What's your OS?

[Stoic Beverage]

What operating system do you use? Are you a diehard fanboy/girl of your OS, or is it just what was available?

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

I normally go for the operating system that provides me with the most utility with the highest degrees of freedom.

I do have computer with linux and it can do all the basics such as spread sheeting, word processing and matlab but it does not really play games all to well and wine is somewhat inefficient.

Windows 7 kicked XP from my heart for some strange reason. I hated vista and I can't tell the different between vista and 7. Perhaps, the transition just took time.

 

[EyeSeeCold]

Windows 7 has a faster load time(initially) and it has improved features and convenience.

 

[Dimensional Transition]

I'm not a diehard fanboy of Macs, but I sure do enjoy them. I like the to-the-point feeling. Clean, fast, barely any crashes/errors... I haven't found any disadvantages of using a Mac. I've never been a fan of PC-gaming anyways, I prefer consoles. And even in that region more and more games are being made available for Macs.

Wait, I do sound pretty fanboyish now. Oh well.

 

[Zero]

Laptop = Windows 7, Old Laptop = Eeebuntu, Netbook = Easy Peasy, Custom Tower = Windows 7

Even though I like the simplicity of Easy Peasy I need 7 for school and for games.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

I'm not a diehard fanboy of Macs, but I sure do enjoy them. I like the to-the-point feeling. Clean, fast, barely any crashes/errors... I haven't found any disadvantages of using a Mac. I've never been a fan of PC-gaming anyways, I prefer consoles. And even in that region more and more games are being made available for Macs.

Wait, I do sound pretty fanboyish now. Oh well.

For my last PC I was considering buying a mac. They look nice, big screen. However, the price performance ratio was/is absolutely terrible. Instead of sinking $2000 into a mac I built a monster of a gaming rig. The rig also allows me to inefficiently crunch numbers pretty damn fast. I do understand some people prefer aesthetics over performance.

In regards to computers crashing or accumulating viruses, it seems that only the computer illiterate achieve this. Though, if it is windows 95 we can deduce it is the OS.

 

[CoryJames]

The rig also allows me to inefficiently crunch numbers pretty damn fast.

inefficiently...pretty damn fast?

 

[The Gopher]

Ubuntu but not out of choice.Funnily though I didn't mind vista. It was kinda fun working out all the ways around the problems.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

inefficiently...pretty damn fast?

Yes, my bad coding.

 

[CoryJames]

My apologies. I assumed the error was in your rhetoric, not my knowledge of computer science. Where did you learn to code? It tried to learn Python language one summer but it became redundant and I did not see the point anymore.

 

[Anchorite]

I'm still using the XP I got 3.5 years ago, but I'll be getting a mac book pro come Summer.

 

[Latro]

Much much more often than not I am on either a Ubuntu system or an Arch Linux system. I don't use Arch on the Ubuntu machine because its kernel doesn't cooperate with the buggy ACPI on that laptop, and consequently it burns up on 0% CPU. (Ubuntu's kernel has some issues with it too, but those don't risk my CPU melting.)

I have a Windows partition on this machine though, and have used OSX a little bit. Annoyingly I'm gonna probably have to buy Windows again, because I lost my key and need to reformat that partition (it's really bogged down; it gets like 50% CPU usage from OS services alone, and I have no idea why).

 

[walfin]

Boo. The poll should be checkbox. What about dual boot or different computer different OS? And what about "other" for the FreeBSD et al users?

I use Kubuntu on one, Ubuntu on another, and dual boot those with Windows 7 for use when I really have to. Really, there are so many little features that linux has on the desktop that it is very hard to use windows except when I need to play games or run something that won't run on linux (wine is still woefully inadequate). In many ways I think linux is the new Win 3.1, business applications are already here, and my switching to Windows is like how Win 3.1 users used to switch to DOS to play games.

Strangely, I find linux to be less stable than Windows now. It's kind of strange.

 

[TheHmmmm]

My career path choice requires Microsoft Office Excel and I'm not running that through Wine. I also like the option to play games.

This makes Windows my obvious choice. I'd try linux if they ported everything over though, but they'd need to eclipse Mac's marketshare first.

 

[Latro]

My career path choice requires Microsoft Office Excel and I'm not running that through Wine. I also like the option to play games.

This makes Windows my obvious choice. I'd try linux if they ported everything over though, but they'd need to eclipse Mac's marketshare first.

I find gnumeric to be vastly superior to MS Excel (except for the fact that the interpolation implementation is bad, and so it spouts out "not a number" when it shouldn't. It's fine for linear interpolation, though.) It can also save in .xls for compatibility. Office type things are probably really easy to run in Wine as well, if you absolutely needed Excel; games are a bigger issue, though, if they are not relatively old. (I was very pleased when I saw that Starcraft II (which I'll finally be getting next month) wines well, though )

 

[James Black]

OS X here: I like the macbook pro's look, chiclet keyboad, one-button glass trackpad, I like the OS, and more importantly, I like how its easier to run Windows + OS X apps on OS X than it is on Windows. I still use Windows a lot, and as much as I like the Mac OS, I'll be honest and say "using money from scholarships/loans, and personal preference on the look and feel of the laptop hardware" is why I went with Mac.

Edit: Oh, although Expose and Spaces make my life so much easier.

 

[nonperson]

Xubuntu 10.10. Mint 8 (using XFCE, but not community XFCE remix,) XP, and occasionally Win 98.

Xubuntu is not long for this world when Debian 6 lands; I am not feeling the Linux love at the moment.

 

[crippli]

I sometimes use backtrack. A form of linux I think, I put it on usb, so can boot it whenever there is need. Very nice for network related things(wish I mastered this more). For most everything else I use a win7 that has had a go trough vlite and DSIM package tool. Then the monster isn't fully as monstrous anymore. I generally just want the barebone OS afap. So usually willing to put in some effort to make this happen.

 

[dark]

My laptop runs: Windows Vista and Ubuntu.

Windows is only used for doing word processing until I transition to open office. Still kind of uneasy about it.

Ubuntu, I do everything else with it. It is much faster for such a crappy machine. I don't play games on it so no need for Windows for that, anyhow I am sure wine wouldn't be near as bad as Vista with games. Ubuntu is taking a bit to get used to, but it is sure a lot better for my outdated computer, about 2-3 years...

 

[5k17]

Windows 7. It does suck, partly because what has changed in the layout since Windows XP was exactly what I had gotten used to, and some programs made for and/or working perfectly under XP won't run any more (compatibility mode has never worked for me, and there doesn't seem to be a good emulator for any older Windows version); and, of course, DOS programs that require fullscreen don't work, either... but that's what DosBox is for.

 

[yes]

Funnily though I didn't mind vista. It was kinda fun working out all the ways around the problems.

I thought so too.

 

[Jennywocky]

Windows 7 Pro. Just got it up and running on a new barebones system yesterday.

I was using Vista on a borrowed machine for six months, after years running Win XP Pro on my own box, so at least that helped me make the jump. I started years and years ago in MS-DOS and Apple and mainframes, so it's kind of mind-boggling where things have gone.

 

[Stigmata]

Windows 7 Ultimate. Why Ultimate? Because it's much more fun to show that I'm a PC enthusiast with a nice, ostentatious display of OS superiority.

 

[NoID10ts]

NoddyOS 2010 which isn't on the list of choices for some reason.

I developed it myself. It's kind of like windows, except that everything is dispayed () in shades of blue, all photographs automatically have genitalia superimposed over them, and the function keys are assigned to insert the word "fuck" and it's nine other most commonly used variations at the touch of a button. It also has a sadomasochistic porn version of Solitaire.

It's a work in progress, but I'm convinced that if it catches on, I'll be poised to take over the world soon thereafter.

 

[SQ_Minion]

My system of choice just switched to Chrome OS.

No, seriously. I applied to the pilot program three or four days ago, and yesterday I received a notebook in the mail. It's awesome.

I formerly spent about half my time on Windows 7 and half on Ubuntu 10.04.

 

[Architectonic]

The only reason why I've used Windows/dos all these years is (a) Such PCs were cheaper (b) more software was available (why I don't use linux) (c) I am most familiar with such.

 

[James Black]

I don't lock myself within the confines of one OS.

[spoil]

[/spoil]

 

[Meer]

Windows, XP on the desktop and Vista on the laptop. I'll probably switch to 7 eventually.

The software I use only runs on Windows.

 

[FearDunn]

Win7 desktop, dual-boot XP/Ubuntu netbook, but I find Android 2.2 is suitable for quite a bit.

 

[Vrecknidj]

Main work laptop = Windows 7
Personal laptop = Windows XP Home
Desktop = Windows XP Pro
iPod Touch = Whatever that is
Other work laptop = Windows XP Pro (with IE 6, ugh!)

I have no preference, except that the desktop be good for gaming.

 

[Fukyo]

No, seriously. I applied to the pilot program three or four days ago, and yesterday I received a notebook in the mail. It's awesome.

 

[walfin]

My system of choice just switched to Chrome OS.

Cool! Is it really that good?

Does everything have to be online (productivity etc)? I wouldn't like it if it did.