Linux or Windows?

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What primary operating system do you use at home (not servers, but just normal desktop use)?
I have a theory that Linux-users may be over-represented by the users of these forums (I use Ubuntu by the way). By this I mean that the percentage of people who use Linux in WP may excede the estimated 1-2% worldwide. If Linux, which distro and why do you use it? And let's be nice. You can bash the operating system (notice the pun?) but not the users.

Where's the option for "more than one of the above?" I run Debian on an aged iMac G3 and (currently) dual-boot Ubuntu and Mac OS X on a MacBook, though the MacBook has seen a variety of dual- and triple-boot schemes.

Ubuntu or Debian would be my favorite Linux distro.

We linux users are definitely over represented at WP.

More to the point we are hugely overrepresented in the technology forum.

Factors? Geeky poor intellectuals.

I voted Linux because I use it the most, but also use Win2k and occasionally OSX. Current set up is Ubuntu 9.04 as a virtual machine running on top of Windows. If the computer were faster I'd try to get Steam working and dump windows all together.

I don't know about WinXP but I love the GNOME desktop. Also Ubuntu's rendering of text is better, Amarok doesn't hard-lock my machine like Winamp, and there's tons of apps to do whatever I want and I don't need to go broke buying them. Also, I like having a way to write powerful scripts.

Oh yeah, and it almost never needs a reboot.

Windows XP because I'm used to it, not because I like it.

I voted Linux because I tend to boot into it more often than Vista. I also recieved an old Mac, a PowerMacG4, from a friend because he didn't know what to do with it after ditching it in favor of Windows. I have that hooked up to a KVM so I can share my peripherals including my speakers and ethernet. I use it the least out of Ubuntu and Vista and I may decide to use it to host my blog if I ever decide to move it away from Wordpress.

I like Linux. I used Gentoo for years but changed to Xubuntu.

I like Linux for several reasons. Installation is easy, and I don't have to be constantly rebooting. I'm not forced to register of validate my OS every time I reinstall it or make hardware changes to my pc. I have control over which software is on my computer and am able to control which processes are running in the background. For the most part, Linux automatically detects all of my hardware and peripherals without my having to install drivers. Security updates are frequent, unobtrusive and automatic. Software installation is a breeze using apt-get. For just about every piece of proprietary software in Windows, there is an equivalent (and free) version available in Linux (i.e. GIMP, though Photoshop is nice too). While the threat exists, there is less of a probability of viruses or malware (the life of a virus in a Linux environment is a hard one indeed). Dropping down to the command prompt is fun, educational and productive. Also, I like the geek factor. I'm learning how to program using the Python interpreter, and am having a blast (I can point out several good online resources if anyone is interested). I enjoy using Linux very much, and only use XP when I feel like playing a game which won't play nicely in WINE.

condemned to Windows on my laptop, though run Linux (kubuntu) on my desktop and also (ubuntu) on my servers, I do get ridicule from fellow aspies becuase of the things that I (and anyone else for that matter) can do with Linux, kinda sucks but hey ho

To be fair, the poll asks for your PRIMARY OS instead of what OS do you have...

I'd prefer if Wine were able to be compatible with games that do NOT like any form of NT. I have some games that will work for a few minutes, then crash. But will be fine on Windows 98SE.

Yes, I've tried compatibility under EVERY SETTING KNOWN TO MAN. I may have to re-install Windows 98, but that means shifting my partitions around and configuring the boot loader for all my OS's Just so it can be first, and NT seems to be adamant on having a primary partition

I've had trouble configuring Wine to do anything at all... otherwise I would probably drop to a ubuntu-based distro fairly quickly.

For my three machines, two are running XP (my gaming machine uses it because of my utter inability to confugre wine correctly, and my laptop is shackled to it), while my fileserver runs ubuntu nicely...


Does anyone have the link to that article about 10 cool things you can do in command line that was floating around here a while back? I want to find that again and try some of that...

It might be a problem with the version of WINE that's in the Ubuntu repos, since I had that issue too. You might try getting a newer version of Wine from somewhere else- I got a recent version from the Ubuntu CE repo and it works fairly nicely. I even have parts of Office 2007 functioning.



Here you go.

Windows XP Home SP3 here.

why not both? Between 2 machines, I have 3 OS's...

Personally I use Mac OS X for personal use and Windows for school (because I have to). I prefer Unix based operating systems as they're more geek friendly. I also despise Microsoft because they copy everyone else and they made billions distributing crappy software.