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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

#291

Post by userulluipeste »

eropple wrote: post #273
userulluipeste wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think ReactOS is what are you waiting for. It suppose to offer you the freedom of any other free and open source OS while holding the benefits of Windows. But it also awaits contributions. Spread the word.

ReactOS is poorly supported, incomplete, and user-hostile. Very little actually works on it--the software support is mostly limited to fairly old software, the only development happening for it is OS development (which is fine, but that's not a lot of use for normal people, or even software developers who don't have a burning desire to reinvent the wheel), and its UX decisions are a noted step backwards from Windows…

"ReactOS is incomplete" = still needs development attention, which is what I've said - "it also awaits contributions". "user-hostile" as much as Windows has ever been. "Very little actually works on it" is actually more than what works on Linux + Wine, which at it's turn (like many would claim) do cover enough needs already, and that's only the "alpha stage" we're talking about here. ReactOS is getting better and better at the fastest pace relative to the rest of the OSS. You see, even if the ReactOS project had to start right now, it would still have a guaranteed chance of succeeding thanks to it's principles: it is free and open source like any other "free-as-in-speech" option out there, plus the one thing that makes the difference - it avoids alienating the users by breaking the backward binary compatibility for the sake of whatever reason. It offers the Windows simplicity.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#293

Post by BrainInAJar »

slowpoke wrote: post #79
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…

I would just like to add that there is a valid reason why Linux or the *BSDs are superior to Windows or OS X - they are Free. As in Speech. And I'm sad this doesn't even warrant a mention.

"And I'm sad this doesn't even warrant a mention."

Because it's irrelevant. When was the last time you hacked at your OS's kernel?

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#294

Post by robert_nsu »

tseabrooks wrote: post #208
slowpoke wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would just like to add that there is a valid reason why Linux or the *BSDs are superior to Windows or OS X - they are Free. As in Speech. And I'm sad this doesn't even warrant a mention.

Maybe I'm the only one... But as a professional developer working on everything from device drivers, embedded systems, up to your average LAMP stack and other web frameworks the "Freedom" of the operating system is worth exactly bupkis to me, ziltch, zero, nada. There are a whole host of reasons to use one OS over the other but this "Free as in Speech" is simply not a very good one. I'm far, FAR, more concerned about…

Well said. I agree. I work in a 99% Windows IT shop, therefore Windows is the OS that will help me get the most work done in the shortest amount of time. I run Fedora and FreeBSD virtual machines in my spare time, but for most of the day, I need to get things done and Windows 7 helps me accomplish the tasks set before me.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#296

Post by rdl »

OSX on laptops, OSX or Linux on desktops, Linux or FreeBSD on servers, iOS on mobile/tablet.

I don't know you you define "primary"; outside of a web browser, I spend more time at a command prompt on a linux machine than at the command prompt on OSX.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#297

Post by jiggy2011 »

Argorak wrote: post #28
Spyro7 wrote: post #11

Every day, I start up a computer running OS X. Then, I proceed to fire up virtual machines for two Linux distributions, Windows XP, and Windows 7. I occasionally play around with a headless system that I have running FreeBSD. Then I may power up my iPod Touch to test recent changes to my mobile site. I also do a significant quantity of work while I am logged into a remote debian server via ssh. I doubt that I am the…

I use something like: "OS X is my host operating system. I develop on Linux."

I have tried similar to this but always find the experience of running desktop software on a VM to be lacking.

Just things like resizing windows or minimising things becomes clunky enough that I prefer to just native boot into whatever I plan to use.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#298

Post by groovy2shoes »

ramblerman wrote: post #119
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…

I disagree. You are entirely correct that fanboism is detrimental to any healthy discussion. But sweeping any discussion under the rug as fanboism isn't much better. I use all three operating systems, and one major argument for me when doing development is the terminal. I know there are emulators on windows, but I have had moderate success with them. Ubuntu and osx give me much more power in that area.

At work where I'm forced to use Windows, I have Cygwin installed. It's great to pop open a terminal and be able to pipe things around as you would on Linux. It makes Windows a little bit more comfortable, although Cygwin still feels like a second-class citizen (especially when it comes to the file system).

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#299

Post by thatjoshguy »

randallsquared wrote: post #252
tseabrooks wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe I'm the only one... But as a professional developer working on everything from device drivers, embedded systems, up to your average LAMP stack and other web frameworks the "Freedom" of the operating system is worth exactly bupkis to me, ziltch, zero, nada. There are a whole host of reasons to use one OS over the other but this "Free as in Speech" is simply not a very good one. I'm far, FAR, more concerned about…

It seems short sighted to say that some arbitrary and subjective personal belief system about technology makes one system inherently "better" / "superior" to another. It's true that the FSF and those who support them are more concerned with the long-term future of computing availability than about whether they can GSD in the next few days or weeks. I'm assuming that that's what you mean by "short sighted"? Well, that…

Just out of curiosity, what is making you move towards Linux?

The huge appeal of OS X to me is, as someone said on here recently, it's basically *BSD with a fancy window manager and 1-to-1 hardware/software integration.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#300

Post by thatjoshguy »

arthur_debert wrote: post #275
davidw wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You would hope that on a site like Hacker News, there would be a good percentage of users who would get a lot of utility out of being able to tinker with their operating system in ways not sanctioned by the creator of said OS.

The issue is not that one would like to tinker, but that without a significant time investment tinkering, you can't get the basics working. Nothing precludes the OS from being tinkerable but mostly working out of the box.

Why I love OS X.

I remember using Terminal to change every single .string string to "LOL" on one of the school macs. Good times indeed...

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