What is your operating system of choice?

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Ubuntu, I am running Feisty for almost 1 year already (without booting windows at all)

I can't believe someone answered windows 98, of all the windows versions that's one that I really hated it for its total lack of stability, it is substandard even for Microsoft.

Photoshop is now platinum (or gold?) in WINE.

I just use virtual box for those silly apps that were made by inept people so they aren't cross platform, this said, WINE has been getting so good and alternative apps have been improving as well , that lately I am feeling like I'll be able to drop virtual box soon and be completely windows-license free.

I run WinXP and an Opera Browser.

I think I've posted here before but can't find it. O.o

DOS is really nice system: you can assemble the kernel just from unknown binaries in CONFIG.SYS Modern versions "understand" FAT32, long file names, 4GB RAM etc, and you can even install drivers for NTFS and EXT2FS. In real life I use Windows XP SP2, but with NC-style Far Manager.

Windows XP fulfils my needs nicely.

I tried a few versions(?) of Linux but didn't really know what I was doing and it wouldn't run the programs I wanted to run. I didn't like OpenOffice.

Windows 98 was lacking too much and I'm not going to even bother with Windows Vista.

I always find this odd. That Microsoft's crib of CP/M, that they called DOS, somehow became the ONLY DOS.

By the time MS-DOS was around, I had already used several other things called DOS (Disk Operating System), and even a TOS (Tape Operating System).

Calling MS-DOS a "really nice system" also seems strange. It has always been a poorly integrated bunch of bits and pieces.

It was vastly improved when it stole a mass of stuff from Unix. And these days Microsoft are trying to say that Linux has infringed MS patents. What a joke.

MS-DOS is not the only DOS - now there are FreeDOS, EDR-DOS, PTS-DOS 32. Of course, it is hard to call it "a really nice" seriously, but I just have DOS nostalgia It is really unusual system - it is often requires "dances with tambourine" for normal functioning.


Linux and FreeBSD sometimes use Soviet approach to the end-user: they often "assume" that user is clever and smart and can "tune" the system. I still remember Soviet user guides for TV sets: they were typed on typewriter on yellowish paper, but always with the electronic scheme of the device.

Ah, but there you go again. All those are just variations on, or clones of, MS-DOS. I was talking about things like DEC PDP11 DOS, i.e not the PC/i86 platform.
That sounds like a superb idiom. I can't think of anything that might be a good equivalent in English. I did find "... without black magic and dances with tambourine" on a blog, elsewhere, so I'm pretty confident as to what it means. Maybe "jiggery-pokery" or "hocus-pocus" would be about right?
All the early electronics stuff I bought came with instructions that included the circuit diagram. It was rather useful on one occasion, when I figured out exactly how to disconnect the built-in microphone (which allowed an "auto-dubbing" effect) on a portable cassette deck, so it would record my Sinclair ZX80 programs more reliably (without having to stay incredibly quiet, to stop the microphone cutting in).

I also find it frustrating that most people don't know that anything ever existed (or even still exists in some cases) outside of the tiny world of the IBM PC or macintosh.

You're right, "dances with tambourine" is word-to-word translation of Russian idiom, which is popular among IT specialists. Another idiom is "district shaman" (aka guru).

I've seen DOS only on IBM PC, but I remember some non-PC computers from the end of 80-x: Mikrosha (Soviet clone of Sinclair Z80), Yamaha. Mikrosha had no OS inside, just "system monitor" for loading programs from tape recorder and output to black-and-white TV set; after it IBM PC XT with EGA and 640k RAM was something fantastic.

No kidding?

I am about to switch from Windows XP to Mac OS X.

Windows Vista Premium (64bit) Still runs perfect. I've had it ages now and had 0 issues with it.

I assume that means that you don't do anything with it.

I've just had someone else who is stuck with it, after discovering that it can't read his new camera's MPEG2 files.

As for having it for ages, it was only released at the beginning of last year.

Like I say I'm a gamer. I Brows the net watch TV, BluRay movies and play the latest games on it. I can even play games like Crysis on high settings with about 35 to 40 frames per second.

I better my Vista PC will out perfrom any of you PC easly.

Outperform in what way?

It may outperform in terms of speed, but not stability.

I'm not saying XP's the most stable OS though, but it's certainly isn't the worst