What OS (Operating System) do you use? And Why?

I use windows 7 because that is what came installed on my laptop.

I miss the days when I could look at a PC and say "2gb hdd? I shouldn't need more than that for quite awhile!" the moment the box was brought out to me, I needed more than that.

Granted that was in 1997, but I miss the blissful ignorance that I, at one time, enjoyed.

reply to post by ProfessorChaos


I used to sell computers for a few chains. My first such gig was at a defunct Tandy company that was called "Incredible Universe" and I can remember a rep, from Microsoft, giving us a seminar saying that 250 megabytes was way too much HD space and that he felt that storage would move more in the direction of getting smaller and possibly even moving towards zero ROM systems.

Then again I also remember when the Zip drive rep showed up and gave us all free Zip drives and we spent weeks going "ZOMG I CAN STORE 100 megs ON A SINGLE DISC!!!!!! AND IT'S REWRITABLE!!!!"



I'm not going back further than that, I remember when Fry's sold groceries and computers were things you customarily hooked up to your TV and bought cassette tapes to use for storage with.

I also remember the day I said "9,600 baud! THAT'S FAST!"

reply to post by Hefficide


LOL! I remember 9600 baud. I didn't want to confuse the kids though.

Currently running Windows 8 on a new Laptop, which can run Crysis 1 on High. Will eventually install Fedora LXDE 64bit on it, mostly because it should run absurdly fast.

My old PC has Ubuntu 11.10 on it, but it isn't overly useful for anything any more, Unity takes a lot out of it in terms of performance.

Originally posted by ProfessorChaos
reply to post by Hefficide

 

LOL! I remember 9600 baud. I didn't want to confuse the kids though.

Sheesh! I remember when the new 1200 baud modem was FOUR TIMES FASTER than a 300, which was almost 3 times faster than a 110 baud acoustic coupler! Zowee! Speed!!!! And a 20MB hard drive for $1000 bucks! What a steal! After all, a 300 MB drive cost $40,000.

i have been using windows 8 for a year now

i use it on a slate PC and on my workstation here in the office.

it is without a doubt a very good operating system, it is windows 7 with some nice changes to file transfers and other features.

the metro (or whatever they renamed it) is good for laying out all the important and quick access programs and apps you may require.

and to my surprise having previously only used it on a touch enabled device, it is easily used with a mouse and keyboard (in fact EASIER than with touch!!)

so all you win 8 naysayers should actually TRY it rather than spouting what you read in a blog or forum.

its great!

*not paid for by mircrosoft, but accepts cash cheque and paypal*

reply to post by ProfessorChaos


I currently run Mint 13, just because it's an LTS release, and supported til 2017. Remember, they are going to obsolete XP in 2013. Might be a good idea to switch. You need a modern computer to run anything above XP, like 2 gb ram min. Mint fits just fine on the older systems. You can get the LTS release before Maya, and that should keep your old XP systems running til the hardware fails.

My first computer was a 7 Mhz beast with 64 kb of ram. No hard drives yet, but the first modem was 300 baud. I go back to the beginning.

My first hard drive was a 40 mb monster for the Amiga. I thought, OMG, there's no way I can use that much room!



Ah, the memories.

I have an 8 gb USB flash drive set up to boot any PC that will boot from USB, which covers mostly anything modern enough to still be usefully fast. Yeah, and a whole collection of LiveCDs of Mint flavors, able to boot any PC alive.

Often, I use a Mint LiveCD to boot a corrupted Windoze laptop/tower, fix the partitions, copy off the customer's "vital" information, and return it to normal. (Tech support on the side.)

Of course, I stay up to date, and tinker with building my own Android ROMS. But then again, Android is based off Linux, which is based off Unix. Mac is also 'nix based, but went the same unfortunate proprietary route that Windoze did.

I use Mint 13 just because it works nicely. It does everything I want it to, and will do things I haven't asked it yet. I was a long time Ubuntu user, but the Mint fork is, IMO, so much nicer, and uses the same repositories. I tend to get lazy, and like the flashy GUI.

Oh, and BTW, I'm running the Cinnamon desktop. I had to do a mental battle between that and MATE, but I'm guessing that Cinnamon is going to be the new standard in GUI.

reply to post by Druid42


You may have me confused with another poster on the XP thing (I haven't used XP for about 4 or 5 years now), but I use Maya as well, with cinnamon. I've used Ubuntu, OpenSuse, Fedora, heck even Mandrake 7.1 a long time back. I LOVE Mint. I'm literally counting off the days until Steam has a full compliment of games for Linux and then Windows will be the extreme minority in my house.

In fact, since my wife got pregnant, I've spent far more time sitting with her using my Mint Laptop, than in front of my Win 7 rig in the office.

I'm the XP guy - but also Run Mint Maya.

The only time I really log onto Windows these days is if I want to play Steam games.

I, however, appear to be the only one who didn't go Cinnamon here.

reply to post by Hefficide


They've obsoleted Gnome, so between Cinnamon and MATE, I had to research and choose. Experience says go with the GUI with the most support and potential.

And the darned applets are so freakin handy. I got my system monitor in applet form now. I'm liking it a lot.

reply to post by ProfessorChaos


Funny thing is, with 2 gb ram, I don't even touch swap space anymore, and run smooth with only 505 mb of resident ram. You simply can't beat performance.

Originally posted by ProfessorChaos
reply to post by Hefficide

 

We geeks are truly a species of our own. Everything you and the above poster said would send the average PC/Mac user into convulsions, but to someone like me, I said "Yeah, I hear ya there." lol.

LOL, and sigh.

Enlightenment -- if only in the Linux-distroic or window-managerial sense of the word -- is a lonely place sometimes!

Windows 98 > XP > Window 7.

Nothing is decent as XP(in windows)

Originally posted by luciddream
Windows 98 > XP > Window 7.

Nothing is decent as XP(in windows)

I agree, as far as Windoze goes. Micro$oft shot its load with XP, SP2.

SP3 broke every good software program and Office extension I owned at the time. That was a deal-breaker for me.

As far as UI design, usability and marketing go, M$ hasn't really gotten wood in a decade, AFAIK. Seems they're headed the same way as Ma Bell, except their death is likely to be of senility and dementia, instead of forcible dismemberment. Unlike Ma Bell, M$ got its anti-trust protection just in time, in the 90's.

So I expect that, like Queen Victoria, M$ will go its grave unrepentant, crotchety and clutching most of the world's hapless peoples by the ball$.

Windows 7 Ultimate because it was on Piratebay and is worlds better than Vista.