Which computer operating system do you prefer?

[jefboyardee]

In addition to W7HP32b, I now sextuple-boot with Mint Cinnamon and Mate, Ubuntu, Lubuntu and SolydX.

That nearabouts drove crazy. Now I just dual-boot, W7 and Mint.

 

[nickdalzell]

with a bit of hacking and using still-developed FOSS apps (such as SeaMonkey) you can make OS/2 Warp 4 pretty modern despite it being as old as Win3.1. i was playing with it not too long ago and it was pretty neat until my hard drive died. wasn't interested in the amount of effort needed to reinstall it and get drivers again. aside the rather dated looking dock, with a floppy disk icon for 'save' and a link to the DOS prompt, it was rather ahead of its time.

 

[MacLinDroid]

OS/2 Warp...............another beaut killed by IBM. You are taking me back to the early 1990's which was when I used it.

 

[Crashdamage]

Using Linux exclusively on my desktop box since 2001. Presently still on Fedora 15, installed when I last rebuilt the box. It still does everything I need, is absolutely rock-solid, I've got it tweaked just like I want it, and I've been too lazy to update. Maybe next winter when business is slow I'll get around to it - or not. If I do I'll load either Fedora again or go back to CentOS.

Hate Windows and M$ business practices (though I respect Gates for his philanthropy). Hate Apple's business practices even more.

That said, my wife's PC runs Win7 Pro because she has has to have Windows for her business. Unfortunately, when it comes to business software it's still a Windows world.

 

[Slug]

OS/2 Warp 4 [...] was rather ahead of its time.

Rather??? It was way ahead... fully 32-bit, a completely object-oriented UI (Workplace Shell), a robust file system (HPFS, then later JFS), solid networking supportboth for LAN and WAN, SOM, and with speech recognition integrated.

 

[MacLinDroid]

Using Linux exclusively on my desktop box since 2001. Presently still on Fedora 15, installed when I last rebuilt the box. It still does everything I need, is absolutely rock-solid, I've got it tweaked just like I want it, and I've been too lazy to update. Maybe next winter when business is slow I'll get around to it - or not. If I do I'll load either Fedora again or go back to CentOS.

Hate Windows and M$ business practices (though I respect Gates for his philanthropy). Hate Apple's business practices even more.

That said, my wife's PC runs Win7 Pro because she has has to have Windows for her business. Unfortunately, when it comes to business software it's still a Windows world.

I never tried Fedora. Downloaded PCLinuxOS a week ago, with terrible results. It could not drive my laptop's screen even and, when I finally coaxed it to display on the entire screen area, the display was pixelated and lagging. Quite a pity because I always wanted to see what PCLinuxOS was like.

Zorin: I tried to download a few times over the past few days but my service provider throttles it and I could no complete it. Instead, i downloaded Mint 16 32-BIT and that took well over two hours. At my next home, I will have either fast adsl or fibre, but presently it only is mobile broadband at a very high price. I get free wireless internet, lots of it, yet it is in a public place and there are some restrictions on download speeds, etc.

Fedora remains untried by me, for now.

 

[Crashdamage]

Fedora is definitely a cutting-edge distro, yet has been extremely stable for me. Just works. I may stay with it, partly because I'm really tempted by the alternative Cinnamon desktop (though Gnome 3 has been just fine). Then again, I might go back to CentOS for the long-term support and ultimate stability, even though it is sometimes a bit of a pain in the butt. I only do a system reinstall every few years.

Mint is nice, but I cut my Linux teeth on RedHat 6.1 and Mandrake and have always preferred .rpm to .deb.

 

[nickdalzell]

I never got too much time to appreciate OS/2 Warp 4 before my hard disk crashed. plus a lot of the software that it ran in its heyday was either non-functional (too old for today's standards or not supporting the 'new' Internet) or was completely unavailable. i had just got it where i could browse the web, play YouTube videos (FYI don't even ask how i got Flash 11 to run on the thing ) and had my desktop setup with a decent wallpaper, 16-Bit high color support, wifi networking, and some notepad software. it took FOREVER to boot up (blame the too-new computer, very sketchy drivers and a long load due to the wifi driver waiting for a IP address) but once it was up it did look amazing. i never got to appreciate it when it was new, so for me it was just a trip down OS's from the past.

For the short time i had it going, here's an old screenshot:



I was using SeaMonkey version 1.1 (?) for the web, YouTube, AF, etc. Netscape was used to download SeaMonkey (WebExplorer was non-functional) and i kept the icon. the computer was a Dual-core Toshiba Satellite laptop with 2GB RAM and a 250GB Hard disk. it originally came with Windows Vista.

 

[JamshiJack]

I use both Windows 7 and 8, but prefer Windows 7 on PC... have tried Ubuntu and Linux.. they are nice OS too

 

[jefboyardee]

Another Mint-ish distro I've discovered is Linux Lite... second place for me.

 

[Demache]

My desktops run Windows 7 and 8. I really have no preference for one or the other really. Unfortunately, Linux gaming isn't quite there yet there yet so I can use it full time, but its getting better. Running Windows in a VM for games creates too much overhead as well.

Fortunately, my laptop is 8 years old and is pretty useless for modern games, so I just run Arch Linux on that. It performs admirably for a first gen Core 2 Duo at general purpose stuff though.

I also have two Debian servers. The Mac G4 Mini is primarily for torrents and SSH to reduce traffic on the wireless network. The other is an Athlon II X4 machine for VM's and file storage, but is on the other side of the wireless bridge. Hopefully I can run an actual ethernet cable to eliminate the need for the G4.

 

[anoniemouse]

I dual boot windows 7 & xubuntu, i get the best of both worlds.

All the inherent security of linux, & without losing games etc that i have in windows.

Incidently i am using 14.04 of xubuntu & if i could get all my games & programs running on it i would ditch windows completely.

 

[sreum]

Nothing above windows Vista

 

[jefboyardee]

I dual boot windows 7 & xubuntu,

I dumped Linux Lite for now, in favor of Xubu as second place, just behind Mint. But I might put Lite back on my third ext4 partition... doesn't really matter, I always wind up back on W7HP.

 

[saptech]

I've been running ArchLinux lately and I must say, what a solid distro. Once you get it installed and configured, it's amazing. I have Mate desktop, a fork of Gnome 2, and Openbox & i3 Window Managers. So far, I'm satisfied with it and Mageia 4.

 

[JohnLaird]

Windows 7 and I'm partial to Fedorra. I've used Ubuntu and Slackware in the past...the only big gripe is that they always seem to have issues with wireless cards and the video card drivers.

 

[NYCHitman1]

Mint 17 and Win 7 Pro. Can't wait until Linux gets proper Nvidia Optimus support. >_<

 

[DirtyDee]

Ubuntu windows vista, 7 and 8 I keep the windows around because I went Linux for a year and forgot how to use windows xp which made me forget how to help people out with. "issues" it's the same reason I keep random devices on gingerbread,ics, and jellybean so I don't forget their ui

 

[jefboyardee]

I dumped Linux Lite for now, in favor of Xubu as second place

And of course, that has been replaced by something else I've tried before: SolydX. I might keep it in the triple boot for an entire week...

 

[Dngrsone]

And of course, that has been replaced by something else I've tried before: SolydX. I might keep it in the triple boot for an entire week...

Hm... looks interesting.

:/ My Mint is a mishmash of Cinnamon, KDE and xfce... I like the Plasma desktop but prefer the Gnomish programs and such (but Thunar is a must for file renaming)

 

[furryfuser]

I prefer to use some Linux over windows. I like the way software installation is on the Debian and Ubuntu derived desktop solutions but still I dual boot cause game.

 

[jefboyardee]

SolydX. I might keep it in the triple boot for an entire week...

Gone. For the umpteenth time, everything except W7HP and Mint 17 LTS is gone. They're only two operating systems I in which I have any faith. I appreciate the efforts of the distroizers, but some of them, I mean really...

 

[freakshow85]

I'm a Windows guy because I build my own rigs for gaming. I ran Windows XP 32-bit for over ten years and last year finally went to Windows 7 64-bit, not only for the RAM support but for DX11. Wish I would have done it earlier because it is just as solid as XP, but like most, I feared change and didn't want to ruin a good thing lol. But, yeah, I'm a gamer and that requires Windows so I gotta go with Windows.

 

[argedion]

Gone. For the umpteenth time, everything except W7HP and Mint 17 LTS is gone. They're only two operating systems I in which I have any faith. I appreciate the efforts of the distroizers, but some of them, I mean really...

I hear ya I stick with the os I like I don't change because this one has this advantage and that one that. I strictly run OpenSUSE anymore. I may set fedora back up in the future as I like it as well. But I just don't really bother with other OS's with the exception of Android.

 

[girolez]

Hi

I'm another whos been around awhile. Started at school which in 1978? had one Commodore IBM between 650 pupils! At uni I remember producing piles of punched cards which were fed into the university's Cray. I also had a BBC model B 32kb 6502 which I loved. I had the brain to programme it in hex machine code (as well as BBC basic) in those days (not now - partly because 8 bit code was simple compared to todays!)

I used the model B until about 1991 when I bought an Amstrad SX20 laptop with B&W screen and floppy drive. I think it had a 286 processor and a 20Mb hard drive (yes mega byte). I used all sorts of windows until 2007 when I finally abandoned XP and switched to Ubuntu on all devices. In 2010 I aquired a netbook with W7 on it along with an HTC Desire. I kept W7 (dual booting with Ubuntu) just to be able to use software with the HTC. Its still that way - I use odin with my note 2 occasionally. My other laptops have ubuntu, bodhi linux (really fast!) and chromeOS. My wife had a macbook but it died (glass of wine over it) and it was replaced by a chromebook.