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Which operating system?

What Operating System do you use?

  • Windows

    Votes: 32 86.5%
  • Mac

    Votes: 7 18.9%
  • Linux

    Votes: 5 13.5%
  • I don't use a desktop operating system

    Votes: 2 5.4%

  • Total voters
    37
  • Poll closed .

Dan

Joined
Sep 19, 2011
Gender
V2 White Male
Hey Forum Dwellers, been a little bicurious as to which operating systems my fellow ZD-I peeps have on their desktops. I use both Windows 8 and Linux U myself, what about you?
 

Link Floyd

ᵒⁿ ᵗʰᵉ ʳᵘⁿ
Joined
Sep 23, 2014
I use Windows 8 as well. ^^

I had some computer nerd friends in high school who would laugh at you if you owned or even liked Windows, but honestly I think they're very user friendly and I prefer them over Macs.
 

Salem

SICK
Joined
May 18, 2013
Windows 7 and whatever most recent OSX for my Macbook, although I rarely use it nowadays.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
Hey Forum Dwellers, been a little bicurious as to which operating systems my fellow ZD-I peeps have on their desktops. I use both Windows 8 and Linux U myself, what about you?
Technically Mac is the hardware and OS X is the operating software.
Just like Dell, Alienware, HP etc etc is the hardware and Windows is the operating software.

My Mac boots up with OS X but I have Widows 8 virtualised with Parallels. I also have Mac OS9 virtualised with Sheepshaver and Dos virtualised with DosBox.
 

Dan

Joined
Sep 19, 2011
Gender
V2 White Male
Technically Mac is the hardware and OS X is the operating software.
Just like Dell, Alienware, HP etc etc is the hardware and Windows is the operating software.

My Mac boots up with OS X but I have Widows 8 virtualised with Parallels. I also have Mac OS9 virtualised with Sheepshaver and Dos virtualised with DosBox.

Woops! Nice call, too late to change the poll now. :(
 

CrimsonCavalier

Fuzzy Pickles
Joined
Mar 27, 2015
Location
United States
Gender
XY
I hate Windows and all it stands for. I have not liked Windows since Windows 2000, which is saying a lot. If you had asked me in high school, I would have told you Windows in a heartbeat, but now, I wouldn't touch Windows unless it was forced upon me. Mac OSX all the way. Anything Microsoft makes is utter trash, especially their software.

If I had time to learn Linux, I would. But I don't.
 
Joined
Oct 14, 2013
Location
Australia
Woops! Nice call, too late to change the poll now. :(
That's cool.

I don't see any of the major OS's to be totally bad. Each one has it's own use. An OS really needs to be invisible. An OS on it's own does nothing, well apart from be a file organisation system. It's the applications where people do their work. It's the applications that people care about. The OS needs to get people into the OS as fast as possible. That's why iOS is so great. Anndroid tries the same thing (with varying degrees of sucesss). This being an OS that puts the focus 100% on the applications. That's how it should be for any OS. Less time spent optimising the OS and more time in the applications you want to be in and that you need to work in.

The best OS in the world would be an OS that you don't even know exists. It'd do all it's work in the backgrouund. All the user has to do is enjoy the applications they like to use on a daily basis.
 
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
I hate Windows and all it stands for. I have not liked Windows since Windows 2000, which is saying a lot. If you had asked me in high school, I would have told you Windows in a heartbeat, but now, I wouldn't touch Windows unless it was forced upon me. Mac OSX all the way. Anything Microsoft makes is utter trash, especially their software.

If I had time to learn Linux, I would. But I don't.

I mean, if you're into buttons that are lickable, sure, OS X is better. Personally, I think OS X has a little too much focus on eyecandy. Don't get me wrong, if it weren't for the fact that most games are released on Windows, I'd switch to Linux fully. I think there's thing that each OS is good at and each OS... not so good at.

That's cool.

I don't see any of the major OS's to be totally bad. Each one has it's own use. An OS really needs to be invisible. An OS on it's own does nothing, well apart from be a file organisation system. It's the applications where people do their work. It's the applications that people care about. The OS needs to get people into the OS as fast as possible. That's why iOS is so great. Anndroid tries the same thing (with varying degrees of sucesss). This being an OS that puts the focus 100% on the applications. That's how it should be for any OS. Less time spent optimising the OS and more time in the applications you want to be in and that you need to work in.

The best OS in the world would be an OS that you don't even know exists. It'd do all it's work in the backgrouund. All the user has to do is enjoy the applications they like to use on a daily basis.

That also depends on what you're trying to do. Most of us do stuff with a GUI, but what if you run a server? You don't have a GUI on most server OS. You only have CLI, and if you don't know what the commands are and what parameters/arguments they take, then that's a no-go, too. I know when I do stuff with just about any distribution of Linux, I have to mess with CLI at some point. There are things that the GUI won't let you do that the CLI will.
 

CrimsonCavalier

Fuzzy Pickles
Joined
Mar 27, 2015
Location
United States
Gender
XY
I mean, if you're into buttons that are lickable, sure, OS X is better. Personally, I think OS X has a little too much focus on eyecandy. Don't get me wrong, if it weren't for the fact that most games are released on Windows, I'd switch to Linux fully. I think there's thing that each OS is good at and each OS... not so good at.

True. I don't PC game, so that isn't an issue for me. What I use my computer for is pretty narrow in scope, so that's why I like OSX. It does what it does, and it does it very well. I guess if I wanted to use my laptop for other things, maybe OSX wouldn't be the most ideal of operating system. But I still like stability and I really don't want to be questioned about closing a tab or downloading something 17 times by a machine.
 
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
True. I don't PC game, so that isn't an issue for me. What I use my computer for is pretty narrow in scope, so that's why I like OSX. It does what it does, and it does it very well. I guess if I wanted to use my laptop for other things, maybe OSX wouldn't be the most ideal of operating system. But I still like stability and I really don't want to be questioned about closing a tab or downloading something 17 times by a machine.

I will give you this one, in all fairness- the drag and drop feature for installing Apps is very neat compared to the process involved on Windows and Linux. Some distros of Linux like Ubuntu have a software center that you can download some apps from, but a lot of the time, if you aren't running a CLI command to find a program within their repositories, you're compiling the program yourself in some fashion. I don't like Windows, but not even Play on Linux can give me the ability to play most of my Steam library at a decent frame rate.

I tried installing Warframe on Arch Linux a while back using Play on Linux, since I couldn't get WINE to work right by itself. It played the game after a bit of fiddling; it didn't play the game very well. There was a lot of graphical stuttering that made it impossible to do any missions, let alone walk around on my ship. Perhaps if I ever get around to fooling around with Arch some more, I'll show you guys what I'm talking about.

Although if you're new to Unix or want to try something different from OS X, I probably wouldn't try Arch. That distro's geared for advanced users. Newbies should probably try out either Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or Debian.
 

CrimsonCavalier

Fuzzy Pickles
Joined
Mar 27, 2015
Location
United States
Gender
XY
I will give you this one, in all fairness- the drag and drop feature for installing Apps is very neat compared to the process involved on Windows and Linux. Some distros of Linux like Ubuntu have a software center that you can download some apps from, but a lot of the time, if you aren't running a CLI command to find a program within their repositories, you're compiling the program yourself in some fashion. I don't like Windows, but not even Play on Linux can give me the ability to play most of my Steam library at a decent frame rate.

I tried installing Warframe on Arch Linux a while back using Play on Linux, since I couldn't get WINE to work right by itself. It played the game after a bit of fiddling; it didn't play the game very well. There was a lot of graphical stuttering that made it impossible to do any missions, let alone walk around on my ship. Perhaps if I ever get around to fooling around with Arch some more, I'll show you guys what I'm talking about.

Although if you're new to Unix or want to try something different from OS X, I probably wouldn't try Arch. That distro's geared for advanced users. Newbies should probably try out either Ubuntu, Linux Mint, or Debian.

You might as well have typed:

001010101001110101010011101010101010010010000010101011010101010111010101001010100101010
101001010100101010111010101010101111111010101010001010010101001010101001010101110101010
111110101001001001010011101010101000010101001010100101001010110100101000101010010111011

and I would have understood just as much.
 
Joined
Jun 3, 2011
Windows 8.1 right now, I wasn't keen on switching and I like 7 way more, but I'm learned to live with it.

Have you tried doing the free upgrade to Windows 10? There's still a couple of months for people to take advantage of it. Personally, I tolerated 8.1 at best. Vanilla Windows 8 can go straight to hell, while I really like 10 and 7. 10 is basically a mix of the best of 7 and the best of 8.1 without the stupid Charms bar tile screen.
 

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