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Poll: What is your primary operating system

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Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#281

Post by jiggy2011 »

derrida wrote: post #231
merijnv wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, for programming linux (any unix, really) is superior (personally I use OSX). But, for just desktop usage (browsing, e-mail, video, music) I much prefer Windows to linux. OSX vs Windows is a bit of a toss-up, I prefer OSX because of the unix environment for programming, but I still keep windows around for games. Since XP the instability issues have Windows have been a thing of the past and the Windows 7 user exp…

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 older games (GTA3 etc) that work fine in wine, and some indie games that have been built for it to begin with but I couldn't recommend it to anyone as a gaming experience that is close to that available in Windows 7.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#283

Post by jiggy2011 »

timClicks wrote: post #104
conradfr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My way of thinking is that being free does not really to me, a lambda user, make it superior but otherwise just add pros and cons. By using mostly Windows I trade the inconvenient and risks of non-free with other advantages. It is a informed choice. RMS may hate me though :)

Are you able to explain the term "lambda user"?

Someone who does a lot of lisp?

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#284

Post by cmeiklejohn »

kisom wrote: post #170

I've got a macbook air and a thinkpad. I use the air much of the time but quite often I just need to get my FreeBSD fix on in spectrwm. (Yes, you can run spectrwm on OS X but it's a pita and XQuartz makes it much more difficult). Most of what I do on the thinkpad is C hacking. I tend to approach operating systems with a BSD mindset: use what works for you, and if you have a complaint - put up with some code.

traitor! :) thought you were obsd for life?

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#285

Post by esolyt »

foxit wrote: post #154
drblast wrote: post #116

For desktop use I'm migrating back to Windows after having used Ubuntu almost exclusively for the past five years. It's a shame, because Ubuntu was soooo close to surpassing Windows from a "I just want to get stuff done without mucking with the machine" standpoint. But then Windows got much better with version 7 and Ubuntu took a nosedive into crazy UI fantasy land. The final straw was when text started randomly disa…

I'm getting older, and after about 15 years playing around with config files, I just want something that's stable and consistent[.] .. Windows is leaps and bounds better than when I heavily used it last. This is why we use Windows. When we buy a new computer, it's a former corporate business class laptop sold on eBay, it comes with some version of Windows preinstalled, and we don't mess with it. As with the recent Gm…

I use Windows too. But I found it interesting that someone on Hacker News considers installing an OS as "messing with the computer".

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#286

Post by Lammy »

bobobo1618 wrote: post #59
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.

I've a little how-to written up for putting together a nice FreeBSD desktop system. You may want to check it out: http://cooltrainer.org/2012/01/02/a-freebsd-9-desktop-how-to...

FreeBSD has been my go-to desktop OS since 2005 or so, since giving up on OS X post-Tiger.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#287

Post by recursive »

tallanvor wrote: post #207
mseebach wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more thing: A terminal as a first class citizen. Definitely not on Windows, and while the OSX one is orders of magnitude better, I seem to recall it's still a bit lacking. What ruins OSX for me isn't the terminal, though, it's that X apps aren't first class.

Have you tried PowerShell? It provides many more features, and has been a default install since Windows 7. Microsoft has been pushing it by making it possible to use PowerShell to configure a lot of the server products - and sometimes requiring the use of PowerShell for some configuration tasks.

I have tried powershell. The fact that you can't copy or paste in a standard way suggests a pretty half-assed implementation to me.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#288

Post by hackermom »

silasb wrote: post #238
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…

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 hungrier than 10.6, though I still can't recall the last time I saw anything else than "Swap used: 0 byte" in the Activity Monitor.

Re: Poll: What is your primary operating system

#289

Post by doktrin »

Luyt wrote: post #167
ramblerman wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

One thing that bugs me about putty is its cramped GUI, which isn't even resizeable. (The terminal screen is, but not the windows in which you configure the connection parameters).

Check out Xshell 4. It's a perfectly adequate PuTTY alternative with tabbing and fully re-sizeable windows.
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