Your operating system - Linux?

My desktop PC OS is…
[poll]

  • Windows XP
  • Windows 2000
  • Windows Vista
  • Linux/Unix
  • Apple
    [/poll]
    I was surprised to notice that over the last month 18% of our web traffic, counted by visitor numbers, are reportedly running UNIX/Linux. Are you getting sneaky with your Opera settings, or truly penguin powered?

I had to reply “Vista” although I’m increasingly frustrated with its slow performance, overzealous security, horrendous battery power consumption and constant compatibility issues. Even though I use it, I don’t recommend it to anyone that asks. I’ve purchased an extra hard drive and will be going back to XP as soon as I have a couple extra days to spend on it. Might wait for SP3 first.

I don’t plan to do Linux or Mac, as I would then be just as reliant on virtual machines as I currently am using Vista. At least it would be faster though.

Well, I got a new machine here not too long ago that came with vista… I played around with it for about 20 minutes just for fun before hunting down how to turn off all of the new security stuff/themes/etc (essentially making it look as much as possible like XP). Since I’ve done that I’ve been relatively happy. Of course, it probably says something that I’m “happy” to have it running just like XP did… :laughing:

I tend to use linux as much as possible, but XP otherwise. I do a lot of web development, and I find it easier to do in linux.

I also recently got a new laptop and played around with Vista for about 20 minutes. But I just reformatted and installed XP + linux. Vista seems too bulky and in the way to me.

Like porksmash I got a new laptop a couple of weeks ago which came with Vista Business. Although I primarily wanted XP on it I thought it would be useful to keep Vista on it as well so I could play with it in the future.

I went through a long, involved process to dual boot Vista and XP, but I couldn’t get it working and, at 1 am and needing the laptop next day, I vaped it and installed XP alone. I did notice that Vista used 850MB sitting at the desktop with nothing very much running :open_mouth:

One thing you should be careful of when buying a current laptop with the aim of putting XP on it is the manufacturer’s driver support. Fortunately enough people had complained to HP about the laptop I had and they had drivers for all of the hardware. Some other manufacturers (such as Sony I believe) are not releasing XP drivers for their more recent kit.

To answer Nathan’s query about Linux, I’ve dabbled with it and like the idea of a completely open OS, but I’m put off by the lack of standardisation and difficulty of developing apps for it (although I guess knowing Java would help with that).

Fwiw, Microsoft actually anticpated that some people wouldn’t be thrilled with the Vista experience, and made it fairly easy to “downgrade” to XP. It’s completely legal, they support it, and you can upgrade to Vista again later if you want. This way, you don’t have to screw around with a dual boot system (although it doesn’t help the driver issue). Here’s a link with more info:
http://download.microsoft.com/download/5/f/4/5f4c83d3-833e-4f11-8cbd-699b0c164182/royaltyoemreferencesheet.pdf

Just for fun, I put a copy of Ubuntu Linux on my home laptop (I wasn’t using it for anything but Internet Explorer anyway), and I am very happy with it. I finally took the plunge on a recommendation and I was amazed at how simple the install was, and launching a FactoryPMI client from my windows desktop is totally painless. Although, I am running an extremely small project at home.

I chose Ubuntu because it is big on easily finding/installing Linux programs, but I am curious; what Linux flavor are you using and why?

I usually play around with Ubuntu. I’ve also been tinkering with Fedora and a few others on VMWare. Pretty slick, I downloaded a virtualized build of M0n0wall - not sure what flavor it runs - it’s a really small file. We used to run that at the office on a Linux box as our main router. I was always happy with it. The whole thing was configured with a .PHP based web page interface.

Sorry, always find myself using Windows when I’m doing real work.

I use WinXP, but I’m a pretty big Ubuntu fan as well. My major complaint about Linux over the years has been a feeling that it was just a bunch of egotistic nerds who refused to work together for a common goal - they splintered their efforts to no end. I think MacOSX proved this correct when a funded, managed company could do with Linux (or BSD) what the open source community couldn’t for so many years. Ubuntu (funded by the sellout of Thawte to Verisign) is changing this…

But like nathan, I always go back to windows for “real” work. Call me crazy, but to me, one of the larger gripes about day-to-day linux is that the fonts always look really crappy and their file explorer interfaces always really, really suck. Everything looks really huge and clunky.

Seems like a small thing, but, well, it bugs me.

This is nice indeed, but the large majority of new computers seem to come with Home Premium, which is not eligible for the downgrade (upgrade? :wink: ).

m0n0wall is based on FreeBSD. Watch out, BSD fans get angry when you think its linux! You might also want to check out pfSense which is based on m0n0wall. It seems more 'friendly'. I've used it as my home router/VPN server for about a year now. Easy to config, and I never have to touch it at all. It is the most rock solid PC I have. I think it has 300 or so days of uptime.

BSD - right. Easy to forget when you only interface with the web interface. Very solid indeed.