Favorite OS

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Hay Im wondering what your guys Favorite OS is mine is QNX.

OS X.

Gnu/Linux specifically Ubuntu flavor

Windows 7 because I like computers and don't need an unnecessarily complex or overly expensive OS to show it.

My new Mint 9 is far less complex than my Win7, and it did not cost me a dime beyond the electricity to download it and the price of a blank disc to hold its ISO!

GNU/Linux, particularly the Debian-based distros, although I can tolerate just about any Unix-like system.

You, sir, win this thread's irony prize.

Irony on what basis? Unnecessarily complex is software prone to dependency issues, typing in terminal commands in a Unix system for troubleshooting problems that could be fixed with a few clicks a lot of the time on other OSes. Overly expensive is having to buy a $1500 computer to run an OS that can't be run on other computers, which isn't as outstanding as Apple fanboys claim it is.

Windows 7 has the right amount of complexity, isn't overpriced, barely crashes, leading OS for gaming, and is the most widely supported OS for desktop usage (which means more programs that aren't cheaply done free clones).

You make good points there, and I had not thought of Apple.

I dont favor apple, but lets try something.

What is the cost of an apple computer?

Well, no matter what, a person has to purchase a computer. So the cost of the apple experience is the difference between a generic PC and a branded apple.

Lets say you want a macbook pro. Apple.com shows this as being 1500 bucks for a 2.66 GHz machine.
This one here. The 2.66 Ghz 13 inch screen, 4 gigs.
http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/s ... TM3NjU5MzU

So you want to find an equivalent PC laptop.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications ... CatId=4939

Here. Would you look at that. You save a whole 80 bucks.

But wait! You need a virus scanner.

Here is a typical one.
http://buy.norton.com/estore/mf/landing ... 3374718028

Oh wow. Its 80 bucks!

How much are you saving? Thats right. Zero.

But it gets better. Because that isnt a lifetime purchase. Oh no. Thats per year. Remember, you dont like:

So you cant use a free anti-virus.


You, sir, win this thread's irony prize.

Irony because Windows 7 is both unnecessarily complex and overly expensive, of course. I shouldn't have to wander all over the Internet just to get the programs I need for basic functionality. It should all be available in a centrally managed, security-audited repository from my operating system distributor where it can easily be managed. What dependency issues? Just install from the repos and there are no problems. Plenty of third-party stuff can be installed easily enough as well. And I never actually have to use the terminal in GNU/Linux. I use it sometimes because it's a lot more efficient, but there really aren't any situations where it's actually required.

Isn't overpriced? It's a couple hundred bucks for Windows 7, and the thing runs slow unless you have new hardware (sometimes even then it's slow). It has less power and less security than any other operating system on the market today, and it is also the most expensive at retail. What kind of value is that?

Cheaply done free clones, eh? Try using Excel for any real work, I dare you. It's garbage. It fails at basic statistics, and spits back absurd results. I have watched Excel produce regressions with negative R-squared values. I'll take my "cheaply done free clones" written by people who didn't flunk out of math.

Ubuntu for me. I don't think Windows 7 is overly complex or expensive - just generic and boring. I like messing around with everything and personalizing my experience to an extent Microsoft and Apple won't let you. That Ubuntu is faster, more secure, and absolutely free (as in $0.00 as well as freedom) is a nice bonus.

yay another OS/software flame war.

OS X here, somtimes paying more for the same means more money for research and better/newer products, ensures fairer pay to manufacturing employees so that I may have a good conscience, and creates inventions, or at least innovations (360 degree scrolling, magnetic power adapters, unibody metal construction, ambient light sensors for backlight control, sudden motion sensors for shock protection, all the tons of little things, first to make the cdrom a standard feature, first to adopt USB and fireware as a standard feature, first notebooks to be DDR3 across the board and use true 64 bit memory controllers, I could go on) in a world of low markup plastic junk, its a premium I am willing to pay for an experience that is fluid, high quality, and solid.

I also used before owning a mac Linux (and still do)

Last edited by TOGGI3 on 01 Sep 2010, 8:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

TOGGI3, that's a very good argument for going with Apple over Microsoft. But with Linux, much of the software and innovation is donated to the community. I'd rather give back to that community than support one corporation over another.

excellent point, and I support that all the way, but I am willing to mix open and closed in bits and pieces where there is obvious benefit. Not everyone has this moral flexibility with software it seems. I support the FSF (I have a GNU sticker on my MBP) at the conventions I go to and buy their merch and make contributions here and there. I also support open source projects that would directly benefit me. But you know, at the end of the day it comes down to what I will work most efficiently in. OS X delivers me a mix of things (mostly *nix utilities) windows cannot so easily yet gives me a level of proprietary software support that is at least compatable to windows.. And Cygwin is a terrible solution. I can tell you though that if Apple moved away from *nix at some point in a big way, I'd probably move back to Linux...

I guess the main difference between apple proponents and those who are not, is those who are not compare the hardware and the software as two seperate topics of discussion, apple proponents don't think this way at all. They are a single product and it doesnt make sense to compare one without including the other given they are built around eachother..

Some good points, TOGG13.

One of the main things that really bugs me about OS X is the lack of proper X11 integration. It's very difficult to get common *nix graphical programs working conveniently under OS X. If not for that, it would be almost as good as GNU/Linux for my purposes.

This is true, the X11 integration feels alien, its not incredibly fast, direct rendering leaves something to be desired, if it works with your application at all.

X11 isn't all there is to *nix though, and many of the common *nix graphical programs have OSX equivalent, and the ones that don't aren't very significant and have plenty of adequate replacements. It works well enough to be acceptable, I wish apple would bundle a GTK/Qt theme of some sort so at least they looked a little better.

Theres few things graphical that actually *need* X11 that I care enough to use.. I think just GIMP and Wireshark right now.. Its almost irrelevant if it is something Qt because more often than not its just ported to OS X without X11. Native GTK+ on OS X still isnt entirely stable, its getting there, but it has a ways to go yet.