Which OS'es

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by Avatar, Apr 26, 2007.

?

Which OSes?

  1. Windows Vista

    15.8%
  2. Windows XP

    68.4%
  3. OSX

    13.2%
  4. Fedora Core (Linux)

    10.5%
  5. Debian (Linux)

    7.9%
  6. Ubuntu (Linux)

    26.3%
  7. Mandriva (Linux)

    2.6%
  8. Gentoo (Linux)

    2.6%
  9. Other Linux

    10.5%
  10. BSD (open, free, other)

    7.9%
  11. Some other OS

    5.3%
  12. Windows 2000

    15.8%
Multiple votes are allowed.
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  1. Nickelodeon Banned Banned

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    Win2k isn't supported anymore is it?
     
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  3. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    I've never been a fan of Microsoft and their products (well, not since I was a naive 12 year old who didn't know any better).
    I personally run a triple boot system: Windows 2000, Windows 98 (for the odd app that Win2K can't handle; I don't use it much), and Fedora Core 6. I much prefer the Linux environment, but find its lack of hardware support frustrating sometimes. The day I get it to support my modem, I will have little use for Windows other than gaming.
     
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  5. Jeremyhfht Registered Senior Member

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    Heh, I need not 98 anymore. If I want to play a dos game or something, I simply use DosBox. I've no applications that are so old they can't run on 2k, or 2k's compatibility mode.

    But what can your Linux do that Windows 2k cannot?
     
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  7. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

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    XP has a compatibility mode. I didn't know 2K had one?
    You can do potentially anything in both OSs. I suppose Windows still wins here as most applications (and malware) are built for it, though you get the occasional Linux application for which a Windows version either doesn't exist or has only partial functionality (like GAP).

    I generally prefer Linux as a programming and work environment though. It installs out of the box with gcc, Vim (which puts Notepad to shame), LaTeX (which I expect to be using a lot more than any word processor), and bash, tcsh etc. (which beat the DOS prompt any day) - exactly the features that tell you Linux is designed for more serious work, as opposed to Windows XP's and Vista's eye candy. You can get all these applications for Windows (and I have), but even there I usually end up working under cygwin. At the end of the day it's just an environment that I find suits me better personally.

    Linux also beats Windows in efficiency (GNOME and KDE are resource hogs, but they're not the only desktop environments available) and configurability, but these aren't really issues for me at the moment. Also, you're free of licensing issues and Linux actually has a future, if you consider the successors to Win2K dead ends. Windows 2000 won't be supported forever.
     
  8. Jeremyhfht Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    386
    You have to turn it on. Google for instructions. It appears to work far better than XP's compatibility mode.

    I use DEVC++. It's an IDE, something GCC is not I believe.

    I know, but the entire point of boycotting microsoft is some small hope they'll pull another 2k, and get something efficient.
     
  9. Repo Man Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,955
    Because of its ubiquity, people who would have nothing to do with a computer voluntarily are forced to use them. Not all intelligent people are technical.

    I've a good friend who is a professor at a small JC. He has a masters degree in history, and is quite intelligent. He is all thumbs with computers though, and keeping their machines going for them has been a real challenge. They now live a couple of states away from me.

    I once gave him a CDRW. I repeatedly emailed him, even once sending one that had photos of how to install it step by step. A year after I gave it to him, I visited on vacation. It was still in the box on a shelf. I installed it in minutes, and the kids went crazy copying CDs.

    Sadly, within a few months one of the toddlers got in the computer room, and wrecked the CDROM. I sent an email link to a good deal on one at Newegg, and once again offered to talk him through installing it over the phone. After some time had passed, I replaced my own CDRW with a DVDRW. I asked if they had one yet, offering to give him mine if not. He told me that he had bought one. It was a USB one, and they had paid about $150.00 for it. At least $100.00 more just because it could be plugged in by USB, rather than paying $40.00 and having to crack the case open.

    Then they had some problems shutting down Windows because the mouse kept locking up. It was a wireless mouse, and they had the receiver too close to the CRT monitor. They got in the habit of turning it off by using the rocker switch on the PSU. This finally scrambled some files, and only then did they ask for my help. If they had asked earlier, I could have told them to move the mouse receiver, and to use the Windows key to bring up the shutdown box if they still had a problem.

    It was too damaged to start in Safe Mode, so I had to talk him through a Repair Install. But it couldn't boot from the USB CDRW. So he had to buy a plain jane CDROM for $50.00, and I talked him through installing it.

    My mom has to stick with the Trend Micro suite. If something actually infected her system, it would be all over until I could visit and take care of it. She has never been technical, and now her faculties are rapidly declining with age. I found an AARP page on some computer basics, and I told her that I wanted her to read it, and that I had added it to her favorites list so she could find it. She then told me that she had forgotten how to use the favorites (actually bookmarks, I have managed to get her to use Firefox).

    When I gave my aunt a computer, I had a huge folder of MP3s for her. She has always been a music lover, and I knew she would enjoy it. She didn't have the money for computer speakers, so I used a RCA splitter, and connected the computer to her home stereo. Turn the computer on, turn the stereo on, set it to Aux, crank up Winamp and you have hours of music to listen to. After having it for over two years, she admitted to me that she didn't know how to listen to music on it.

    I kept having to help my brother get rid of spyware. I'd talk him through getting rid of it, and tell him not to use IE ever. Then he'd call me up in a couple more weeks, and we'd have to repeat the procedure. "Why in the fuck do you keep using IE?" I finally asked him. "My girlfriend likes it, and she won't use Firefox." "Then make her fix it!"

    Old cars had to be started with a hand crank. You had to manually set the choke, and the ignition advance. Just starting the car required that you be both physically strong, and understand how to set the choke, and advance and retard the ignition timing. Imagine if someone tried to sell a car that required that level of effort by the operator now? Computers will similarly advance.
     
  10. Jeremyhfht Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    386
    I only quoted this, since the rest of your text was ridiculously a waste of typing.

    I called them ignorant. Not stupid. Ones intelligence, also, factors in on your willingness to learn to operate machines required.
     
  11. river-wind Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,671
    And until Vista's release, this was near the top of my list of anti-windows complaints. Why the hell can't you boot off of a USB drive??!!?! I can't tell you how much easier that makes life when things go south. The last time I had a problem with my machine, I easily booted it off of the barebones OSX install I have on my iPod. Ran disk utility on the main drive, and was back up in less than 15 minutes.

    Keeping the basic drivers that handle possible drive options unavailable until the full OS is loaded is not wise, IMO. They don't have to be blazing fast super-drivers, either, just well-tested basic ones that allow mounting and R/W to the drive - be it an external HD, a usb key, an ipod, a camera (if it can act like a basic external drive), or internal ATA/SATA whatever! Any recognisable system folder should be bootable; Microsoft has not helped drive adoption of better bootloaders that would allow for this sort of functionality. What motherboard manufacturers want to put the expense into supporting better booting options when Windows itself doesn't support anything but a 15 year old BIOS tech?

    Now that Apple has pushed EFI, it looks like we'll finally start seeing this progression. but it should have happened 10 years ago!
     
    Last edited: May 3, 2007
  12. przyk squishy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,203
    Thanks. I'll have to try some old apps now.
    The compiler and IDE are seperate utilities. If you perform a "workstation install" of Fedora Core it'll install Eclipse and KDevelop - both IDEs that use GCC as their compiler (at least by default) - as well as Glade and Qt Designer for GUI design. DEV-C++ uses the MinGW compiler, which is a Win32 port of GCC (though not the most recent version).
    I'm not exactly holding my breath. What you could do, though, is stick with Windows but lag a version or two behind the most recent one. As current computers becomes more powerful, the loss of performance caused by a bloated OS designed for the computers of six or seven years ago becomes less significant. The difference between an OS consuming 25% and 75% of your system resources is much more noticeable than the difference between, say, 5% and 15%.
     
  13. Jeremyhfht Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    386
    I know. It'll be what I'm going to be forced to do, since Microsoft probably wont improve.

    That, of course, assumes I'll ever have to stop using 2k. The array of programs I use still have windows 95 support for crissake. They wont be dropping 2k anytime soon.
     
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