Which Operating System Do You Prefer?

[TheSlamma]

Os/2 warp

Half an operating system

 

[Magic Carpet]

Because in order to work well the hardware list would be so small that it would effectively be a console anyway. So why not just get an XBox and do it right? No one wants to fight with driver and DX issues when trying to get a game to run and the only way to do that is to tightly control the hardware and drivers in use.

Was really thinking of an OS that would only have gaming oriented functionality, minus everything else. Pretty much the same Windows but... tweaked for games, OOBE.

e.g. Windows 8 Gamers. Comes loaded with this and that for a reduced price. IMO, people choosing PC form-factor solely for games, would buy a product like that, if the price is right.

Then you have more patience than I and most people do. I can't stand having to reboot and lose my place in everything that I have open.

VMs could be the answer though.

I think 3dfx's fail was that they were so proprietary. It worked out really well at first, but once they got some competition and more open standards like OpenGL and DirectX appeared they got screwed. Why use Glide and support 1 set of cards when I can use OpenGL and support all of them?

They simply ran out of money and were late with their tech. Like in any business, if you don't deliver, you're doomed. Now as to where did the money go is another question. Wiki pages have an in-depth view on this. Glide was the superior API but the big fish (MS, nVIDIA) ate the small (3dfx, Rendition, ... ).

True and the primary difference would be in that partner and IBM's target focus. Gates wanted a PC on every desktop, but if IBM were in charge they would probably focus on business and mainframes and leave the regular consumers out in the cold. IBM has opened up a lot over the past few years because of the open nature of PC hardware, Linux, etc but if they were in control I doubt that would've happened.

Think, there would have been somebody else. Think of myriad of the companies... that Microsoft ended up acquiring. Think of actually how much credit goes to IP of the companies MS has bought since. You may be surprised.

 

[mammador]

I've only ever used Windows, largely due to not being assed to install Linux lol....

Most Windows have been shit, but Win 7 is the best ever IMO. Not in terms of aesthetics alone, but the UI is more intuitive and neater.

 

[HeXen]

Most Windows have been shit, but Win 7 is the best ever IMO. Not in terms of aesthetics alone, but the UI is more intuitive and neater.

I agree its the best version, but i'd rather see more control in the UI.
I hate having the start menu on the far left side...too me it seems more intuitive to be located in the center of the taskbar.
I also hate Explorer...well most everything about Explorer. Going through sub folder after sub folder only to see tons of .dll..etc files that i can't do nothing with anyway when all i want is the .exe/.txt..etc.
search and advanced search is a joke, there are some files it will not find even though i know exactly where its at, yet a simple app like "everything" finds it and much faster too without indexing. however i never found using the kb to navigate very convenient.
i could go on, but i ranted enough

 

[Nothinman]

Was really thinking of an OS that would only have gaming oriented functionality, minus everything else. Pretty much the same Windows but... tweaked for games, OOBE.

e.g. Windows 8 Gamers. Comes loaded with this and that for a reduced price. IMO, people choosing PC form-factor solely for games, would buy a product like that, if the price is right.

The minus everything else is the problem. Most of the things MS includes by default are there for a reason and if you remove them you end up breaking something. It's definitely possible to trim Windows down a good bit and have a well working system, but it's a lot of work and requires intimate knowledge of Windows, its internals and their interdependencies. Something 99% of the population doesn't have. And removing most of the stuff that comes with Windows doesn't really save you much except for disk space. Having a service running that's sitting idle doesn't have any affect on performance.

And if you sell a reduced functionality SKU of Windows, now MS has at least 1 more environment they have to support which isn't in anyone's best interests.

VMs could be the answer though.

Not for games, at least not yet.

They simply ran out of money and were late with their tech. Like in any business, if you don't deliver, you're doomed. Now as to where did the money go is another question. Wiki pages have an in-depth view on this. Glide was the superior API but the big fish (MS, nVIDIA) ate the small (3dfx, Rendition, ... ).

How was Glide a superior API?

Think, there would have been somebody else. Think of myriad of the companies... that Microsoft ended up acquiring. Think of actually how much credit goes to IP of the companies MS has bought since. You may be surprised.

I wouldn't be surprised, pretty much all of the technically good things that came out of MS were first done by another company like SQL Server and NTFS. But that doesn't mean that any one of those companies could have executed the business side as well as MS.

 

[HeXen]

The minus everything else is the problem. Most of the things MS includes by default are there for a reason and if you remove them you end up breaking something. It's definitely possible to trim Windows down a good bit and have a well working system, but it's a lot of work and requires intimate knowledge of Windows, its internals and their interdependencies. Something 99% of the population doesn't have. And removing most of the stuff that comes with Windows doesn't really save you much except for disk space. Having a service running that's sitting idle doesn't have any affect on performance.

And if you sell a reduced functionality SKU of Windows, now MS has at least 1 more environment they have to support which isn't in anyone's best interests.

I use RT7lite and remove a crap ton of things from Windows without issues. Besides that fact that my W7 SP1 install size is about 6 gigabytes fully updated (without pagefile) which helps a lot when you have smaller SSD drives. I get much better consistency of use out of it than i used to.

You might be suprised what performance improvements removing unused apps/files/services does make. Searching is faster (even with SSD) though i rarely use it. UI is snappier feeling...more akin to Linux..and i actually have 100% no errors/bsod's or any of that which i would sometimes on occasion get via default install.

I also have noticed far less game related issues. mostly when it involves launching. benchmarks show 3fps increase in Crysis, very minor of course but i suspect removing files that depend on other files..etc might be preventing registry corruptions and keep some of the internal stuff more streamlined in behavior but i'm speculating there, all i know is everything in general feels snappier.
Shutting down services alone did not make such improvements for me, but removing the clutter did certainly help, especially with the errors and performance degradation with 3rd party apps/games.

Of course you have to have some knowledge and experience with what does what and what you use your OS for. its a great app and agree its not necessary, but done right, it most definitely can help in more ways than one.

 

[Magic Carpet]

System_Mechanic
+1. I have similar experience. There is a difference.

 

[Charlie98]

I can't stand how cluttered Windows is, but it's probably the best thing going for normal users like me. I'm still in love with the simplicity of XP, I don't care for all the visuals in Vista/7 (or XP, for that matter.)

I use RT7lite and remove a crap ton of things from Windows without issues.

That's where I run into trouble... I try to remove some of the useless junk and wind up screwing up the OS. How hard is RT7lite to use for tech-noob like me? That looks like the hot ticket!

 

[Magic Carpet]

I can't stand how cluttered Windows is, but it's probably the best thing going for normal users like me. I'm still in love with the simplicity of XP, I don't care for all the visuals in Vista/7 (or XP, for that matter.)



That's where I run into trouble... I try to remove some of the useless junk and wind up screwing up the OS. How hard is RT7lite to use for tech-noob like me? That looks like the hot ticket!

Stick with XP. Don't fix what ain't broken. There's no point to upgrade, unless you need the features not found in XP. Make the OS work for you, not the other way around.

 

[Nothinman]

Stick with XP. Don't fix what ain't broken. There's no point to upgrade, unless you need the features not found in XP. Make the OS work for you, not the other way around.

That only works if you never update anything going forward. Eventually apps and games will no longer work on XP just as they don't on Win95 now. I'm all for getting the most of what you paid for, but really? XP is over a decade old now and software moves fast. It's actually a huge testament to XP's proliferation that MS and 3rd party devs have supported it as long as they have. But that won't last forever, that's just the nature of software progression.

 

[Magic Carpet]

That only works if you never update anything going forward. Eventually apps and games will no longer work on XP just as they don't on Win95 now. I'm all for getting the most of what you paid for, but really? XP is over a decade old now and software moves fast. It's actually a huge testament to XP's proliferation that MS and 3rd party devs have supported it as long as they have. But that won't last forever, that's just the nature of software progression.

And, I actually agree with you on some of the aspects.

-BUT-

1) By the time, there is an actual need from a) security point of view, b) functional point of view, to upgrade... most likely there will be a different range of software products. So from a financial point of view, it would make sense to buy later unless like I stated above... you require different feature-sets and security levels.

At the end of the day, Operating System is just a tool that helps you use your computer and more importantly, get your work done. Unfortunately, according to my internal tests, Windows 6.0+ doesn't let me get my actual work done any faster, so I question its effectiveness in this aspect.

Having said that, I am probably going to upgrade to Windows 8, when it finally comes out.

 

[Magic Carpet]

That only works if you never update anything going forward. Eventually apps and games will no longer work on XP just as they don't on Win95 now. I'm all for getting the most of what you paid for, but really? XP is over a decade old now and software moves fast. It's actually a huge testament to XP's proliferation that MS and 3rd party devs have supported it as long as they have. But that won't last forever, that's just the nature of software progression.

And, I actually agree with you on some of the aspects.

-BUT-

1) By the time, there is an actual need from a) security point of view, b) functional point of view, to upgrade... most likely there will be a different range of software products. So from a financial point of view, it would make sense to buy later unless like I stated above... you require different feature-sets and security levels.

At the end of the day, Operating System is just a tool that helps you use your computer and more importantly, get your work done. Unfortunately, according to my internal tests, Windows 6.0+ doesn't let me get my actual work done any faster (especially on my low to mid range hardware), so I question its effectiveness in this aspect.

Having said that, I am probably going to upgrade to Windows 8, when it finally comes out. Getting new hardware and all that stuff. XP prolly won't function equally and / or be crippled off features. But that's just me, I know millions of people still won't upgrade... especially the older generation and then Microsoft might offer a trade-in program to get the rest of its core users on the bandwagon. Quite possibly, intentionally introducing a security vulnerability to feed the fear. Fear and shame, greatest means of control. Great business tactics.

-IN THE MEANTIME-

I'd invest in something like Windows Gamers Edition. Really, right at this moment... all I need is DX1x. I don't want Starter/Basic/Home Edition. Gamers FTW. The right name is 50% of the job, here (from a commercial point of view, anyway).

 

[Nothinman]

And, I actually agree with you on some of the aspects.

-BUT-

1) By the time, there is an actual need from a) security point of view, b) functional point of view, to upgrade... most likely there will be a different range of software products. So from a financial point of view, it would make sense to buy later unless like I stated above... you require different feature-sets and security levels.

At the end of the day, Operating System is just a tool that helps you use your computer and more importantly, get your work done. Unfortunately, according to my internal tests, Windows 6.0+ doesn't let me get my actual work done any faster, so I question its effectiveness in this aspect.

Having said that, I am probably going to upgrade to Windows 8, when it finally comes out.

1a) There's already a need from a security and functional point of view. The security enhancements in Vista and Win7 are huge and despite people thinking that UAC gets in the way, it doesn't. I would guesstimate that I see UAC prompts less than once a day unless I'm (un)installing something or making changes to the system which I would expect to generate a prompt.

Even if you paid full retail price for XP you've paid less than $30/year for it's use and currently missed 2 subsequent, major releases of Windows. I would say that you've easily gotten your money's worth. For those that got their license included with a PC, it's easily a third of that.

Buying later doesn't buy you much beyond that because it's still Windows, there may be different SKUs but it's still the same product.

I found Win7 to be much more fluid and snappier on the same hardware as XP, so from that perspective it did help me get my work done quicker.

 

[Magic Carpet]

1a) There's already a need from a security and functional point of view. The security enhancements in Vista and Win7 are huge and despite people thinking that UAC gets in the way, it doesn't. I would guesstimate that I see UAC prompts less than once a day unless I'm (un)installing something or making changes to the system which I would expect to generate a prompt.

From a security point of view, there is no question, that out of the box, Windows 6+ is better. And it's not just "annoying" UAC. However, that alone, may not give enough reason to upgrade for certain people.

Even if you paid full retail price for XP you've paid less than $30/year for it's use and currently missed 2 subsequent, major releases of Windows. I would say that you've easily gotten your money's worth.

Hey, I am not the one that complaining.

For those that got their license included with a PC, it's easily a third of that.

Actually, I got caught on the wrong cycle. I have paid about a dozen of licensing fees thru laptops, mostly Windows 6.0 which we don't use. Is there an exchange program or something? Upgrades, no. It only gets worse. Last I heard, Microsoft doesn't do this. In this room I have 2 COA's, if interested. Had I got Windows 6.1 with them, most likely I would have found them useable.

Buying later doesn't buy you much beyond that because it's still Windows, there may be different SKUs but it's still the same product.

Feature-set and security. By that time, Windows 6.2 or something else will be the "product to get". Until than, XP will serve fine.

I found Win7 to be much more fluid and snappier on the same hardware as XP, so from that perspective it did help me get my work done quicker.

Heavy web browsing, switching between apps? WDDM 1.1 works better with load, no question. But everything else I do: it is within ~5% difference. I did bench it with my workloads.

2) Without decent IO, numerous enhancements only slow down your computer.
3) Faster boot times? My XP boxes start up within 15-20s time frame on slow 5400 2.5" drives. All my IO will have to be reviewed and adequately upgraded because... really as it is, this is a downgrade of experience. Does the new Windows come with a faster hard drive or better yet, SSD? Last I checked, it didn't.
4) Windows 6+ is better at power consumption but not by a long shot. Saved up electricity won't recoup the investment.
5) The Home Editions of the majority of laptops shipping are stripped off useful features. Can't easily buy a laptop you like with an OS that you need. Not for cheap anyway.

Okay, I'll stop now. Bottom line, I am one of the few, that didn't notice "super speeds" and hence the need to upgrade. Windows 6.2 might be the answer, though. But again... "security and feature-set", if, at least one is not met. I am not going to bother.

 

[Nothinman]

From a security point of view, there is no question, that out of the box, Windows 6+ is better. And it's not just "annoying" UAC. However, that alone, may not give enough reason to upgrade for certain people.

I'm sure it's not because most people don't understand the repercussions until they've had their identity stolen or similar.

Actually, I got caught on the wrong cycle. I have paid about a dozen of licensing fees thru laptops, mostly Windows 6.0 which we don't use. Is there an exchange program or something? Upgrades, no. It only gets worse. Last I heard, Microsoft doesn't do this. In this room I have 2 COA's, if interested. Had I got Windows 6.1 with them, most likely I would have found them useable.

Supposedly if you harass people enough you can get a refund on the Windows license, but the amount of work it takes generally isn't worth it unless you're a rabid FOSS person trying to prove a point.

Feature-set and security. By that time, Windows 6.2 or something else will be the "product to get". Until than, XP will serve fine.

Obviously, otherwise they wouldn't be new products. And XP doesn't work just fine, it's about as good security-wise as the blinking red light on a car's dashboard that fakes a security system. Sure a lot of people will just ignore it and move on, but it won't stop real criminals.

Heavy web browsing, switching between apps? WDDM 1.1 works better with load, no question. But everything else I do: it is within ~5% difference. I did bench it with my workloads.

2) Without decent IO, numerous enhancements only slow down your computer.
3) Faster boot times? My XP boxes start up within 15-20s time frame on slow 5400 2.5" drives. All my IO will have to be reviewed and adequately upgraded because... really as it is, this is a downgrade of experience. Does the new Windows come with a faster hard drive or better yet, SSD? Last I checked, it didn't.
4) Windows 6+ is better at power consumption but not by a long shot. Saved up electricity won't recoup the investment.
5) The Home Editions of the majority of laptops shipping are stripped off useful features. Can't easily buy a laptop you like with an OS that you need. Not for cheap anyway.

Okay, I'll stop now. Bottom line, I am one of the few, that didn't notice "super speeds" and hence the need to upgrade. Windows 6.2 might be the answer, though. But again... "security and feature-set", if, at least one is not met. I am not going to bother.

I never said I noticed super speeds, but it was definitely equal or better than XP on the same hardware. So everyone's complaints about bloat are outright wrong.

I don't know about the pricing of the anytime upgrades, but even if you get a laptop with a Home edition on it you can upgrade it later if you need something like RDP server support. But most people don't need it so it's a non-issue anyway.

 

[Gs dewd]

Ubuntu 11.10

 

[berryraceroldMatrixLeader]

Tried linux for a while but I always find myself going back to Windows! I don't want to type code and read online guides just to install a program.

With Ubunto 11.10 64 bit that I tried. even after I installed the ATI Radeon HD5640 drivers which were installed automatically and rebooted, the screen was still kinda blurry so I decided Im not gonna bother anymore with this linux crap