Just out of interest, what does everyone use? There seem to be more than the expected number of "non-standard", i.e. not Windows users.
Please, no OS wars because the One True Answer is Solaris. Only problem is Sun haven't figured out what the Question was. When it comes to Vi vs. Emacs I use pico.
My primary boxes are Macs and have been since 1989. However, as part of my non-day job I mostly support Windows networks. Unless you want to hear the dictionary of obscene words, don't ask me about Windows Vista. I have used Linux (My SuSE server finally pegged out after 11 years and 3 power supplies), It got replaced with a Solaris box. Boy was it "fun" finding out how different Solaris was from Linux. Eventually turned it off before permanent hearing damage ensued. that box was LOUD!
I have installed any number of Linux boxes as dedicated devices on customer networks - mostly firewalls and routers. To my shame I admit there is not currently a Linux box running here. My electricity bills were getting too high so all the *BSD boxes got turned off, as did the Solaris boxes.
At the day job I am forced to use Windows - Linux could do the job better and be more secure for less money as could just about all of the BSD's, but the NHS is a Windows shop unfortunately. A million people forced to use it every day. Mostly in order to delete 99% of their emails as totally irrelevant. My favourite was an email that went to 30,000 people saying that the car park in a very remote health centre was having new lines painted on it so there would be 2 less spaces on Tuesday. I actually spent 20 minutes with a map trying to find the place which I'd never heard of. But enough ranting.
I use various incarnations of Windows on my machines for one main reason, I’ve paid for it and will get my money’s worth out of it if it kills me!
I have used Mandrake/ Mandriva and adopted it as my chosen distro. My favourite offshoot is PCLinuxOS though.
My desktop came with Vista (it’s not so bad since SP1/ 2) and I paid for a licence for it, if the motherboard dies and M$ expects me to buy a new OS for the new MoBo, then I’ll be running PCLOS on it when I replace the MoBo.
If I pay for M$ software I’ll get the value out of it I paid for by using it for as long as I can.
Microsoft’s products are generally better than it’s attitude toward its customers, that should indicate my opinion of M$ in general.
Makes sense to me - if you've paid for it get your money's worth out of it. PCLinuxOs I've not tried - mostly Ubuntu (The ancient African word for "I can't configure Linux") recently and SuSE before that. Somewhere in the loft there is a box with RedHat 4 on it.
I have a large number of dead boxes with valid XP licences, nobody's given me a dead or otherwise Vista box so I've little or no experience of it other than spending 2 days editing the registry on my father's machine in order to make Microsoft Office (Which he'd paid full price for) work. Have a Windows 7 beta licence which I'm trying and failing to get installed on an iMac just now. The stuff that Apple released yesterday may make this possible but have not yet summoned the enthusiasm to try. That is what weekends are for. But will probably play with the dogs instead.
Before you guys cut me down, im a long time user of Windows.....loved XP and i now use Vista, planning on getting Windows 7 just for the hell of it. All my computers have been lappies so yes i would have a really hard time trying to type on a desktop keyboard, believe me i have tried.
Hey your using one now right......just post a little about what your using. OS, how many cores does it have.................blah, blah, blah. The wife and i spend our free time online....she loves Facebook and i have forums that i check up on.
I have just one laptop, an 4-year old Dell Inspiron B130, I'm very surprised that it hasn't broken yet. The climate here is very hard on laptops due to the heat and humidity, and the AC power here is very "dirty", chargers normally get fried very quickly because of the poor sine wave of the power and constant voltage fluctuations, both surges and brownouts. There is also a big problem here with viruses that spread via flashdrives (thumbdrives, pendrives), so I run Ubuntu 9.10 full-time. I've been using Linux since Redhat 9. Linux isn't perfect, but Windows is too complex when something breaks, and I'm too cheap to buy a Mac. But I am also surprised to see how non-standard most of our users here are. Bunch of geeks eh?
I agree with Stan that a Windows license is an expensive thing to waste. I personally prefer to buy a laptop with Windows because I occasionally have to run a Windows program on Linux with Wine, but to do so I have to use Windows DLL's, so I personally feel that I can only legitimately do that if I own Windows.
If you wanted to know, this site is running on CentOS servers managed by DowntownHost in Miami, Florida. It shares a server with my other forum, LinuxForo.org. I prefer Drupal for site content management, it is an absolutely amazingly versatile tool, and very, very reliable and extensible. It's not usually the first choice that comes to mind to run a site that is principally a forum, but I like the Drupal backend so much that I decided to use it for everything, including the forums. So here we are.
Well I have 4 PCs at home and a lappie. All the PCs are home brewed running XP. No. 1 son experiments with Linux, Ubuntu specifically, on one. He also tried out the Windows 7 RC. Anyway he says it rocks. Didn't like Vista nor ME before it. MS just came up with stopgap OSs just to buy time! May upgrade to 7 when the time comes.
I have a buddy of mine running 7 and he loves it.....says that the os is so much easier to use, you dont get all that crap when you try to delete something or shut a program down. But if your like me that got used to it, it works.
Now that Apple have sorted the drivers, it works - but is still Windows. The guts are essentially the same as Vista's and it probably is more secure and is certainly less irritating than Vista. Just for fun I plan to get OpenSolaris to run on this iMac in a virtual machine. Imagine this will be less than simple. But I enjoy fighting with Solaris though those who don't enjoy foul language should probably not listen.
I use Windows for one reason: I can make it do whatever I want it to do. I have been using Windows my whole life and I have all of the interfaces mastered. I have used Linux and it is nice, I just don't like the interfaces. I want to be lazy when I feel lazy.
Started on DOS - Win95- 98SE - 2000 - ME (junk) - XP(early ones were soo bad , SP1 ? got better with SP2 )
VISTA ?? (what can you say about vista) several 7's , currently 7 64bit + 2003Server
Linux ???? Damn it , Ive tried many flavors over the years , seriously , when Linux becomes as easy to use as Windows , when you can download a game . click on it and it installs without any issue [ same with 3rd party software ] , do they call it seamless ? Anyhow , when you can install Linux on the partition of your choice again with no issues , till then Linux will be nothing more than a curiosity to the majority .. [ not talking to fanboys here - cos we know you love linux ] ...
I find it strange , Linux . So many flavors , so many years , and it still cant compete [ not for seamless ease of use - instillation - and loading - finding software ]
I was expecting it to have come of age by now . I tried the Latest Ubuntu , and what a POS ! It refused to install in the partition I wanted and actually integrated with my Windows , WTF is that about ? I tossed that one in the rubbish bin ...
Linux has to : Install where directed ! Automatically set up its own partitions etc - where directed by the user ... Just to begin with ...
Linux has to: Be able to seamlessly install software games ...
Linux developers need to consolidate Linux , so that all software games etc work on all flavors . No software developer is going to develop squat if they have to port there wares to half a dozen different operating systems all calling themselves Linux ..
Win 7 ultimate 64 at home right now, although I have used many ubuntu distros in the past. I actually like win 7, it hasn’t annoyed me like a lot of previous MS offerings ( Pre-SP1 Vista or WinME had to have been the worst)
At work I use many OS’s (DOS6.22, NT4.0, 2000, WinXPE, XP, Win7 and ubuntu)
I generally use laptops at work and home but my main goto machine is what I am always on at home and that is a Motorola Xoom dual-core Android tablet with 10" screen. It's a pretty amazing piece of hardware that even lets me use a BT keyboard and mouse if I care to when performing work on the servers at work remotely.
Notebook 64bit Win7 home premium, Desktop XP Pro SP3 32bit, Router 1 IPCOP Linux, Router 2 Monowall (FreeBSD based) , Archos 605 Portable Video Player 605 Linux based and hacked to run VNC over Wifi, 2 Sandisk Sansa Mediaplayer (MP3+Vid) running Rockbox Linux to run Doom ;-) , Windows 2000 SP4 as fileserver and downloadportal , Kindle 3 with Duokan alternative Kindle OS, PowerShot SD1100 IS / Digital IXUS 80 IS with CHDK alternative OS, My Mio 320 GPS runs TomTom,Garmin, IGO, Navigator, Magellan, Word and Excel ;-)
Home has win7-64 and xp-x86 machines (licenses were free through school) behind my tomato firewall/router.
I'm on the road right now, so it's just me and my sad little 1st gen netbook running win7-x86 behind some it's-in-chinese-so-I-can't-even-config-WPA router.