Operating Systems (Split)

[MaraST78]

I don't have any experience with OS X, so I can't comment on that.

Linux vs Windows will always be here I suppose. Like everything in life, nothing's perfect and everything has it's pros and cons.

Linux has it's repos. Nice concept. You go to some sort of package manager and depending on what repos you have enabled, installing apps and resolving deps is a piece of cake. Windows doesn't have any equivalent for that, searching web for drivers and software is necessary. Ok, Win can potentionally find some drivers on the net for the user, but who's doing that

OTOH, this pro in Linux and con in Windows has two sides.
Let's say some new app is out and I want it in Linux. Depending on distro, it can be available soon, or never, especially because many distros have rather short support cycle. Yeah, maybe some unofficial backport or fan made package exists, maybe not. So I need to get the tarball or get it through svn,git or whatever and compile myself. Not always a simple thing to do. Sometimes the process is rather simple, sometimes it'll just not compile at all, because e.g. GCC used has some bugs and reverting to older one is needed etc. etc. Doing it system wide may also not be ideal, different prefix can be a good idea so it doesn't potentionally screw up already installed package. Can be pain.

In Win, that's rather simple. Practically no deps to solve, just download and install. Or downolad, unpack and run. I think that even though Windows is definitely more time consuming in the beginning, it's also more flexible in the end.

TTYs. Windows need this, period. How many times it happend to anyone that any FS Win app misbehaved and there was no way to get to OS gui to kill it? In Linux, you just do your ctrl-alt-fx and kill it from there. I miss this feature a lot when working with Win.

Trivial bugs.
Linux "wins" here. No matter what distro, it can have very disturbing issues with various hardware and software. Mentioned wireless is a nice example, but that's not all, far from it. Many cams, TV cards, printers etc. are having similar problems. Either firmware is missing, when you find it, it may not be installed normally or you e.g. need the whole v4l source to get it going. Another problem is the "supported hardware status". Supported doesn't necessarily mean supported, it in many cases has some limitations, like this or that input not working, mysterious connection problems because of early, buggy drivers etc.
It's mostly not a problem of the devs, but hw companies, yes, but in the end, common user doesn't care. If every hw vendor had so good drivers like nvidia has, it would be heaven. Their upstream installed never failed me and was always very trouble free as far as app compatibility is concerned. But this is not so common in the Linux world.

In Win, drivers (mostly) work as expected. Like with software, run installer, reboot, done.

OS looks customization.
Linux can't be beaten here. It has huge ability to alter it's looks, including logins, icons, gtk/metacity/emerald/kwin/whatever themes. When compared to that, Win is just a closed box. Gee, even simple themes need patch that get rids of MS sign requirement to work properly. Let alone icons..

There are many other things I like and dislike in both OSes, but everyone knows why they're using this or that.

[MH]

I don't have any experience with OS X, so I can't comment on that.

Linux vs Windows will always be here I suppose. Like everything in life, nothing's perfect and everything has it's pros and cons.

Linux has it's repos. Nice concept. You go to some sort of package manager and depending on what repos you have enabled, installing apps and resolving deps is a piece of cake. Windows doesn't have any equivalent for that, searching web for drivers and software is necessary. Ok, Win can potentionally find some drivers on the net for the user, but who's doing that

OTOH, this pro in Linux and con in Windows has two sides.
Let's say some new app is out and I want it in Linux. Depending on distro, it can be available soon, or never, especially because many distros have rather short support cycle. Yeah, maybe some unofficial backport or fan made package exists, maybe not. So I need to get the tarball or get it through svn,git or whatever and compile myself. Not always a simple thing to do. Sometimes the process is rather simple, sometimes it'll just not compile at all, because e.g. GCC used has some bugs and reverting to older one is needed etc. etc. Doing it system wide may also not be ideal, different prefix can be a good idea so it doesn't potentionally screw up already installed package. Can be pain.

In Win, that's rather simple. Practically no deps to solve, just download and install. Or downolad, unpack and run. I think that even though Windows is definitely more time consuming in the beginning, it's also more flexible in the end.

TTYs. Windows need this, period. How many times it happend to anyone that any FS Win app misbehaved and there was no way to get to OS gui to kill it? In Linux, you just do your ctrl-alt-fx and kill it from there. I miss this feature a lot when working with Win.

Trivial bugs.
Linux "wins" here. No matter what distro, it can have very disturbing issues with various hardware and software. Mentioned wireless is a nice example, but that's not all, far from it. Many cams, TV cards, printers etc. are having similar problems. Either firmware is missing, when you find it, it may not be installed normally or you e.g. need the whole v4l source to get it going. Another problem is the "supported hardware status". Supported doesn't necessarily mean supported, it in many cases has some limitations, like this or that input not working, mysterious connection problems because of early, buggy drivers etc.
It's mostly not a problem of the devs, but hw companies, yes, but in the end, common user doesn't care. If every hw vendor had so good drivers like nvidia has, it would be heaven. Their upstream installed never failed me and was always very trouble free as far as app compatibility is concerned. But this is not so common in the Linux world.

In Win, drivers (mostly) work as expected. Like with software, run installer, reboot, done.

OS looks customization.
Linux can't be beaten here. It has huge ability to alter it's looks, including logins, icons, gtk/metacity/emerald/kwin/whatever themes. When compared to that, Win is just a closed box. Gee, even simple themes need patch that get rids of MS sign requirement to work properly. Let alone icons..

There are many other things I like and dislike in both OSes, but everyone knows why they're using this or that.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
This.

The voice of reason.

[Neil]

ChromeOS.

[oldendirt]

Penny Arcade! - In The Seventh House

[gnounc]

My laptop came with vista on it about a year and a half ago.
I gave vista an hour of my time...uninstalled it and put Ubuntu/XP on it.

When Linux is stable...I love it. When its not...its almost always my fault.

My fault for messing with things I dont understand and shouldnt mess with.
But I think why not..I've got everything backed up for a reason, and I usually dont mind a clean install : )

That said I will not switch to the next windows system until they stop their phoning home, drm, genuine advantage and whatnot. Which is never.
I dont trust windows to not shut me down over something inane in the future
Like false positives or hardware lockout (they dont do this YET)
they do with their consoles, and I know thats another story, but they have a virtual
monopoly, and anything they can do to get that last bit in edgewise is fair game.

moving on.

I use TinyXP, yeah I know its an illegal copy, whatever. I paid for windows at least once per computer I think I have the fucking right to put on a version that runs leaner faster and meaner. (and it does.)

In linux I love making a keyboard shortcut for everything, especially show destkop and media controls.

What I miss most when I'm on windows, is alt dragging windows that show up under my taskbar (which I keep on the top even in windows) in windows these get stuck and you have no way of getting them back, sometimes a reinstall is necessary.. its stupid.
alt ctrl backspace to logout and logback in to see setting changes,
never having to restart after software installation
Automatic driver detection..thats right, linux finds my drivers...and windows does not.
Backwards I KNOW.
A media player that stays out of my way...nothing is a seperate daemon/client in windows: (
And wonderful wonderful repos.


annnnnd what do I use windows for?
Photoshop..
Quake
Duke Nukem 3D.
Dungeon Keeper.
Starcraft.
Wine is a pain in the ass. though runs most of those fairly well. and I know there are ports to linux, but every linux port ive tried has problems with my graphics card (cheap integrated laptop card)

Oh and one last thing..on DirectX10. there is a hacked version of XP that has directx10
support. I cant tell you how well it works, cause my laptop certainly doesnt have
a directx10 capable card. But I'd be willing to bet it works pretty well.

[gnounc]

My laptop came with vista on it about a year and a half ago.
I gave vista an hour of my time...uninstalled it and put Ubuntu/XP on it.

When Linux is stable...I love it. When its not...its almost always my fault.

My fault for messing with things I dont understand and shouldnt mess with.
But I think why not..I've got everything backed up for a reason, and I usually dont mind a clean install : )

That said I will not switch to the next windows system until they stop their phoning home, drm, genuine advantage and whatnot. Which is never.
I dont trust windows to not shut me down over something inane in the future
Like false positives or hardware lockout (they dont do this YET)
they do with their consoles, and I know thats another story, but they have a virtual
monopoly, and anything they can do to get that last bit in edgewise is fair game.

moving on.

I use TinyXP, yeah I know its an illegal copy, whatever. I paid for windows at least once per computer I think I have the fucking right to put on a version that runs leaner faster and meaner. (and it does.)

In linux I love making a keyboard shortcut for everything, especially show destkop and media controls.

What I miss most when I'm on windows, is alt dragging windows that show up under my taskbar (which I keep on the top even in windows) in windows these get stuck and you have no way of getting them back, sometimes a reinstall is necessary.. its stupid.
alt ctrl backspace to logout and logback in to see setting changes,
never having to restart after software installation
Automatic driver detection..thats right, linux finds my drivers...and windows does not.
Backwards I KNOW.
A media player that stays out of my way...nothing is a seperate daemon/client in windows: (
And wonderful wonderful repos.


annnnnd what do I use windows for?
Photoshop..
Quake
Duke Nukem 3D.
Dungeon Keeper.
Starcraft.
Wine is a pain in the ass. though runs most of those fairly well. and I know there are ports to linux, but every linux port ive tried has problems with my graphics card (cheap integrated laptop card)

Oh and one last thing..on DirectX10. there is a hacked version of XP that has directx10
support. I cant tell you how well it works, cause my laptop certainly doesnt have
a directx10 capable card. But I'd be willing to bet it works pretty well.

[Panix]

Beware! Long story about my recent experience with win7! Beware!

BEWARE! LONG STORY ABOUT MY RECENT EXPERIENCE WITH WIN7! BEWARE!

Friday, after a long, exhausting day of playing secretary and technician since I was the only one at the office (Boss and co-worker are out of town, his wife on a field trip with his kids), I ended up taking a computer with Win7 to a customer. This was my experience with it and I was very impressed.

I've had limited Vista experience so I didn't really have to figure out where alot of stuff was moved to.

I had to move all the Quickbooks stuff to the new computer and share it out. Had no clue how to set it up. I was use to going into folder options, turning off simple filesharing and getting things rolling. I decided to see what 7 did. Incredibly easy. I did have to type in 'Everyone' to get that dialog to come up and maybe it was just out of habit. I just wanted the folder to share out with everyone on the LAN having full control (yeah I know it's not secure, their decision).

It asked me about Homegroups. Still dunno wtf that is. May google later and see wtf is up with that.

I auto moved everything to where it was suppose to go when I copied the previous 'My Documents' folder to the new my documents directory. I thought that was pretty neat.

And oh my god, the best thing I think since sliced bread (for Windows) is the option to 'verify your network settings' when setting an IP was turned off by default. I can't tell how much time I've wasted waiting on Windows PCs to go through the whole arp/netbios process after an IP change. I dunno if that's something in Vista but I wish it was in XP.

I also like how it showed the file speed when files were copied.

I forgot the processor speed (3ghz or more I think) but with 4gb of ram, it used about 1gb of ram and was speedy as hell.

I'm not big on changing appearances. I don't care about themes or pretty, cutesy shit. Hell, I'm fine with a minimalist desktop environment like Win2K3 desktop but if Win7 can run that well out-of-the-box, I'm impressed. I'd like to know if you could strip other stuff out of the interface to speed it up further.

All in all, I liked it. When I can get my money situation fixed, I really want to buy a PC and get one of those educational special Win7 licenses. Anyone know if you can see get those $50 Win7 licenses, the requirements to get one and where I can get it?

</story>

[MH]

Hrrrmmmm - I can't remember the last time I had to reboot Windows after a software installation. That really went away when I moved to Windows 2000 (over 9 years ago!) and has mostly stayed away since, aside from certain evil apps that like to replace core OS files with their own bastardized versions (which Windows has prevented from happening since... well, Windows 2000, again). Windows Update is the only installtion that really needs a reboot these days, and considering that's akin to patching a Linux kernel it's understandable enough.

Driver detection is a snap these days too. Windows 7 (which is VERY pleasant to work with) comes with a LOT of drivers by default, and for those where it doesn't, once again a trip to Windows update will pull them all down (seen it happen twice now).

Only cases with even XP where I've seen driver probs are cases where the hardware post-date's XP's release (it is an 8 year old OS after all, so it wouldn't be reasonable to expect to see the latest GeForce driver being automatically detected).

As for DRM, it's not the great evil that populist paranoia would have you believe. All it does is enable you to play DRM-protected content on your machine; it doesn't stamp little jackboots all over your own MP3s/etc. I've ripped CDs on Windows 7, transferred them to other PCs, transferred them to my player (which is a drag-n-drop in Explorer thing), all without a single hitch.

Regarding the 7 desktop, translucency and the Desktop Window Manager can both be turrned off easily - Control Panel | System and Security | System | Advanced System Settings | Performance Settings button. I think that reverting all the way to the trad Windows 2000 theme will disable certain features of the new Taskbar and Start Menu, like Jump Lists, which really are a joy to use.

[Dreadlorde]

HAll it does is enable you to play DRM-protected content on your machine

Unless you're recording it so you can use it everywhere, why would you want to do that?

[MH]

Unless you're recording it so you can use it everywhere, why would you want to do that?

Ummm - Blu-ray?

[Dreadlorde]

Ummm - Blu-ray?

Why are you watching blu-ray's on your computer? Since you have the means to by a blu-ray drive for your computer, I'm going to assume you also have a blu-ray player and a large television. Go watch them on that.

[MH]

Why are you watching blu-ray's on your computer? Since you have the means to by a blu-ray drive for your computer, I'm going to assume you also have a blu-ray player and a large television. Go watch them on that.

I don't actually have any of those things and I'm not watching blu-ray on my computer. Just quoted as an example of the things some people might like to do sometime, but does not necessarily apply to me here and now.

Having said that, if I had a blu-ray drive on a laptop, and if I was staying in a hotel for a few days for a business trip or something, and if I had a large blu-ray collection, bringing a few movies with me and being able to watch them is definitely an option I'd like to have available.

[oldendirt]

Hrrrmmmm - I can't remember the last time I had to reboot Windows after a software installation.

Seems like it happens a lot at work, but then we have a lot of fairly specialized applications.

Driver detection is a snap these days too.

Ha. Except when it isn't. Again, this is likely due to the high amount of legacy hardware we support at work.

Windows 7 (which is VERY pleasant to work with) comes with a LOT of drivers by default....

True true true. When I plunged into Vista on my Phenom-based box I had a lot of driver hunting ahead of me... when I updated to W7 everything worked. Maybe Windows 7 ought to be called the Vista Driver Update!

As for DRM, it's not the great evil that populist paranoia would have you believe.

Here's the thing: if you play certain media without a DRM-approved monitor, the picture goes black (just in the media player!) after the first minute. I think it's unreasonable to require hardware upgrades to support technology that only exists to force your compliance with Big Brother.

Still, largely, my Windows 7 experience has not been too bad.

[foq]

Why are you watching blu-ray's on your computer?

Have you ever heard of a HTPC? Aside from that, modern TVs have ways to link up to the computer. I personally use a cable with HDMI on one end and DVI on the other. The HDMI end goes to my tv and the DVI end goes to my computer. HDMI is the same thing as DVI except that it carries audio as well (but it doesn't have to, it can be used strictly as a video cable).

A computer is so much better than a dvd/blu-ray/whatever player in so many ways that if you're going to have a computer, you might as well make it a gaming/htpc setup. You can make a nice gaming computer and still keep it quiet using aftermarket cooling and/or energy efficient parts.

[spooker]

You forgot to mention overclocking