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What is your operating system of choice?

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ToadOfSteel
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14 Apr 2008, 11:50 pm

Lets see... my main tower and my laptop both run xp pro (although i run both with the "classic" gui because "Luna" and "Aero" were the two greatest travesties perpetrated upon the world of computing.)

I also have a secondary box i made out of old parts my church gave me, with a 333mhz celeron and 576 megs of ram (a pair of 256 chips and a single 64 chip in the three memory slots). I converted it into a linux box and installed fedora 8 on it (ubuntu didnt want to install on any of my systems)



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15 Apr 2008, 12:15 am

I assume "operating system of choice" means which one you actually use.

I use Windows XP Professional. (Like most people) That doesn't mean I like it. It just has the greatest selection of desktop software as the dominant market. Windows break too easily :lol: I install almost everything I possibly can under Sandboxie to keep things separate and to avoid dll-hell, corrupted installs/bad uninstallers, malware, and registry rot; and I use System Restore if the slightest thing goes wrong. I think I'm on top of things so far. Windows Vista basic came with my computer but I "upgraded" to XP as soon as possible.

I've started using Ubuntu for my Linux class homework. It's just installed under VirtualBox for now so I don't have to reboot. I'm considering a dual-boot with the 8.04 LTS Kubuntu 64 bit edition when it comes out to maybe take advantage of my 64 bit processor.

When ReactOS becomes stable (if that ever happens) I'll probably be able give up windows altogether.


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ToadOfSteel
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15 Apr 2008, 12:19 am

[quote="Encyclopedia"] I install almost everything I possibly can under Sandboxie to keep things separate and to avoid dll-hell, corrupted installs/bad uninstallers, malware, and registry rot; and I use System Restore if the slightest thing goes wrong. I think I'm on top of things so far./quote]

You get dll hell on an XP system? Isn't that was .NET was created to address?



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15 Apr 2008, 5:29 am

Using XP for all 3. Need to up to a 64 bit for one. For an OS that is supposedly on the outs, they still keep the price up on the 64 bit. As soon as I'm sure the soon to be home game machine is stable, I'll be fooling around with Linux. Probably put it back on this one too. No way in hell am I going VISTA, even though all could run it with no trouble.


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gamefreak
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15 Apr 2008, 11:38 am

Encyclopedia wrote:
I assume "operating system of choice" means which one you actually use.

I use Windows XP Professional. (Like most people) That doesn't mean I like it. It just has the greatest selection of desktop software as the dominant market. Windows break too easily :lol: I install almost everything I possibly can under Sandboxie to keep things separate and to avoid dll-hell, corrupted installs/bad uninstallers, malware, and registry rot; and I use System Restore if the slightest thing goes wrong. I think I'm on top of things so far. Windows Vista basic came with my computer but I "upgraded" to XP as soon as possible.

I've started using Ubuntu for my Linux class homework. It's just installed under VirtualBox for now so I don't have to reboot. I'm considering a dual-boot with the 8.04 LTS Kubuntu 64 bit edition when it comes out to maybe take advantage of my 64 bit processor.

When ReactOS becomes stable (if that ever happens) I'll probably be able give up windows altogether.


DLL-HELL was only a problem on Windows 9X Based Operating Systems. I`m pretty damn sure you won`t get those issues with XP Pro due to Advanced scructure of the OS. Using system restore for every single problem will also eat hard drive space and memory.[ After a fresh install with all the settings i want i do a restore point and thats the only one4 i use.]



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15 Apr 2008, 4:42 pm

Yeah, things are much improved with Side-by-Side Component Sharing, but problems still occasionally happen. Corrupted installs/bad uninstallers, malware, and registry rot are still serious problems though.

ToadOfSteel wrote:
Isn't that was .NET was created to address?
That was indeed a major motivation for .NET assemblies, but that won't necessarily help with older software written before .NET.
gamefreak wrote:
Using system restore for every single problem will also eat hard drive space and memory
I thought it only took disk space to make more restore points, not to actually use them? You can delete the old ones you know. There's also a disk space usage slider in the system restore tab under system properties. I know system restore sometimes automatically renames folders after a restore to preserve data in case you want undo it later, but I usually don't want to so I search my drive for the folders with "(2)" in the name and delete them. Is there something else eating memory I should know about?
gamefreak wrote:
After a fresh install with all the settings i want i do a restore point and thats the only one4 i use.
8O Wouldn't you have to install all the new security updates again every time you system restore? That would be a major pain. (Unless you just don't do security updates, but that's just asking for trouble.) Besides, the settings I want seem to change every few weeks. I always try to use the most recent restore point possible!



gamefreak
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15 Apr 2008, 10:03 pm

Encyclopedia wrote:
Yeah, things are much improved with Side-by-Side Component Sharing, but problems still occasionally happen. Corrupted installs/bad uninstallers, malware, and registry rot are still serious problems though.

ToadOfSteel wrote:
Isn't that was .NET was created to address?
That was indeed a major motivation for .NET assemblies, but that won't necessarily help with older software written before .NET.
gamefreak wrote:
Using system restore for every single problem will also eat hard drive space and memory
I thought it only took disk space to make more restore points, not to actually use them? You can delete the old ones you know. There's also a disk space usage slider in the system restore tab under system properties. I know system restore sometimes automatically renames folders after a restore to preserve data in case you want undo it later, but I usually don't want to so I search my drive for the folders with "(2)" in the name and delete them. Is there something else eating memory I should know about?
gamefreak wrote:
After a fresh install with all the settings i want i do a restore point and thats the only one4 i use.
8O Wouldn't you have to install all the new security updates again every time you system restore? That would be a major pain. (Unless you just don't do security updates, but that's just asking for trouble.) Besides, the settings I want seem to change every few weeks. I always try to use the most recent restore point possible!


Thats why i set the slider to 200MB. I also do the restore point after all updates have been installed along with Norton, Windows Defender, and MS Office. I have also made CD`s with slipstreamed updates. I make once every month on the last saturday of the month because thats when M$ releases the updates.



gamefreak
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15 Apr 2008, 10:13 pm

ToadOfSteel wrote:
Lets see... my main tower and my laptop both run xp pro (although i run both with the "classic" gui because "Luna" and "Aero" were the two greatest travesties perpetrated upon the world of computing.)

I also have a secondary box i made out of old parts my church gave me, with a 333mhz celeron and 576 megs of ram (a pair of 256 chips and a single 64 chip in the three memory slots). I converted it into a linux box and installed fedora 8 on it (ubuntu didnt want to install on any of my systems)


I have a computer with similar specs running Windows XP Professional

300Mhz Intel Celeron
256MB Ram [Tried upgrading to 512MB but that damn proprietory sony box won`t take above 128MB per memory stick.]
60GB Hard Drive [20GB as a Master and 40GB as a slave.]

XP runs great on it. That computer boots in 15 Seconds and i can even run Internet Explorer 7 on it without waiting more than 3 Seconds to load up to Google. I even run the Luna Desktop on it along with the Royale theme.

Microsoft had a point when 128MB or memory/300Mhz CPU was the recommended Specs for XP. You just can`t load it up with too many startup programs like IM`s.[One is all i need and that is Yahoo.]



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15 Apr 2008, 11:06 pm

Wow, I haven't checked this thread for a while. There are so many posts! :)



Betzalel
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16 Apr 2008, 12:20 am

pat666rick wrote:
Wow, I haven't checked this thread for a while. There are so many posts! :)



Most of them redundant. I mean how many windows XP posts must there be?



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16 Apr 2008, 12:34 am

Betzalel wrote:
pat666rick wrote:
Wow, I haven't checked this thread for a while. There are so many posts! :)



Most of them redundant. I mean how many windows XP posts must there be?


Haha



NeantHumain
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17 Apr 2008, 10:00 pm

I currently use Windows XP, but I'll probably go Linux full-time with my next machine (which will be soon). I am protesting Windows Vista, and Ubuntu has made Linux much less of a hassle than back in the days of Debian 2.2!



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17 Apr 2008, 11:11 pm

I currently use Vista, but my heart will forever be in DOS, the only operating system that can really be called beautiful.


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18 Apr 2008, 3:06 am

twoshots wrote:
I currently use Vista, but my heart will forever be in DOS, the only operating system that can really be called beautiful.


Sacrilege!

My operating system of choice is gNewSense, for ethical as well as technical reasons.


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18 Apr 2008, 7:05 am

Windows XP

I do play around with linux though :lol:


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18 Apr 2008, 12:56 pm

I currently run XP and Ubuntu. I run XP because I can't give up Photoshop, and some other apps of choice. I am thinking about replacing Ubuntu with maybe Fedora, or Backtrack, or possibly even Gentoo.