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Which computer operating system do you prefer?

What computer operating system(s) are you using?

  • Linux - Debian based such as Ubuntu, Mint, etc.

    Votes: 26 60.5%

  • Linux - all other, such as PCLinuxOS, SuSe, red hat, etc.

    Votes: 10 23.3%

  • Windows 98/ME

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Windows Vista

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Windows XP

    Votes: 1 2.3%

  • Windows 7

    Votes: 23 53.5%

  • Windows 8

    Votes: 14 32.6%

  • Mac OS

    Votes: 5 11.6%

  • 32-BIT

    Votes: 3 7.0%

  • 64-BIT

    Votes: 16 37.2%

  • Free BSD

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Other

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    43
MacLinDroid said:
Chinese government is working hard at furtherring Ubuntu Linux, we hear. Even though Ubuntu comes from South Africa's Mark Shuttleworth, other distro's seem more popular here. Ubunto can be translated as "I am because we are." It is a term fondly used wherever selfless community building is happening.

We have another locally developed distro to watch, Makulu Linux, and I wish them success in their endeavour. Makulu means "huge" and so is the distro, being very user friendly.
Click to expand...

It's called Ubuntu Kylin, can buy PCs now with it ready installed. It's a joint effort between Shuttleworth's Canonical Ltd. and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology(MIIT) in Beijing. AFAIK it's got no secret govt. backdoors in it, but then you can't have secrets in open source code. China tried to do it's own official Linux OS previously, Red Flag Linux, but that's abandoned now.
Ubuntu Kylin - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Many PCs in China are still running pirated XP Professional. In fact when I bought a new Lenovo laptop about 18 months ago from a Lenovo dealer, that came with pirated Windows 7 Ultimate. :rolleyes: But is now running Linux Mint. That was when I found all about MS's geo-restricted DRM product activation crap.

North Korea has a home grown Linux OS as well, Red Star OS, and apparently most PCs there are running it.
Red Star OS - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
Chinese are thinking straight! Why re-invent the wheel?

38% of XP installations in my country are pirated. There even is an internet cafe owned by Oriental folks whose computers display boldly that their software is all pirated! :D

I also bought a used Lenovo Thinkpad and found illegal Windows 7 Ultimate on it; I wasted no time in formatting the hard drive and installing Mint on it. Hundreds of laptops equipped with illegal 7 Ultimate gets offered here on Gumtree regularly.
 
I am currently dual-booting Win 8 (haven't bothered to install the 8.1 upgrade yet) and Mint 15.

I prefer the Linuxes, though there are occasions when Win is necessary.

I do wish I could sync with Linux again-- I managed y to do it with my Palm PDA, but since going to the smartphone, I am unable to sync locally.

I used to maintain and repair mainframe computers, and so am familiar with several command-line operating systems most have never heard of, such as Vulcan OS...
 
Big mainframe drivers are the truckers, the airline pilots and the supertanker captains of the IT world. Vulcan OS......never heard of it.

8.1 is a relief from 8, go ahead and try it as you may be pleasantly surprised!
 
8.1 added a different static wallpaper on the tile screen (and removed my neat looking flat Seattle login screen damn you MS!!) but other than that i fail to notice anything new. it's like OS X Maverick (still can't get used to that name--the name of an old crappy POS Ford derived from the Pinto) it just takes up needless amounts of hard disk space, adds time to the initial bootup, and does NOTHING else. at least on the Mac i could downgrade (through some odd low-level hacking mind you) back to Mountain Lion, but in Win8 no way.

One of 8.1's more annoying features is the nag to login to your Microsoft Account. if you deny it none of your live tiles work. and it continues to nag you off and on. what IS it with all this cloud crap these days? are people living in areas with 24/7 internet all of a sudden? because where i stand, the internet is only there 1/3 of the time. without a data connection, no cloud, no storage, no apps.

No thanks. back to Linux. only not Ubuntu this time. from now on it's OpenSUSE.
 
coming from Ubuntu, which i'm convinced is for morons, since it always did everything it could to tell me 'i'm sorry, i cannot do that' and the forums were very rude saying 'you should listen to it, it knows what's best for you'. sheesh. i hate nannyism in my OS. it was done as much in Vista, with the UAC, now Linux does it.

OpenSUSE popped up when i was searching for more 'traditional' power user Linuxes. i had been on Vector Linux 6 but it was starting to age, and i wanted a newer build. OpenSUSE looked enticing having so much already added and having a polished, organic, green-UI TouchWiz look that given my comfort with it on Samsung stuff, i figured this would feel not just familiar but consistant, and best yet, is meant for any Linux user, newbie or power user.

Ubuntu made me hack it to death, go online, spend two hours to do something i feel should take a few minutes, etc. it protected itself too much. even tacking on KDE to replace Unity was not a stable effort. it felt 'half-done'.

OpenSUSE was ready to go out of the box. YAST reminds me a bit of Vector's graphical package manager and shares a UI with Synaptic, but does a lot more. for example, installing Flash which for some unforeseen reason is not installed by default in any Linux distro and which normally makes me pull my hair out in frustration, was extremely easy. i just launched YAST to update the package list, and low and behold, it not only added in the 'commercial' PPAs (no looking up a long string of jargon to type into a console either--just a single click) but installed as well as updated Flash Player in less than a minute. and if that wasn't good enough, Steam was as simple as double-clicking a downloaded file--FINALLY!!! something i wished Linux could do from the beginning! no errors, no 'architecture not supported' no hang at 'waiting for install', it simply worked!

now if i can get it onto my Mac. i got it to install but it refuses to boot. i used rEFIt to install it and such, but trying to boot Linux gives me a black screen with 'missing operating system' and it refuses to boot. i can boot OS X though.
 
nickdalzell said:
coming from Ubuntu, which i'm convinced is for morons, since it always did everything it could to tell me 'i'm sorry, i cannot do that' and the forums were very rude saying 'you should listen to it, it knows what's best for you'. sheesh. i hate nannyism in my OS. it was done as much in Vista, with the UAC, now Linux does it.

Ubuntu made me hack it to death, go online, spend two hours to do something i feel should take a few minutes, etc. it protected itself too much. even tacking on KDE to replace Unity was not a stable effort. it felt 'half-done'.
Click to expand...

Ubuntu aims to be useful to everyone. Morons included. What were you trying to do? Certainly installing KDE shouldn't be that hard. The below should get everything, but I don't use KDE so I don't really know.

Code: 
sudo apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

And then purge Unity's crap if you don't want it anymore.
 
Linux (Mint XFCE, PCLinuxOS KDE/Enlightenment/LXDE, PearOS (Mac look'n'feel) and Kubuntu) on various desktops and laptops. a couple of the desktops dual boot Win 8 but I can't remember when it was last used.
 
We seem to have had similar experiences on Ubuntu. The support forums were the exact opposite if being friendly neighbours and one had to toe the line or get zapped.

openSuSe: I am working on an AMD Athlon 64 with 2GB RAM of which 256MB get shared with ATi Radeon graphics. Presently considering to install a different OS as my Mint 15 Olivia 32-bit is not supported any longer. Which would be best: opensuSe or PCLinuxOS, given that I do not have 3D graphics and the CPU can only handle 32-BIT.
 
My only gripe with 7 was that a) I bought a laptop with illegal 64-bit installation and b) it had hardware compatibility issues with some gadgets.

Removed the pirateware. I dislike pirated stuff.

So I sent a cybervangelist onto the hard drive and turned it into a Mint flavour with a fresh breath :D
 
MacLinDroid said:
We seem to have had similar experiences on Ubuntu. The support forums were the exact opposite if being friendly neighbours and one had to toe the line or get zapped.

openSuSe: I am working on an AMD Athlon 64 with 2GB RAM of which 256MB get shared with ATi Radeon graphics. Presently considering to install a different OS as my Mint 15 Olivia 32-bit is not supported any longer. Which would be best: opensuSe or PCLinuxOS, given that I do not have 3D graphics and the CPU can only handle 32-BIT.
Click to expand...

I thought the Athlon 64 was 64 bit. Wasn't it the first amd64 bit for average users? And I would definitely choose OpenSUSE. The members here have me sold on it. If Mint completely fails me that's what I'm trying next for sure.
 
OpenSUSE seems to be one of the last distros yet to be dumbed down. That's what made Ubuntu crap for my use. Yeah I got KDE there but parts of Unity were left behind. It tended to forget my desktop settings. It protected itself to the extent you were locked into Software Center unless you did a ton of hacking. Can't even install Skype without spending hours online then using console hacks.

Currently it's running on a very cheap Toshiba Satellite AND Vision laptop. Other than me maxing out the RAM it's basic spec. The only thing with OpenSUSE is the huge 4.7GB Download. It's not a live CD or a light dstro. It sold me on it by basically being the middle ground, not too easy, not too hard.
 
nickdalzell said:
OpenSUSE seems to be one of the last distros yet to be dumbed down. That's what made Ubuntu crap for my use. Yeah I got KDE there but parts of Unity were left behind. It tended to forget my desktop settings. It protected itself to the extent you were locked into Software Center unless you did a ton of hacking.
Click to expand...

I never used software center. Is

Code: 
sudo apt-get remove software-center

not all that's needed to remove it? Then just add Synaptic or do it all yourself. You're not locked into anything. And how did it protect itself too much? I don't think I've run into situation where sudo couldn't get me the privileges I needed.
 
been using Mac OS for about 7 years so i prefer it over Win.

It has its ups and downs but overall its easier for me to use.
 
I haven't used Windows at home for day-to-day stuff in about 7 years. There was about a 2 month period in there where I had to use Windows to access some mock exams when I was studying for a Java certification, though.

Since I started a new job last July, I've been Windows-free at work, too.

This has produced the pleasant side effect of being mostly clueless when it comes to Windows problems, which gets me out of being "the guy who's good with computers".
 
Windows is my only love
Click to expand...

In addition to W7HP32b, I now sextuple-boot with Mint Cinnamon and Mate, Ubuntu, Lubuntu and SolydX. Don't ask why... I don't know... I still use Windows 99.99% of the time.
 
John Bean said:
I wasn't really thinking of the "toy" home computers like the ZX-80 before CP/M, more about the small minis from the likes of DEC. In any case CP/M was only really available for Intel-like processors (plus the Motorola 68k) so manufacturers using other popular 8-bit processors like the 6502 or 6809 used something else, usually proprietary but often incredibly efficient like Acorn's 6502 DOS.
Click to expand...
Well ...

I actually ported CP/M 2.2 to my Kimsai (Kim running a 6502 to an S-100 bus adapter), because CP/M was my favorite OS at the time. (I had most of the source in my head.) SOLOS was okay, but looking at it today, it's like looking back at "transportation" being crawling on your knees. And CUTER (cassette OS) was even worse. Isis wasn't too bad.

Today I'd go with Windows up to 7 (or 8 run as 7), a few Linux distros and Android (it's a great distro, when you think about it). Although I still liked the ability to interact directly with hardware in Win 98. I spent a few years converting proprietary databases to our proprietary database - with Peter Norton's Diskedit (and a calculator) as my only tool. Our laptops with 384MB drives went out to shows with 250MB drives - as far as the MBR knew. Source code, in case we needed to write a patch in a hurry at a show, was on the "unused" part of the drive. Which I wrote a little program to switch the MBR back and forth. (Although I could rewrite the MBR manually if I had to.) (Speaking of Forth ... and I'm still reasonably sane IMO.)

Never used a PDP, but used the DEC 10 and 20. But since most of my work back then was hardware and 8-bit CPU programming (on the metal when necessary, on an assembler when lucky), I was just a user on big iron. Still have my Godbout Imsai Z-80 front panel with the split octal readout and keys. No S-100 bus to plug it into, though.
 
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