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Poll: What is your primary operating system

news.ycombinator.com

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Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#51

Post by hasenj »

stanleydrew wrote: post #40
hasenj wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly doubt this. Not even tablets will run on top of browsers. Developers will never give up a real operating system. You just can't develop on consumer devices like the iPad; these are designed for consumers, they come with many limitations to make the consumer's experience easy and smooth, but at the cost of hackability.

"Developers will never give up a real operating system." I always hesitate to use the word never. Things can change very rapidly. What developers need now may not be anything like what we need in 5 years. But more importantly, what a "real operating system" is will probably change in the next 5 years.

Right, but whatever directions things go towards, do you really think that developers will use "browsers" as the operating system?

Look at photographers. Despite all the consumer level digital cameras that have flooded the market, professional photographers (and even hobbyists) still buy the more expensive (and more complicated) cameras that a consumer would probably never buy.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#52

Post by pavanky »

skore wrote: post #36
stanleydrew wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some of us run Linux on our MacBooks.

It is clearly the best of both worlds.

Aren't the macbooks over-priced ? Personally I'd rather buy a laptop and a tablet (something like the transformer) rather than get something that costs twice as much or offers lower return on hardware for the same price.

Disclaimer: I am from a parallel programming background, so I am biased towards performance rather than form factor or battery life.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#53

Post by cageface »

zheng wrote: post #18

I run windows, but always run a Linux VM in which I do all of my dev work, and have an OS X laptop which would be a linux laptop, but Logic/Final Cut Pro keep it that way. Right tool for the right job, IMO.

The two apps keeping me from running Linux full time are Ableton Live and Adobe Fireworks. Unfortunately it doesn't seem likely that the high-end proprietary content creation tools or anything comparable from the OSS world are likely to come to Linux any time soon.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#54

Post by teebot »

Osiris wrote: post #25

I've been using Windows pretty much since version 3.1 (though will some time on OS/2 as well) as my primary OS. I have, of course, used Linux, though mostly for servers and not a full-time primary OS. I also have a Chromebook running Chrome OS. Recently, I switched jobs and my team uses Macs so over the last few months my primary work OS is now Mac OS X, while I still use Windows at home. One thing I have discovered…

totally agree with this. The OS is becoming more and more irrelevant.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#56

Post by mironathetin »

Since 1998, my primary private system is Mac OS. In 2000 I gave my last Windows Notebook to my brother (A 9000$ Fujitsu Siemens Lifebook E6560 - he used it until a few months ago and I'll get it back soon).

At work, I used Linux exclusively until 5 years ago. Since then, my Notebook is Mac OS. But large processing jobs still go to our grid that consists of several 172 GB RAM linux machines. I am an astronomer and I process quite a bit of data.

I fought for Mac OS at work and since I don't have to use linux on my notebook any more, life is much easier. But Lion and Apples cloud integration bs makes me fear, linux has to come back someday.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#57

Post by reidrac »

andreime wrote: post #24
reidrac wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then I guess Chrome OS is a Unix-like too. So it would be Unix-like or Windows. Eh, and other. EDIT: I don't agree with your classification. Sorry, Monday morning before my first coffee.

Chrome OS is a browser in a linux box ....

Yep, what I was trying to say is that the poll is about what is your primary operative system and not about the OS family.

The classification is arbitrary, definitely. I'm not using "Linux" but Ubuntu, in the same way Chrome OS is a valid answer instead of just "Linux".

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#58

Post by pjmlp »

Osiris wrote: post #25

I've been using Windows pretty much since version 3.1 (though will some time on OS/2 as well) as my primary OS. I have, of course, used Linux, though mostly for servers and not a full-time primary OS. I also have a Chromebook running Chrome OS. Recently, I switched jobs and my team uses Macs so over the last few months my primary work OS is now Mac OS X, while I still use Windows at home. One thing I have discovered…

Could not agree more.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#59

Post by bobobo1618 »

cperciva wrote: post #10

FreeBSD. Only desktop I've used since 2004.

I'm curious, how difficult is it to set one up?

Do you encounter many issues performing your day to day work?

I've been eyeing it for a while and I had it running on my home server for a time but I didn't think it was quite ready to be my primary OS. I generally use Arch Linux at the moment, mainly because I like the configurability and frequent package updates.

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