What is the best OS?

[N8N]

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 right now but I can't say that it's the "best."

Unfortunately, I find myself having to boot into a windows partition several times a year because of something that just can't happen in Linux - like running AutoCAD (don't know of a good Linux-based equivalent) or updating my GPS.

I also don't know that Ubuntu is the "best" Linux distro as there are some issues with it (had a serious video card incompatibility with some of my older laptops, also caps lock LED isn't handled correctly on computers with more than one keyboard, or on the Noppoo Choc Pro) and also some of the software in the official repositories is out of date - although in some cases that may be a benefit.

I *prefer* the *nix-based OSes, but I don't really know what is best right now.  All I can say is that I use Linux for my day to day stuff, and Windows when I have to.

[hashbaz]

Honestly I'm happy with whatever for standard at-home use like email and browsing this forum.  At home I have a Macbook and a PC desktop running Windows 7.  Both are great.  For software development, though, I can't see myself ever getting away from Linux.  Even if I get a job in Windows development, I'll find a way to develop on Linux and build/run on Windows.

[Chobopants]

All OS's suck.  Just some less than others.

I use both Linux and OS X fairly regularly on the desktop.  I use the nasty for work when required to.  7 has been ok.

This is my philosophy too. I use OS X as my main dev box, CentOS for my dev server, and Windows 7 for gaming in the evening. I've struggled with all three OSes quite a bit when they decide to act up, though I have to admit that Windows takes the cake for being a finicky little jerk. It's great when it works but may the lord have mercy on you if anything goes wrong.

[Malphas]

I quite like Android for just doing what it's meant to and staying out of my way, I didn't mind DOS for the same reason.  I've hated every single version of Windows until Windows 7, which I find much more tolerable, Windows is my only real option on the desktop though, due to videogames.  I've ****ed about a bit with OS X, and didn't care for it much for unknown arbitrary reasons.  Most Linux distros are a disgusting mess.

[bootstrap]

Stable release of CrunchBang Linux (10 "Statler") Openbox, running on a Lenovo T61 notebook and external monitor.

It meets my needs but I had to make one major adjustment switching from XP/7: dumping OneNote and using Evernote via apps in Chrome instead. All the other Linux equivalents to Windows software (e.g., LibreOffice, GnuCash, Gedit, VLC, Banshee - to name a few) just work. Stata (a statistics package), which I use a lot, runs fine on the OS.

I needed some time to figure out how to enable scrolling with my DT225 trackball but all hardware issues (trackball, printer, scanner) have been sorted out.

CrunchBang has been extremely stable, fast enough, and quite elegant with Openbox. It's the best OS I've used/tried to date (vs "Classic" Mac OS, Mac OS X, Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, Ubuntu, Lubuntu, PCLinuxOS, openSUSE, LMDE, vanilla Debian), but to each his own.

[one_each]

OS X although I'm using Windows 7 on my laptop for games.  I also prefer iOS over Android.

[Mazora]

anyone knows why mouse movement is so ****ty on my girlfriend's new iMac ?

[kraise]

anyone knows why mouse movement is so ****ty on my girlfriend's new iMac ?

Ripster may have already hit the nail on the head but what kind of mouse are you using?

[enoy21]

It senses it belongs to a pus...... feline ?  

ooohhhh Thought that said "shifty"  

nvm

[Mazora]

its the magic mouse

[RC-1140]

I totally love Linux. I started with SuSE, and soon switched over to Debian. After a long period of using Debian I decided to go on with Sabayon, but when my newly built PC refrained to boot any distribution at all (kernel Panic when trying to boot the live cds) I started looking for a new one, and ended up with Arch Linux. I am really happy with it, and I won't leave it anymore. My system is running very smooth, with a neat XMonad, and it's the best one I ever had!

[iindigo]

Is it skipping or something?

Some people don't like Mac OS X's cursor acceleration curve and can't get used to it no matter how hard they try, maybe that's the case for you. Myself? I didn't even know there was a difference until somebody told me. When it comes to pointing devices I adapt very, very quickly.

[Clickey]

anyone knows why mouse movement is so ****ty on my girlfriend's new iMac ?

Probably because Apple products are just random pieces of dog crap, picked off the street and packaged in a nice fancy plastic shell. They charge twice as much as their well made competitors, because dogs on the street can't defecate enough to meet the demand.

[iindigo]

That really wasn't necessary, wasn't helpful, and was completely unsubstantiated.

I could list off parts and explain where the costs differences come from *complete with evidence*, but I don't want to start a fight in this thread.

[J888www]

I purchased a Windows 7 Home Premium OS for my second ThinkPad T60p build because my first build graphics was an ATI FireGL v5200 and I had wanted better, so this second build has a FireGL v5250. The seller of this OS was from Amazon marketplace, then I went for a Months holiday to the Orient. After acquiring all the components etc etc etc, I finally finished this build just under four Months after the OS purchase.

When I installed the Wins 7 HP, it did not activate so I contacted Microsoft with regard to this issue and was informed that the product was pirated software with the activation code been used by numerous purchasers. I contacted Amazon and was given the brush-off " Nothing to do with us, it's from the Marketplace ", cow-poo. Then I found out the Seller can no longer be contacted through Amazon, the illegitimate son of a great big round empty dark circle had scarpered. I contacted my credit card company World BastardCard and was directed to Post a hard-copy letter of Transaction dispute with receipts etc etc etc. After checking the date that this registered letter was received and counted the Days after transaction, I was lucky to realize to my good fortune that I was within one day of the 120 Days deadline. Received a letter of "Regretfully we are unable to deal with your claim of transaction dispute due to the time limit have already passed", cow-poo from World Bastardcard. This was the second occasion that I had transaction disputes, first was for non delivery after 30 Days and on both occasions I followed the Customer-nonService of World BastardCard and they put one over me, twice. Previously before the Bank introduced World BastardCard, I never ever had problems with Visa transactions (lucky) or disputes.

One transaction and I get put over three times by three different fother mucker sons of great big deep dark round circles, obviously I was not very pleased and started jumping up & down the branches of my tree house. My money was gone, no matter; but my feelings was of great anger for being cheated, so I decided to report this seller for selling pirated software to those who have enough resources to find and prosecute this little poo stain.

I contacted Microsoft Anti-Piracy team and filed a Counterfeit Report, then sent the Box/Discs/receipts Recorded Delivery to MS base. In due course, I received a reply stating my Counterfeit Report was accepted and a "TYVM, you good Monkey", and thought it was the end of this stressful episode.

Two Weeks later, to my great surprise, I unexpectedly received, not a gratuitous copy of Windows 7 Home Premium, not a copy of Windows 7 Professional but a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate. :hail: TYVM MS. Maybe SomeOne up there is keeping an eye on good little ol' Moi after all..................

My opinion of the best Operating System is Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit. Well done, you've guessed it correctly........

PS: I am now back to using VISA Credit Cards, only.
.

[fossala]

Best OS's are OpenBSD or Solaris (OpenIndiana) but both don't have much support so I tend to use FreeBSD and Debian.

[sinis]

Ubuntu/Debian imho

[alaricljs]

On topic:  the one that gets my work done:  Linux.   the one that gets my entertainment done: Windows 7 x64

Off topic:  To the best of my ability I use Discover exclusively.  When I register a charge complaint it immediately comes off the card and then THEY do all the research.  If they need anything from me they let me know.  It's up to the vendor of record on the charge to prove their right to my money.

[fossala]

Ubuntu/Debian imho

I am testing 11.10 out atm but I am having horrible graphical glitches. Back to debian it is

[J888www]

Best OS's are....but don't have much support so I tend to use....

I am only a simple Simian, your contradiction confuses me........... I know not why.

Many people vote for Linux but I think it is best if one doesn't need to continuously fix future issues, just something that simply work.

[sinis]

I am testing 11.10 out atm but I am having horrible graphical glitches. Back to debian it is

Having 11.04 on all 2 machines. Runs flawlessly.

[J888www]

I too used Ubuntu until I became fed-up of needing to reinstall.
Fresh installs always work flawlessly.........until one day, you turn on the PC and it is broken but you know not why.

[flyball]

anyone knows why mouse movement is so ****ty on my girlfriend's new iMac ?

you cant turn off mouse acceleration. i had a similar problem when i used one at work and my solution was just to use it as a synergy slave to a windows synergy host which i guess uses the windows mouse drivers for positioning. i've heard that the microsoft intellimouse drivers fix the acceleration issue, although i haven't tried this.

[flyball]

Best OS's are OpenBSD or Solaris (OpenIndiana) but both don't have much support so I tend to use FreeBSD and Debian.

too bad fbsd 9 is on track to be like 5 months late

[fossala]

too bad fbsd 9 is on track to be like 5 months late

As always, I think it is now going to be released on 1st Nov. Same as OpenBSD 5.

[flyball]

As always, I think it is now going to be released on 1st Nov. Same as OpenBSD 5.

they arent even up to rc builds, it wont be out before 2012

[RC-1140]

GNU Hurd.

Wait a moment. Are you saying you used Hurd in 2009? Or is all you want to say you like Hurd because of its ideas? I can't imagine Hurd would've been usable in 2009, I mean, it's barely usable nowadays! I have to admit, I don't know much about it, but I'm interested in it. The GNU projects own OS. That'd be pretty awesome. I'm thinking about trying Arch Hurd in a VM, just out of curiosity. There is vi, and there is zsh. That's all I need. Too sad the vim package for Arch Hurd is orphaned. If I were a C hacker, or would at least have any idea about it I would port it myself. Damn, I gotta learn C finally.

[Clickey]

I would say Win 7 is the best OS overall, because it is the most compatible with most applications/hardware, even if other OS have some superior aspects.

[Shinryuu]

Something that is more likely user-end and you can configure your system in your own way. It's freedom of the soul. So i'd go with GNU/Linux distributions like Arch Linux, Slackware and Gentoo. Heh, it seems this is my first post as well :baby:

[RC-1140]

wlcm 2 gh!

[iMav]

Windows is the best OS at providing me with job security.

I was a UNIX admin in a former life, so I prefer UNIX-y type OSs.  OS X and Linux are my top two.

[VentiLator]

I went from XP to Debian to Ubuntu to Win7 to Mint and finally, back to the roots, Debian which all my computers are running now, except for one old notebook (a cute IBM 560e) that runs OpenBSD (standard Debian-Kernel wouldn't boot on that 32mb RAM, building a custom Kernel on a notebook that lacks a CD-Drive... nope).

I just kept Win7 for gaming and presentations in school (using awesomewm and other fancy stuff, i usually try to prevent comments like "lol u a hacker HURR DURR", ****ing awkward).

But best OS? To me, it's a UNIX flavour but i don't hate Windows, just too bad they crippled down their shell.

[ch_123]

I would say Win 7 is the best OS overall, because it is the most compatible with most applications/hardware, even if other OS have some superior aspects.

There's a huge quantity of software for Windows alright. Not sure how much of it is actually worth using. I'm not denying that many people (myself included) boot into Windows to use some software to get the job done, but I'd argue that a lot of people could happily use their computers without ever using any Windows specific software.

As for hardware... depends on the machine. For me, Linux actually supports more hardware out of the box than Windows does, possibly due to the lengthy development cycle for Windows.

[N8N]

I'd argue that the *nix OS's are fundamentally better from a security standpoint and possibly a technical one as well, and that the reason that most of us use Windows or at least maintain a Windows partition has to do with its popularity and the subsequent availability of software, and no other reason.

[iindigo]

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems with Windows is Microsoft's unwillingness to chuck old, crusty parts of the OS. They take far too long to do it. If they remedied this, the OS could be a lot smaller, lighter, and more pleasant to use.

[DaemonRaccoon]

In my opinion, one of the biggest problems with Windows is Microsoft's unwillingness to chuck old, crusty parts of the OS. They take far too long to do it. If they remedied this, the OS could be a lot smaller, lighter, and more pleasant to use.

But that backwards compatibility is part of why it's so popular, businesses can upgrade the OS while keeping their crufty in-house programs which were written in the days of NT 3.5.

I'm going to go with Linux (Gentoo specifically) as best OS at the moment. It does what I need and stays out of my way. My experience with Mac OS X is limited, but I've never enjoyed any Mac OS. Windows is useful but has its headaches for me.
I hope Haiku gets better, BeOS was the greatest OS I never tried.

[iindigo]

But that backwards compatibility is part of why it's so popular, businesses can upgrade the OS while keeping their crufty in-house programs which were written in the days of NT 3.5.

I'm going to go with Linux (Gentoo specifically) as best OS at the moment. It does what I need and stays out of my way. My experience with Mac OS X is limited, but I've never enjoyed any Mac OS. Windows is useful but has its headaches for me.
I hope Haiku gets better, BeOS was the greatest OS I never tried.

Virtual machines exist for a reason. NT 3.5/95/98/XP are ridiculously easy to virtualize with even lax hardware. If not that, sell a commercial version of Windows with cruft and a consumer version without it.

I agree on BeOS though, it's too bad it didn't ever really get a day in the sun. It was ahead of its time, much like NeXTSTEP was in the early 90's.

[Malphas]

I think they have started moving in this direction, albeit slowly, with Windows 7.  Wasn't the Cairo project and then to some extent Longhorn intended to be a rewrite and huge overhaul of Windows respectively, before both ended up as a mess?

[keyboardlover]

The best OS is the one that best meets the individual needs of the user using it.

Just as no keyboard is best for everyone, no one OS is best for everyone either.

[jwaz]

Best? That is kind of a loaded question...
Windows 7 64bit, OSX Lion, and Backtrack 5? Also Android < iOS (Jailbroken) mainly because of security and design.

[TacticalCoder]

The best OS is the one that best meets the individual needs of the user using it.

Just as no keyboard is best for everyone, no one OS is best for everyone either.

Am I not recognizing the smell of a good old logical fallacy on GeekHack in the morning...  I may be mistaken but I'm reading what you just wrote as a variation of the "fallacy of gray" :fear:

It goes like this: "all tools have their merits" or "the world ain't black & white, it's all gray".

Here was one science-fiction author's take on it:

The Sophisticate:  "The world isn't black and white.  No one does pure good or pure bad. It's all gray.  Therefore, no one is better than anyone else."

The Zetet:  "Knowing only gray, you conclude that all grays are the same shade.  You mock the simplicity of the two-color view, yet you replace it with a one-color view..."

[Malphas]

But saying "best" is a subjective term in this case (which it is, unless you provide some less vague criteria like "most secure" or something) isn't the same as the fallacy of gray in the slightest.

On the other hand, saying something like "all OSes have their exploits, therefore they're all just as secure/insecure" would fit the fallacy's criteria.

[Clickey]

The word "best" ALWAYS implies subjectivity, anyone that asks for best, is asking for an opinion, not a fact.

[iindigo]

Well to be fair, 2000 was a killer Windows release. It was my preferred version of Windows until a year or two before Vista's release. It was kinda like XP without the eye-melting Fischer-Price inspired Luna UI theme.

[Pretendo]

There is no best OS.  To each his own, blah, blah, blah...

There is, however, a worst OS.  Tripe called Windows ME (Mistake Edition.)  My God was it rotten...

[Demofly]

Slackware with VMware running windows 7 for gaming.

Also, I know absolutely nothing about linux and I can't use terminal for beans.

[chario]

I have four virtual screens, eight terminals, integrated keyboard and mouse of two computers.

I've been a Linuxer for decades. Linux is best OS for me. Current Linux is Debian Squeeze both workstation and laptop. I customized kernel to maximize the systems. I use same GUI that I like - simple window manager, same text editor that I learned. It takes some time and effort to learn Linux in general. Once the user pasts newbie stage, it provides great freedom of computing IMHO.  The user has the power to choose what software one like to use or upgrade, what types of hardware configuration one want.

Only problem I've had in Linux when the hardware device fails.

[fossala]

Benchmark your system. I doubt you are getting any real world benefits from running a custom kernel.

[pitashen]

Once the user pasts newbie stage, it provides great freedom of computing IMHO.  The user has the power to choose what software one like to use or upgrade, what types of hardware configuration one want.

The concept of freedom provided by the linux is great, but sadly the ideal IMO doesn't go beyond the OS itself for being free and open. Once you hop onto the platform, limitation starts to show. The freedom is hindered the lack of software/hardware choices (compared to windows) and some of the standards established by the commercial entities (AutoCAD, Solidworks 3DstduioMAX,  Photoshop etc etc). There are very little linux can do to catch up in the Desktop department.

Mobile space is whole other business, yet it still requires big momentum pushing from behind like Google does to Android. Even then you loses some of the ideals linux is intended to be, when Google is imposing quite a bit of control over android despite being open sourced.

[fossala]

The concept of freedom provided by the linux is great, but sadly the ideal IMO doesn't go beyond the OS itself for being free and open. Once you hop onto the platform, limitation starts to show. The freedom is hindered the lack of software/hardware choices (compared to windows) and some of the standards established by the commercial entities (AutoCAD, Solidworks 3DstduioMAX,  Photoshop etc etc). There are very little linux can do to catch up in the Desktop department.

Mobile space is whole other business, yet it still requires big momentum pushing from behind like Google does to Android. Even then you loses some of the ideals linux is intended to be, when Google is imposing quite a bit of control over android despite being open sourced.

Because they are not the programs you are used to does not mean linux or bsd doesn't have any programs. Just look and Debian's and FreeBSD's repo size. I have used Linux or BSD on the desktop for my whole family and we all get on fine. As far as hardware goes I have yet to have a piece that doesn't work on Linux (I did have a hard drive caddy that didn't like FreeBSD).

Looks like you are using OS X, how does it feel to be ****** in the *** by a company that cares more about taking things from you than providing you with a secure service?