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Poll: What is your primary operating system

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Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#351

Post by moystard »

thatjoshguy wrote: post #306
celer wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the virtues of locking everything down, I would switch from free v not to mac v windows. These are the two dominant operating systems, dislike it as I think we do. Apple locks down everything. Apple hardware, on the iphone Apple Software, Apple plugins and addons, everything, to the greatest extent possible, is controlled by Apple. This yields benefits. Driver installs giving you problems? Not with Apple. Screen…

OS X is not really that locked down. There is quite a lot you can go through and change and customise and tinker until your heart is content.

OS X is hardly customizable. The user interface, for example, is pretty hard to customized while on Windows, numerous patches exist to modify completely the user experience (it might be because it is less needed on OSX..). Also, SIMBL allows to patch applications and add features, but it is far from being trivial. I do think Windows is more customizable. Concerning Linux, you can just do what you want with it.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#352

Post by dredmorbius »

irreverentbits wrote: post #326
richurd wrote: post #143

I was forced to choose "other" since my operating system (GNU) was not listed. What you're referring 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…

This argument is, and has always been, ridiculous. The GNU user land is no more an operating system than the Linux kernel or the K desktop environment. It's just one component of a larger software system which most refer to by the convenient moniker of "Linux".

gcc would be the principle counterargument. At a more fundamental level, the GNU project provided the philosophical foundations for the Linux kernel to develop. GNU is among the principle reasons (the AT&T lawsuit being another) that we're living in a Linux rather than BSD centric world. I suspect that the free software model of the GPL also mattered -- BSD/MIT licensing have their place, but they're not a match for the OS/kernel as a whole, at least not at this stage of the game (in an earlier period they did help establish UNIX as an industry standard, and spreading standards and reference implementations is a key element of these licenses, hence: X11, Apache, BIND).

As I find the GNU userland superior to other tools, I also find that it's worth consideration.

And in all cases, I find it's sufficient to acknowledge the FSF's contributions to the environment I use and prefer. It's GNU/Linux.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#353

Post by deno »

mikegerwitz wrote: post #345
irreverentbits wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This argument is, and has always been, ridiculous. The GNU user land is no more an operating system than the Linux kernel or the K desktop environment. It's just one component of a larger software system which most refer to by the convenient moniker of "Linux".

It is disappointing to see "GNU/Linux" comments consistently harassed. Consider the history. The GNU project was conceived in 1983 to create a full free (as in freedom) operating system. This operating system combined many different projects (for example, X), in addition to creating its own components. Before Linux, it had one troubled component - the GNU Hurd, which was its kernel. Torvalds developed Linux (the kern…

It is what it is, history. Calling it GNU/Linux might have been appropriate when GNU was such a big part of the system. It isn’t any more. Linux, on the other hand, is the biggest open source project in existence. Saying those two are equal is ridiculous.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#354

Post by moystard »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #281
derrida wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still keep windows around for games. Have you used Wine recently? I'm not a serious gamer, but last time I checked, it ran everything I needed.

Wine for games is still a massive crapshoot. Firstly you will get compatibility problems with many DRM systems which is a killer if you plan or running your legally licensed games without cracking them. Assuming you can then get the game to work , expect graphical glitches a plenty , occasional/not so occasional crashes , slower performance and issue with the audio and visuals being out of sync. There are a bunch of…

Completely agree with you. If you are a gamer, the only solution is Windows, there is no alternative.

Steam on OSX brought some hope, but performances are just not there yet, and in any case, as long as developers will stick to Direct X, there won't be any other choice than having a Windows installation. I cannot blame them, Direct X seems to be largely above OpenGL, notably accessibility wise.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#355

Post by __abc »

tseabrooks wrote: post #320
randallsquared wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sorry, I didn't communicate well. The FSF movement is surely thinking "long term" and these people aren't necessarily "short sighted". What I do think is short sighted is using that as the primary metric for the quality of an Operating System; That leaves and awful lot of pretty important bits and pieces out. Admittedly, some people just prefer Linux / BSD... and thats fine. However, the parent comment I was replying…

Use whatever metrics is most important to you when deciding which OS to run. Some is "free as in speech", some focus on "does this help me git shit down a lot faster" ... some, well, who knows. Who cares for that matter.

I pick a Mac laptop as I can run OSX, Windows, and any necessary flavors of Linux (Metric #1). Plus, it has a nice physical shell and for me, that's worth paying some extra cash (Metric #1). But that is me. I assume no cary over in what works for me with other people.

Laptops are as diverse and affordable as shoes (or any other commodity consumer product) and people pick these things based on whatever suits their fancy at that time.

In regards to getting shit done, I can pretty much get shit done on any distro for the most part once past any learning curve (if there is one).

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#356

Post by silasb »

TylerE wrote: post #260
silasb wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT question for you: I'm a developer that does a lot of web development, from Perl to RoR. When I end up starting more than 1 VM with 4 GB RAM, my computer literally dies with Mac OS X. Now this is all with VirtualBox, which I suspect isn't the best all around VM application. For some reason I feel that it is the crappy memory management with OS X that is killing me. Other than getting more RAM do you do anything spe…

What's your machine? More RAM would certainly help, more CPU cores ( real cores, not hyper-threaded "virtual" cores) will too.

I have a Quad Core i5 in my iMac with 4 GB RAM, boss doesn't wanna spend the money to upgrade :( Need to convince him otherwise.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#357

Post by blhack »

ramblerman wrote: post #144
blhack wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you elaborate on that? I have never ever noticed a difference between putty and iTerm.

putty is great. But I was talking about terminal into your own system, as an interface to your local files

Ah, gotcha. Yes, this is a huge gripe of mine as well. I don't want to have to launch RDC just so that I can then launch a cmd.exe instance and pscp something to a remote machine.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#358

Post by silasb »

hackermom wrote: post #288
silasb wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT question for you: I'm a developer that does a lot of web development, from Perl to RoR. When I end up starting more than 1 VM with 4 GB RAM, my computer literally dies with Mac OS X. Now this is all with VirtualBox, which I suspect isn't the best all around VM application. For some reason I feel that it is the crappy memory management with OS X that is killing me. Other than getting more RAM do you do anything spe…

What is this "crappy" memory management of OS X that you speak of? When it comes to memory management, OS X is definitely among the best from my 14 years of experience with modern operating systems. For what it's worth, I regularly run two VMs in VirtualBox totalling just over 2gb of guest RAM allowance, on a 4gb machine running 10.6.8, and I don't suffer problems with this. Users of 10.7 claim that it's a wee bit hu…

I can't seem to find the blog post about the memory architecture in Mac OS X, but it was rather recent, under 8 months ago some guy blogged about the crappy memory management that was used in OS X and why he ended up switching platforms.

I have yet to try 10.7 stuck on 10.6 until the boss allows us to upgrade. This will probably be my next big upgrade before anything else.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#359

Post by silasb »

Argorak wrote: post #254
silasb wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OT question for you: I'm a developer that does a lot of web development, from Perl to RoR. When I end up starting more than 1 VM with 4 GB RAM, my computer literally dies with Mac OS X. Now this is all with VirtualBox, which I suspect isn't the best all around VM application. For some reason I feel that it is the crappy memory management with OS X that is killing me. Other than getting more RAM do you do anything spe…

First, even if its the answer you ruled out: get a machine with lots of RAM. Don't care about the rest, even an SSD is not that important, just cram as much of RAM into the machine as possible. 8GB would be good, 16 is better. Make sure that the OS has enough space to shuffle memory. Use tiny VMs. Most development stacks do actually fit in 512MB, as long as there is nothing else running. Pay attention about which par…

This is what I'm thinking, I'm kinda spoiled at home with both my main box and my VM server each having 8 GB.

You do make a good point about the extra cruft that isn't needed for a VM. I should actually know this as I have several LEBs on the web and optimize them highly for low memory usage. I guess personal time < work time.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#360

Post by slowpoke »

BrainInAJar wrote: post #293
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.

"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?

>Because it's irrelevant.

On the contrary, it couldn't be more relevant. It's a fundamental issue of technology, and becoming increasingly important as we face the war on general purpose computing, a possible new advent of trusted computing with UEFI, and the list goes on.

I would go as far as to say Free Software is on of the most important things of the 21st century. We're moving towards an information society, and if we don't free the means to create, process and transmit information (as well as information itself), we will lose control to a few big corporations. I'm not planning to let that happen.

>When was the last time you hacked at your OS's kernel?

I haven't done that yet, but I occasionally poke around in the sources for things like the coreutils, read them, try to understand them and learn from them. I plan to do that with the Linux kernel at some point, too. You simply can't do that on unfree operating systems.

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