thirty years from now you'll have one in your pocket if history is any guide.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 2) by Leebert on Wednesday May 28 2014, @03:31PM
Find me something on the TOP 500 that isn't a cluster. :)
Again, I didn't say there aren't fast clusters out there today, I'm saying that "supercomputers" are dead, and people are now defining clusters as "supercomputers".
I grant that I was being SLIGHTLY hyperbolic when referring to them as "PCs with high-speed interconnects", but not by much. It's all mostly off-the-shelf commodity stuff nowdays; the biggest differentiator being the interconnects.
(If my explanation still doesn't make sense, just chalk me up to a grumpy old man talking about how good things were back in his day, and these kids nowdays with their pee-cees and infinibands have it so easy...)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @08:10PM
SLIGHTLY hyperbolic? ;)
Of course the definitions change; what is now a PC used to be a "microcomputer" and the fastest computer in the world in 1972 was slower than your phone.
They had a computer at Dover running their C5-A simulator, it was a library with printed circuit boards rather than books. Very cool machine.
just chalk me up to a grumpy old man talking about how good things were back in his day
GOOD? Dude, did you ever visit a hospital in the 1960s? It was primitive back then. Awful experience. Fast forward to 2002 and it was like Star Trek. Driving past Monsanto you had to have the windows rolled up because there was no EPA and the air literally burned your lungs. And cars didn't have air conditioners back then, or seat belts or air bags or ABS or crumple zones. I was five before they started building the interstate highway system. No affordable microwave ovens, no VCRs (let alone DVRs), lots of stuff we had that we don't have now. I could never write a book without a computer!
Good old days? I must have Alzheimers because that's not how I remember it! Yeah, some things were better, but I enjoy this world far more (especially since I retired).
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday May 29 2014, @04:16AM
No true supercomputer...
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @09:24AM
processors are just transistors with high speed interconnects
if you wanna get pedantic, "personal computers" aren't used to build supercomputing clusters
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @06:23PM
> Excel is way, way better than Oo's spreadsheet
It may be. But I'll stick up for OO as a perfectly serviceable spreadsheet. I use an older version every day.
(Score: 1) by unauthorized on Tuesday May 27 2014, @03:58PM
Do we expect any time travellers from the future on this poll? Also, this needs to be mutiple choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27 2014, @08:05PM
Windows 8.1 is newer than Windows 8.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:28PM
Multiple choice? The question was what is your favorite. You can only have one favorite.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 29 2014, @03:31PM
No, it was about your operating system of choice. Of which you could have several, for different tasks.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday May 27 2014, @04:00PM
I'm surprised to not see "other Linux" and "one of the BSDs" as choices on this poll before getting to the generic "other *nix" option.
Also: I'm happy to see Windows 8 losing pretty badly at the moment...of course, when I loaded the main page, the poll was at 0 comments and 0 votes, so who knows what's going to happen...
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 27 2014, @06:43PM
I'm pretty disgusted to see Windows 7/8 at 24% on this so-called site for nerds. And a significant part of the other 14% selecting "The poll creator is dumb" is quite likely WinXP lovers (since all versions of OS X and Linux/Unix are covered in the other choices). Absolutely pathetic.
(Score: 2) by AndyTheAbsurd on Tuesday May 27 2014, @07:44PM
Windows XP would fall under the umbrella of "Windows 7 or earlier".
Also, if the people voting for that are using BSD, BeOS, or AmigaOS, then I have to agree with them. Or maybe they're using NeXTStep! or AIX! or...well, you get the idea.
Please note my username before responding. You may have been trolled.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 27 2014, @08:54PM
*BSD and AIX are covered by the "*nix" option. BeOS and AmigaOS would fall under "other", as would NeXTStep, but I seriously doubt there's more than a few people here claiming any of those as their OS of choice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @08:29PM
NextStep would be *nix, it being a mix of Mach and BSD and all that -- unless you don't feel that either Mach or BSD are variants of Unix. I think you'd find the certification people would disagree with you given that Darwin is a direct descendent of NextStep and is certified Unix.
(Score: 2) by TK on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:19PM
God forbid people who are nerds in fields other than computer science/engineering use a common, well-supported operating system* for their day-to-day activities.
M$ may be evil, but they have a strong 50% success rate with operating systems.
*I'm referring to Win 7, I (thankfully) don't have much experience with 8.
The fleas have smaller fleas, upon their backs to bite them, and those fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:37PM
Well, you have to remember that Windows is many of these guys' bread and butter. E.g., that hairyfeet guy repairs Windows computers, so of course Windows will be his favorite. Probably a lot more like him, if everyone were running *nix they'd have a lot less business. Probably quite a few Microsoft programmers and developers, too.
As to the last poll option, I almost chose it just because the submitter seems to have never heard of a mainframe or supercomputer. Good luck modeling a nuclear explosion in a desktop!
I'm disgusted that some Microsoft shill modded you "flamebait." No way was that flamebait.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:51PM
So car mechanics should drool over crappy, unreliable cars because they require more repair work, and turn their noses up at well-built and highly reliable cars?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @08:13PM
If there was a car that seldom needed maintenance you can bet your mechanic would curse them! Note that folks love BMWs even though I'm told they're shitty cars that break down often. I'll bet mechanics love those things.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 1) by MajorTom on Friday May 30 2014, @07:32AM
No they don't.
No they're not shitty cars, although when they get older they do break down often and they can be shitty to work on.
No they don't.
You're only going to love a car for that reason if something that breaks all the time is easy to work on and you get paid a lot of money to fix it, unfortunately they are seldom easy to work on and you never get paid a lot to fix them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @08:33PM
Grow up for fuck's sake
(Score: 5, Funny) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Tuesday May 27 2014, @04:08PM
Feel free to print this comment out and use it as a Bingo card as the thread progresses:
- Windows is lame and full of insecurities and bugs and taints all it touches because of teh ebil Micro$oft.
- Actually, Windows $OLDER_VERSION is a pretty solid OS once you get it fully patched.
- OMG you're totally a MS shill, go back to shillsville, shill.
- OSX is lame and full of Apple. Something about walled gardens.
- OSX is lame since Jobs died.
- Comparisons of Jobs/ Apple fandom to religious worship.
- I have an apple and I fucking love it so shut up SHUT UP SHUTUPSHUTUP.
- Ubuntu is lame ever since Unity.
- No, Ubuntu is lame ever since they moved the [X] button to the top left instead of the top right.
- Shut up and use Ubuntu with XFCE/ Enlightmentment.
- If you're gonna do that, why not just run Debian?
- Mint is great. It's Ubuntu without the lame bits the people above are complaining about.
- If you're gonna do that, why not just run Debian?
- Linux is nice and all, except it has no games.
- But WINE!
- But Valve!
- Anyone not running home-rolled slackware is a noob and a lamer.
- Anyone with a mouse plugged in is a noob and a lamer, CLI ftw. I watch my Game of Thrones downloads encoded into ascii.
- Anyone not running customised hardened BSD is just begging for MS/Apple/Google/The CIA to rape their goldfish, just you wait and see.
- Who gives a shit about OSes now that we have web browsers? That's all the average users actually uses these days.
- Who gives a shit about OSes now that we have smartphones? That's all the average users actually uses these days.
- Fade out to the sound of old geezers bitching about internet surveillance and The Cloud.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Tuesday May 27 2014, @05:55PM
That's a bit extreme; ratpoison [nongnu.org] should be able to run a video player without requiring the resolution downgrade to ASCII video. As much as I enjoy ASCII video on my old Wyse terminals, the artifacts get annoying after a bit.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Tuesday May 27 2014, @10:10PM
What would you recommend for getting video running on an AMD k6-2 (I think) at around 2-300mhz with 64mb ram and an S3 video card? I've only been able to get the Vesa driver working for Xwin with an old copy of Vector linux, also run Thinstation on it to use as a VNC remote, it's an old toshiba satellite 2820 or something like that. ascii would be sweet :)
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Wednesday May 28 2014, @03:02AM
Personally, that sounds like an ideal case of spend the $400 and buy something newer that happens to come with a still-working battery.
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Wednesday May 28 2014, @07:03AM
that's not the point and who says I don't have a working battery? it's still the original one. they were built tough in those days and this one was looked after well, only thing wrong is a broken dialup modem socket flap which I fixed with a bent staple, I've got dualcore lappy which I'm working on at the moment so I'm not missing anything, I just want to try to get the max out of something ancient for shits and giggles. I've also got a 440cdx running Deli linux and have managed to VNC scale the display to run 1600x1200 when remoting to a windows box with UltimateVNC and surprisingly it's actually readable. people who say old machines are useless don't know what they're talking about. Even if the power draw is more than my Pi, I don't really give a toss, it's not on permanently. I also have an older one which only has 640x480, that one is a little old for my tastes and the 8mb ram only just runs X but I can word process, browse basic web with Lynx or dillo. oh yeah, they all run wifi too, 802.11b for these 3 old ones, g would probably be pushing it.
(Score: 2) by egcagrac0 on Wednesday May 28 2014, @11:02AM
If you're using it merrily, great.
If you're having more trouble than it's worth, reclaim the precious metals and replace it.
I understand and appreciate the value of a 1600x1200 display (pair of 'em on my desk, and I think there's a lappy in a drawer with one for "just in case") - but it didn't sound like the laptop with the S3 had such a display.
IMO, 300Mhz K6-2 is too slow to use. You say you (try to) use it as a terminal for sheer amusement factor, but you're having trouble with the video driver. That's great. If it won't run with the VESA driver, won't run with the FBdev driver, and you can't find the Savage driver, that sounds like "more trouble than it's worth" to me - but that's just my subjective value judgement.
My litmus test these days is that if the hardware is less powerful than a Raspberry Pi (and you have *any* trouble with it), it should probably be recycled. Yes, I did just take several loads of e-waste for recycling.
I'm just going out on a limb and guessing you've got the 802.11b network on a separate AP, channel and isolated network segment from the 802.11g/n... and if not, I've got an Aironet 1200 (802.11b) I'm happy to unload on you (although you're on your own for the firewall - but I'm sure you can spin up ipcop on something from the museum).
(Score: 2) by EvilJim on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:52AM
nah, all trouble is an opportunity to learn more about the fantastic Mr Linux. VESA video driver works fine with VNC, just would like to be able to do .avi video for a laugh, I think Win95 could do a reasonable immitation of playing video so should be able to do it better in linux. unsure about the savage driver, dont think I've tried that one, pretty sure it's an S3 virge or something similar...oh yeah, this is the beast I'm talking about: http://209.167.114.38/ISG/pastproducts/html/satell ite/satellite_2180CDT_spec.html [209.167.114.38] :) it's a different story at work though, that is secured up the wazoo. Home is only recreational use and nothing superfluous running.
it was the 440cdx that I managed to scale to 1600x1200, that's double the res of the actual LCD panel but was quite usable surprisingly. it was using UltraVNC server on a windoze box with server screen scaling turned on, never tried it on the 2180CDT. My RaspPi is great on the little 4wd rc car chassis with webacam and python script to move it around and display camera output via VNC but having to add monitor makes it not suitable for the basic VNC remote function that these laptops do for me, unless I was to build a custom laptop from one. I haven't had the 802.11b network up for a while, I was just NAT'ing with a b USB adapter that had an accesspoint rom. I would love to take you up on the offer of the Aironet however I'm in New Zealand so postage could be an issue depending on where you are.
to be honest I really haven't given a crap about firewalls since I ditched windoze permanently, only using the built in security in my current router. that's probably a big invitation right there but it doesn't bother me, I never used AV in windows, if anything ended up installed without my permission I'd just nuke and re-image.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @01:05PM
ASCII video can be pretty good if you scale your font so that each character occupies only a single pixel. ;-)
(Score: 2) by Blackmoore on Tuesday May 27 2014, @06:54PM
Fine. I'll be over here. yelling at "the cloud"
god damn cloud..
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Tuesday May 27 2014, @07:40PM
What - did it rain on your parade?
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 2) by gallondr00nk on Tuesday May 27 2014, @11:01PM
Ah, you use the 'mplayer -vo caca' option as well then? ;)
(Score: 2) by Appalbarry on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:34AM
- No, Ubuntu is lame ever since they moved the [X] button to the top left instead of the top right.
That's actually a pretty big thing. To me at least. Drove me crazy when I first switched to Apple, and again before I figured out how to set the (Linux OS of the moment) defaults to move it to the right where God intended it.
(Score: 1) by zaxus on Wednesday May 28 2014, @04:53PM
Congratulations...you have won the internet. <slow clap>
"I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity...I'm for it." - Tom Lerher
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @03:03PM
you left out "get off my lawn!"
(Score: 2) by GlennC on Tuesday May 27 2014, @04:44PM
It depends on the purpose of the computer.
I use Ubuntu (although I'm considering switching to Mint) for personal use. For servers, Red Hat or Debian are what we're using now, although I occasionally support Solaris, HP-UX or AIX. My work provided laptop has Windows 7.
After trying Windows 8 I insisted on replacing the OS with Windows 7.
I don't have a use for Apple systems.
Sorry folks...the world is bigger and more varied than you want it to be. Deal with it.
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Tuesday May 27 2014, @04:45PM
My desktop at home. Ubuntu 12.04 running VMware... Then 2 Mints, Gentoo, XP, Ubuntu, ME, Trisql, Puppy, plus 3 more. Then there is the machine sitting next to it, FreeDOS, ME, Puppy, #! and Gentoo. Add to that two Win8.1 (one with XP in a VM), two ACER netbooks with Ubuntu 12.04, IPCop V2 and V1. XP/Ubuntu combo.
Still have not got to the rest of them...
"Your Operating System of Choice" - ALL OF THE ABOVE!
(Score: 1) by Valkor on Thursday May 29 2014, @11:58PM
You have way too damn many computers. Donate them to a school or something...
(Score: 2) by jackb_guppy on Friday May 30 2014, @02:10AM
I do!
Before my last major move. I donated to a non-profit that did computer training:
45 PC - same model and equipment
6 cpu Dec server
AIX - with full cds to load 3 different releases of OS
HP/9000 - full cds
Sun Desktop - full cds and manuals
Sparc Desktop - full cds and manuals
28cd drive server in rolling cabinet - used in library for music on demand
6cd drive server - a baby version of "mom", that looks like "mom". Small desktop size, 7cd drives stacked small.
Plus other hubs/switches/...
When they came out in a station waggon to pick it up. I asked "where's the truck?" They said "You have a few computers, it will fit." I said "you don't understand..."
(Score: 1) by Valkor on Friday May 30 2014, @02:51AM
Good to hear that you're donating them! If it weren't for donations I wouldn't be the nerd I am today.
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Tuesday May 27 2014, @05:22PM
I have a Quad boot, Vista (the machine came with it hardly used ) Win7, Pclinuxos and Elementary which is very OSX ish to look at, but behaves differently, Why 4? I have to support both vista and win7, the *nix are for me to mess about with. I think i get bored easily.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 1) by Gertlex on Friday May 30 2014, @03:41AM
If you get bored easily, how can you stand rebooting?
(This is why I have 4 computers, instead; XP, 7, 8.1, Ubuntu; 3D printing/CAD, everything else, Surface Pro, ARM plaything/eventual robot board, respectively)
(Score: 1) by present_arms on Friday May 30 2014, @06:54PM
Normally as I am waiting for the reboot cycle, I'll go and grab a coffee. Depending on what I am waiting for, vista is a 3 course meal, elementary is a glass of water haha. seriously the time it takes to reboot isn't really an issue, even on this old laptop, I do have another that's running elect xmbc in the main room, and that's all it does.
http://trinity.mypclinuxos.com/
(Score: 1) by shadowknot on Tuesday May 27 2014, @06:07PM
Working for a financial institution my primary work machine is Win7 as the encryption suite we have only runs on NTFS and the corporate IT department have taken deep swigs of uncle Bill's Kool Aid. I do, however, run a Slackware 14.0 VM under VirtualBox which I use most of the day. On my personal machines I dual boot Slack and Win7 on my personal lappy though I can't remember the last time I booted in to Windows. I have a Raspberry Pi which runs ArmedSlack and a media server that also runs Slack64. Incidentally I have a bunch of VM's on my primary machine for fun ranging from Debian's and other desktop distros to Gentoo and LFS.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27 2014, @08:12PM
It's a 1%er! Occupy him!!
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:43PM
Bank tellers aren't 1%ers, but they work in financial institutions. In fact, few "people who work for financial institutions" are 1%ers.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday May 27 2014, @06:36PM
Just set up my first laptop that isn't a dual-boot. Granted, I haven't actually *used* the Windows partition in many years, but I always kept it around since it came pre-installed. Bought a System76 last week though and nuked Ubuntu for Arch. Technically Antegros I suppose because I got lazy on the install, but same thing since Antegros is basically just an Arch installer.
Made the switch from KDE to Enlightenment at the same time too, which has been interesting. I'm finally starting to get the point of virtual desktops ;) Helps that I finally have enough power to not worry about things slowing down. No matter how many windows I've got open :)
(Score: 2) by gman003 on Tuesday May 27 2014, @06:47PM
I use whatever works for the job.
My gaming systems run Windows. I use both 7 and 8, and they're difficult to distinguish. With a single program to get rid of the dumb tablet shit from 8, W8 is superior (lighter, faster), but the new Modern/Metro crap needs to die in a fire. Fortunately you can do that easily (W8 with Classic Shell Start Menu is actually a better interface than W7, due to the deep customization).
My desktop is an old Mac Pro, and it does have an OS X install. I basically never use it though - there's no advantage it has over Windows, and since that's mainly gaming and music production (a hobby of mine), there's a lot of stuff it can't run. I did use it as a pure OS X machine for several months though, and it's perfectly usable as that as long as you don't want to play Windows-only games.
My laptop, being a combo work/gaming laptop, runs Windows. I've used OS X for dev work before, and they're functionally identical in my usage. I run Komodo Edit on both (the SCP file browsing is great), and the only other big tool is either Terminal.app or PuTTY. Why?
Because all my servers run either Linux or a BSD. My home tinkering server is OpenBSD just because I like how minimal it is and had the disks handy; my work servers are all Linux (various flavors, mainly CentOS but I've run everything from RHEL to Ubuntu servers).
That OpenBSD home tinkering server is also my tertiary workstation, for if both my laptop and main desktop are out of commission. And yes, that has happened. So I keep X11 and some basic productivity tools installed. It's not ideal, but I think that has more to do with it being slow old hardware rather than it being OpenBSD. It would be rather hard for a novice to use, but for me, it's no problem at all.
I keep meaning to put Linux onto the laptop to see if it's a fully usable desktop system. I just can't seem to find the time or initiative to do so.
Having tried many different operating systems, I've found that there really isn't much difference between them all anymore. I can use anything as a desktop, I can use anything as a server. There might be advantages to certain systems in certain places, but the best OS to use is usually whichever one your program will run on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27 2014, @07:28PM
Kind of a bad choice. Windows 7 is legit and I can't really fault anyone for preferring that over windows 8, although it's a sentiment I don't agree with. But it's lumping in with windows XP, which is shit and really should have died years ago from a security perspective.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday May 27 2014, @09:00PM
The poll options do suck badly. XP should have had its own category, named "XP or older", or perhaps "Vista or older".
Why did Mint get its own option, but not many other distros? At the very least, "other Linux" should have been an option, separate from "other Unix". Preferable would have been 1. Ubuntu (just because it's so popular), 2. Other Debian-based distro (Debian, Mint, etc.), 3. RPM-based distro (Fedora, openSUSE, RHEL, etc.), 4. other (non-RPM, non-Debian) distro, 5. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD, 6. Other Unix (AIX, Solaris, etc.), 7. Other OS (mainly fringe OSes like ReactOS, AmigaOS, BeOS).
Also, this should have specified that the question is about desktop/laptop machines, not mobile devices, which is a completely different issue.
(Score: 2) by FuckBeta on Tuesday May 27 2014, @08:21PM
https://qubes-os.org/ [qubes-os.org]
Quit Slashdot...because Fuck Beta!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @01:15PM
So much for security.
And yes, the self-signed part is not really an issue ... but if you're self-signing anyway, there's absolute no excuse for not renewing it after it expired three years ago. If they can't even keep the web site certificate up to date, why should I trust them to keep the operating system up to date (an absolute must if you care about security)?
(Score: 1) by Alfred on Thursday May 29 2014, @05:50PM
Security through isolation is easy on any OS. Pull the network connection.
(Score: 1) by darnkitten on Tuesday May 27 2014, @10:47PM
On my primary laptop, triple-booting Ubuntu Studio Xfce, Win7 (used only when i HAVE to use an IE-compliant website), and Mint KDE. I prefer a Linux flavor with KDE as a desktop environment, but currently am restricting myself where possible to Xfce for a six-month trial.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @02:47PM
Websites that only work in IE? It's been over a decade since I've seen one of those. Corporate intranets, maybe, but you probably won't be using your own computer to access them.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 1) by darnkitten on Wednesday May 28 2014, @05:38PM
Yep--the most annoying one is for a company that exclusively manages paperwork for a couple of federal programs that affect the library I run; I have to access their website quarterly to fill out forms. The site is IE6-compliant, and the forms crash about 3-5 pages in if you are using anything other than IE; even with IEtab in firefox, it will crash a little less than half the time.
I've been complaining about it quarterly for years, but the only thing that has changed is that 2 or 3 years ago, they put up a notice saying that the site works best in IE6 or above and that other browsers are not guaranteed to work.
Also, the state library had some interactive reference content that only worked in IE, but that now works (mostly) with IEtab, and they've been updating it to be standards-compliant over the last few years.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Wednesday May 28 2014, @07:51PM
Hmm... I had to access USDA's site and the as part of my job before I retired this year, but they were Microsoft-only at my job site as well. However, I have no trouble using Firefox at the copyright office's site when I register my books. I'm guessing (correct me if I'm wrong) yours, like my USDA use, wasn't for the general public.
I don't know about Illinois' state library, the only research I had to do there was in a huge forty pound book with fifty thousand funding organizations listed, but a cursory glance at it just now showed no problems.
And IE6? That's begging for trouble! At least where I worked they were up to IE 7, but its intranet wouldn't work in anything but IE6 with Java installed. But their public-facing sites seem to be okay.
Our nation is in deep shit, but it's illegal to say that on TV.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 27 2014, @10:57PM
Every OS is such crap.
(Score: 2) by yellowantphil on Thursday May 29 2014, @03:22AM
I use Arch Linux because it's currently the OS I hate the least. I've never seen an operating system that is exactly what I wanted. Slackware is close, but its package management and package repository is too limited for my taste. Arch does better on package management, but it has SystemD. Windows is annoying, OS X is more annoying... I guess I could try BSD, but I doubt it has as many programs available for it, so it comes back to the size of package repositories.
(Score: 2) by joekiser on Tuesday May 27 2014, @11:11PM
Using QNX on the phone, OpenBSD on the laptop. There's a few Windows machines in storage.
Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted! Because I shouted too much, apparently.
Debt is the currency of slaves.
(Score: 1) by idetuxs on Tuesday May 27 2014, @11:47PM
Cool poll. But for future polls, just one option for windows and another one for OSX, not two each. This is SN.
I use Debian, because always works. It's my intermediate between having to configure every bit of config file and struggling for hours just to set up a home system and a system out of the box but bloated like ubuntu.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Wednesday May 28 2014, @03:08PM
idetuxs wrote:
>for future polls, just one option for windows and another one for OSX, not two each.
I dunno, I think the dichotomy of Win7/8 and Mac OS X 10.6 and the later versions are going to be important lines in the sand --- I'm certainly trying very hard to find a portable Mac which will fit my needs for the foreseeable future which is running 10.6.8 --- I'll likely do the same for a Windows 7 machine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @10:22AM
Just click a few buttons, turn off launchpad, and 10.7/8/9 are exactly the same.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @09:44PM
I keep my Mac on 10.6.8 specifically to run one piece of old PowerPC software, which old software is not available for Intel Mac's.
--Peter Traneus Anderson
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Friday May 30 2014, @02:45PM
Except for the matter of not having Rosetta and the ability to run PowerPC apps such as Macromedia FreeHand --- until I can find a replacement for it, I'm sticking w/ 10.6.8.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @05:32AM
Based on Ubuntu but all the non-free bits are removed from the kernel and userland.
https://trisquel.info/ [trisquel.info]
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Wednesday May 28 2014, @08:52AM
My favorite desktop OS is Fedora. My favorite server OS is CentOS. Pretty ordinary choices, none of which were available in the poll, not even as "other Linux". Even the last option, which I chose, sounds wrong. Was the poll creator too hasty in compiling the choices? Possibly. Clever enough to have done this on purpose, to make us Linux users write comments such as this? Quite likely. Stupid? Probably not.
(Score: -1) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @01:20PM
They are covered by "*nix (Any other)".
(Score: 2) by Marneus68 on Wednesday May 28 2014, @09:46AM
I use Plan9 of course !
Install 9front !
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday May 30 2014, @03:15AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by zaxus on Wednesday May 28 2014, @05:07PM
Sadly, I don't run my OS of choice (Linux) much at all. At work, I'm restricted to Windows. I have a dual-boot laptop at home with UbuntuStudio and Windows 7, but I'm almost always in Windows in order to run my preferred music making program (Ableton Live). Also, all of my games "just work" on Windows. I don't have to mess around with Wine and end up with two separate Steam installs (one native, and one Wine) to run my games. My free time it constrained enough that I would rather spend it creating or actually playing then trying to just get the software to work.
Linux has a lot going for it now, in terms of applications, which is why I set up the dual-boot. Between Blender and LightWorks there's a full video production workflow available, which it was lacking for a long while. Also, before someone mentions it, yes I have heard of Bitwig Studio (Ableton competitor available natively for Linux). I haven't had much of a chance to play with it yet, but it could turn the tide for me. If only the major game studios other than Valve would release more Linux native games.
"I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity...I'm for it." - Tom Lerher
(Score: 1) by captainClassLoader on Wednesday May 28 2014, @08:48PM
Right now I'm using multiple flavors:
And I'm probably not the only one using a bunch of platforms on a daily basis.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 28 2014, @09:38PM
If I had the resources and force of will to manipulate the global OS development community to suit my exact tastes....
I would donate multi-millions of dollars to the ReactOS [wikipedia.org] project to see it get out of Alpha status ASAP.
I would go and meet the lead developer 'Alex Ionescu' and discuss the nuts and bolts of achieving the objective.
I would tell Alex that I am happy to bankroll the whole project all the way as long as he implements the things I would like.
I would like total audio and sound support. I want the Windows Audio API and Sound Driver support to be completely reverse engineered and functional. I would like my favourite audio player 'foobar2000' to run perfectly and to input and output bit-perfect high resolution audio perfectly. I would like all famous editing software used in the Windows audio engineering world such as "Pro Tools, Audacity, Audition, Wavelab, Goldwave, Vegas, etc" to run perfectly. I would then ask Alex to compile a list of all the hardware which should be targeted ASAP to have excellent support in ReactOS.
Apart from what I would like to have, I would let Alex and his dev team be free of my influence and to make all the project management decisions.
A few years down the line, I may consider bankrolling a Linux-based operating system which mirrors the ReactOS user interface --[1]--, and I would like to see libraries developed which would allow input/output/execution between the two systems which would look seamless to userspace.
The long-term objective of my "philanthropy/benevolency" is to try free the world of the corrupt clutches of greed, extreme capitalism, corporate oligarchy and mass manipulation.
--[1]-- I think would also bankroll/financially support the open-source audio player 'DeadBeef' which is the Linux equivalent to foobar2000 (which is closed-source). From all accounts, it looks like the foobar2000 author will never open-source his software. If we assign a value to every single user who ever made any type of contribution to foobar2000, and then we sum those values, then the long-term view of this relationship can be viewed as an insult to ones intelligence and nurturing of selfishness and elitism. Therefore I think that in the long run, since foobar2000 will never be open-sourced and its developer chooses to keep his cards stuck to his chest permanently, I think the best long-term solution for the digital audio software power-user community is to completely reverse engineer the functionality of foobar2000, which is exactly what the 'DeadBeef' open-source project is doing.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @04:10AM
Erm... https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/reactos-communi ty-edition [indiegogo.com]
They're essentially doing just as you described: "selling" prioritization of app/hardware support.
There's even a $10,000 perk to skip voting and "guarantee" support for an application; $35K for hardware.
Just sayin'.
(Score: 1) by rudolph on Wednesday May 28 2014, @09:39PM
Well, lets see. The laptop runs Win7 'cause it's the only thing that works right on it. VPS1, VPS2, BeagleBoneBlack all run Debian. Phone and tablet are Android. Portable music player is iOS. So that makes the install score 3 Debian, 2 Android, 1 each iOS and Win7.
Though I spend the majority of my time with the laptop, followed by the phone and tablet. The Debian stuff just sits quietly and does the job, I don't have to actually spend much time with them. So by time used the tally is in favor of Win7, followed by android, followed by iOS, followed by Debian.
On the other hand, if I had my druthers I'd put Debian on the laptop too. If it'd just resume/thaw when I ask it to. So that'd make it Debian, then android, with iOS trailing way off in the distance.
So, I guess, taking everything into account, my answer is gonna have to be... I like tacos.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @03:09PM
in my house: ...and that's not including VMs
- 2 x win7
- 1 x vista
- 5 x android
- 3 x debian
- 1 x iOS
- 1 x win xp
(Score: 1) by khedoros on Wednesday May 28 2014, @09:48PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 29 2014, @09:12AM
...is just debian with a skirt
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday May 29 2014, @04:25PM
There are "pay to play" OS's, and there are free OS's. I simply refuse to pay for an operating system. Why should I pay for someone's permission to run my machine?
Maybe if MS were more secure, or faster, or more stable than competitors, I could consider paying for their OS. I say "consider", I don't say that I would pay for it.
Apple is a bit different - they are about as secure and stable as most other Unix-likes. But - still, why should I pay them for permission to operate my hardware, when Linux is free, free, free?
I simply cannot justify a cash expenditure for something that can be done as quickly, easily, and efficiently for free. That seems like paying a voluntary tax on the air we breathe.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 30 2014, @02:34PM
I find "Old" broken computers that have been thrown away, and scavenge them for Windows keys printed on the outside of the case.
All the major retailers have the license just right there.
If I own the license key sticker, I own the license.
If someone threw away the license and I picked it up, it is now mine.
Now I have a free copy of Windows 7 that is 100% legit.
(Score: 1) by elgrantrolo on Thursday May 29 2014, @04:48PM
I got Windows 8 when it first came out. I was the weird guy who liked it.
Then I asked my company IT dudes to upgrade from 7 to 8. I was the weird guy who WANTED Windows 8.
At home I upgraded from 8 to 8.1 asap and found that MS paid too much attention to the people who did not like Windows 8 in the first place. WTF. Taskbar with Metro apps looks weird and does not work with drag and drop as desktop software does, window title bar visible on hover breaks the UI standard look, the start and the new icons next to the user icon on Start screen are an eyesore... meh!
Now I changed jobs and they gave me a Samsung laptop with a touch screen and Windows 8.0. Can't wait to get 8.2 and get rid of the eyesore. Would be nice to have the right version of Office to go with it. MS CRM and Yammer already look the part.
Yep. It ju^H^H kind of works. Too bad it was this the one time on 20 years MS payd attention to customers.
(Score: 1) by gambrill on Thursday May 29 2014, @06:00PM
Slackware since 1996. Never had any compelling reason to switch.i on_Timeline.svg/ [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Linux_Distribut
If Slack went away, I would go to Linux From Scratch
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/ [linuxfromscratch.org]
(Score: 1) by hb253 on Friday May 30 2014, @03:49AM
Microware OS9-6809 or OS9-68000
The firings and offshore outsourcing will not stop until morale improves.