I primarily use OSX due to its GUI consistency. I also like Linux a lot but I always end up breaking well working software and installations or the sound drivers in it:-). If you need to do occasional windows work then a desktop dual boot with windows and OSX/Linux is your best option.
Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
61–70 of 85 posts
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#62i have been using windows for many years, but in recent years i got experience on linux (console) environment. then i tried many times to switch linux permanently, but always i can't find it easy to use. for example when i connect my monitor to my laptop, switching between my laptops sceeen and monitor is easy on windows but linux can't handle this well, or when i watch video on youtube linux can't perform well on fullscreen, but on windows, it plays with no lagg. however i think when it comes to server environment, windows has no chance against any unix like os.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#63It depends a lot on what you do for work, I bet. I'm in sort of a similar situation as you--Windows at work, Linux at home, but I also have a mac. I run a pretty bare-bones setup on my Linux desktop (#!: an OS for those who got frustrated trying to learn Arch and still like APT). The lack of extra stuff makes me less prone to messing around, so it's great as a GSD system and when I want to dedicate my CPU and memory…
Sorry, '#!' is basically un-searchable. Which distro is this? I like Arch, but I wouldn't mind something even more bare-bones.
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Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#64An OS is just an OS. Remember that there's a learning curve when switching and some things will be baffling ("Why the heck did they do this like that?" "Why can't I turn this off?" etc). Some of these are just annoyances and have work arounds. Some of them are more serious and you're stuck with them.
FWIW I don't do anything serious with any of my machines, so any OS is fine. I have Fedora on the desktop, and Vista with Kali on the Thinkpad. I had OS X snow Leopard until that computer died.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry, '#!' is basically un-searchable. Which distro is this? I like Arch, but I wouldn't mind something even more bare-bones.
It's pronounced "shebang" but it's probably easier just to search "Linux distros" and Ctrl-F "#!", which is what I did. Google-fu :) http://crunchbang.org And agreed--this is a silly name for an OS, but it looks pretty cool at least! Though sadly it seems like they don't have a non-Bittorrent download option, so I can't try it out -- if anyone knows of a mirror, that'd be great.
Thank you!
I should have thought to search for it that way, given that I know that pronunciation...
I have heard great things about CrunchBang in the past, actually. Neat. I used Fluxbox at one point in time, so OpenBox shouldn't be too big of a change. It's also been a few years, so re-learning things would be nice as well.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#66Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#67Linux user since 1996. Not going to change - I like having an OS that's open to the core, and behaves how I want it to. Focus follows the damn mouse, for instance.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#68I'm increasingly surprised that this matters at all to software developers.
Software developers aren't afraid of changing UI. (In fact, they usually are the ones inflicting that upon others.) So, it shouldn't matter where your menus are, how you switch between applications, how the file browser displays files.
The technical differences between operating systems are huge, but they all support the same day-to-day features: they all multitask reasonably well, they all have or support reasonable filesystems, they all support a lot of different kinds of hardware (and most of what you're likely to need to use).
Worst-case scenario, you can fall back on multiboot or virtualization to fill in a few gaps.
Software developers spend most of their time in just a few applications: a text editor or IDE of some sort, a web browser, maybe an ssh client. There are perfectly usable options for each of those on each operating system.
So ... seriously, what does it matter? I have a mild preference for Debian/KDE, but I could do most of my work on MacOS (in fact, I did in the past) or Windows, with just a couple of days of tweaking and setup. The only possible spot where Windows might fall down a bit for me would be in supporting a locally-hosted LAMP setup, and even then there's WampServer (http://www.wampserver.com/en/).
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#69Linux user here. Aside from being free and running on just about anything, the fact that you're familiar with Linux means you're likely to end up frustrated with UI shortcomings or (intentional) system limitations that you can't get around (by design) in OS X. Of course, if you just happen to love everything Apple has baked inextricably into their OS... then awesome, and you'll certainly be happy! For the rest of us,…
I recently switched to OSX after being exclusively on Linux for 14 years (Redhat 6.0!!). My employer gave me an awesome laptop and I decided to give it a shot.
After hearing for so long how great OSX was I was shocked to find out how poor the experience was compared to Unity. Go figure.
I'd switch back _today_ but all distros have very bad support for the latest retina MBP. A few years ago I might have done it anyway but honestly one of the reasons I was so open to switching to OSX was that I just feel worn down by the constant battles with hardware issues in Linux. It is better than it used to be but still sucks and the last thing I want to do is dive into a known bad situation.
Sad.
Re: Poll: What is your primary desktop OS?
#70I was on various Linuxes for several years and went back to Windows. Why?
* Buggy updates. About 1 in 3 kernel upgrades produce a crash or hang on bootup. About a quarter of those that survive booting fail to recognize my network card. A smaller fraction of updates delete features from my desktop, and some give me a broken X that won't load. Then there's the annoyance that the upgrades often spend half a gig of bandwidth; I'm glad I'm not on dial-up anymore, or in a rural area.
* Uncancelable fsck. Windows does not randomly keep me off my own computer for an hour at a time when I'm most interested in getting some work done.
* Games. I don't even mean mass-market games. Wine for old Win9x games is a crapshoot. The Linux version of Adobe's flash player underperforms and the open source version doesn't perform. On games that are playable, the sound is a half-second off.
* Opportunity. Windows came with my new computer.
YMMV, but these are my reasons.