What is the best OS?

[ch_123]

I just installed Windows 7 yesterday and I am liking it already, but it still doesnt beat good old Windows 2000.  Being more use to the classic style of Windows, it is a learning experience using any Windows operating system newer than XP.

Is there any reason that 2000 is better than 7 other than "OMG the GUI has changed over the past ten years"?

[microsoft windows]

It uses much less system resources and is a lot more efficient, while retaining all useful features.

[ch_123]

Maybe on 10-15 year old hardware, but I think you'd find Windows 7 would make much better use of newer hardware than 2k would. And using the least amount of resources is not necessarily the best way to go, otherwise we'd all use DOS still... I'd rather that an OS uses the power of my PC to provide the best foundation without compromising on the performance of the applications I run.

One thing about 7 that impresses me about 7 is how it scales it's RAM usage relative to how much RAM you have. On my main PC, it uses about 900MB of my 4GB of RAM. Yet on a friend's machine that only has 1GB of RAM, it only takes up about 350MB. That isn't much worse than XP.

[itlnstln]

My computer runs leaner on 7 than it did in XP (x64).  I am thoroughly enjoying 7.

[timw4mail]

I really don't feel like dispelling OS myths again.

[itlnstln]

Obvious troll is obvious.
 
Windows 7 - less than 1GB of memory usage with only IE8 and Outlook 2007 running
 
Windows XP x64 - about 1.37 GB of memory usage with only IE8 and Outlook 2007 running.
 
Thanks for playing.

[Computer-Lab in Basement]

Windows 7 is alot better than Windows Vista, I found it impossible to set up network printing on Vista, it took me a few min to set it up on Windows 7

[timw4mail]

Obvious troll is obvious.
 
Windows 7 - less than 1GB of memory usage with only IE8 and Outlook 2007 running
 
Windows XP x64 - about 1.37 GB of memory usage with only IE8 and Outlook 2007 running.
 
Thanks for playing.

Actually, I was referring to Kishy. Windows 7 runs suprisingly smoothly.

[itlnstln]

Actually, I was referring to Kishy. Windows 7 runs suprisingly smoothly.

My bad.  Sorry.

[ch_123]

I'm just waiting for ReactOS 1.0 to come out. But at this rate, Windows 9 will probably be out before we see the beta...

[microsoft windows]

Maybe on 10-15 year old hardware, but I think you'd find Windows 7 would make much better use of newer hardware than 2k would. And using the least amount of resources is not necessarily the best way to go, otherwise we'd all use DOS still... I'd rather that an OS uses the power of my PC to provide the best foundation without compromising on the performance of the applications I run.

One thing about 7 that impresses me about 7 is how it scales it's RAM usage relative to how much RAM you have. On my main PC, it uses about 900MB of my 4GB of RAM. Yet on a friend's machine that only has 1GB of RAM, it only takes up about 350MB. That isn't much worse than XP.

Windows 2000 is actually better than you think. It's light enough to run fine off of 32mb of RAM, but still a powerhouse which can run over 95% of new programs.

[itlnstln]

Windows 2000 is actually better than you think. It's light enough to run fine off of 32mb of RAM, but still a powerhouse which can run over 95% of new programs.

New programs? Wordperfect 5.1 and The Oregon Trail? If you upgrade to 64 MB, you might even be able to run Harvard Graphics and Lotus 1-2-3.
 
 
 
 
 
(<- Obvious troll is obvious)

[timw4mail]

When I say "relatively old" I mean K6-2s and Pentium IIs <400MHz. 7 would slaughter them and you know it lol

And if they aren't ATX it won't run at all (I tried to run the installer for either 7 or Vista, I forget which, on a non-ATX system and it halted while scanning the hardware before running setup. It cited a lacking power management standard as being the issue)

Hmm...I'll have to try 7 on my Socket 7 rig...

Oh wait, I can't, because there aren't drivers for half of the hardware in that computer for anything beyond XP.

[itlnstln]

Hmm...I'll have to try 7 on my Socket 7 rig...
 
Oh wait, I can't, because there aren't drivers for half of the hardware in that computer for anything beyond XP.

This would be inaccurate.  Windows 7 even had drivers for my now 15 year old HP Laser Jet 4.  The mfr. might not make drivers for it, but Windows will have their own.

[timw4mail]

This would be inaccurate.  Windows 7 even had drivers for my now 15 year old HP Laser Jet 4.  The mfr. might not make drivers for it, but Windows will have their own.

I'm talking about my All-in-Wonder Rage 128. It's quite the trick to find XP drivers for it, let alone the wild goose chase of anything beyond that.

[itlnstln]

Are there OSX drivers for it?

[timw4mail]

Are there OSX drivers for it?

Doubt it, and I don't have a Desktop Mac.

[TheSoulhunter]

Regarding Win7:

Overall, its a nice OS with many enhancements n tweaks compared to XP (skipped Vista). It also installed fine on my aged Athlon XP box, including all the old drivers, even the 10 year old on-board audio and LAN ones, great... But what I really hate about it is the UI! It has nothing to do with "getting used to it" or so, its just that I find it inefficient and it slows me down... Someone knows a way to add a top menu like I did in my XP? There are also a lot other small things I dislike (like the new Control Panel). Seems I have to wait for some modding/hacking work to get done before I finally switch... :/

[sixty]

Regarding Win7:

Overall, its a nice OS with many enhancements n tweaks compared to XP (skipped Vista). It also installed fine on my aged Athlon XP box, including all the old drivers, even the 10 year old on-board audio and LAN ones, great... But what I really hate about it is the UI! It has nothing to do with "getting used to it" or so, its just that I find it inefficient and it slows me down... Someone knows a way to add a top menu like I did in my XP? There are also a lot other small things I dislike (like the new Control Panel). Seems I have to wait for some modding/hacking work to get done before I finally switch... :/

I also disliked some parts of the UI. System preferences was one of the worst things yeah. I actually wondered how you got that bar with your quicklaunch tools working? I was under the impression you used a third party tool to get that done.

[TheSoulhunter]

Probably... Plugins/Patches included in the build I installed are countless. Even a simple right-click on a file shows up non standard (but very useful) stuff like "Edit date", "Copy also" or "Copy path". Thats what I meant with "I have to wait for some modding/hacking work to get done". I simply don't understand why they still didn't include a option to add additional taskbars out of the box, its sooo useful... Well, at least I found out how to get the quicklaunchbar back. ^^;

[itlnstln]

I used the Quicklaunch trick for Office.  You can pin anything to the taskbar that you want, too, if the format/l&f doesn't matter as much.  The one thing I miss (since Vista) is being able to move a toolbar off the taskbar up to the top of the screen like Soulhunter's screenshot.  I used to create a Desktop and Office toolbar, and put it at the top of the screen and set it to Autohide (I do the same with the taskbar) to have a clean, icon-free desktop.

[ch_123]

Ooh yeah...

[Mnemonix]

Ooh yeah...

Hehe, I had OS/2 Warp 4 installed for some time back in 1997 or so for assembly programming for DOS. Its DOS box was compatible with MS-DOS, and the system was so damn stable that you could do even this without freezing the whole machine:

Code: [Select]

label: cli
       jmp label

(Disable all interrupts, again and again in an endless loop.)
This little code was an instant killer for Win95 (and also for pure DOS, of course).

Back at the time, I really thought OS/2 was the best OS in the world.

[molto]

Its DOS box was compatible with MS-DOS, and the system was so damn stable that you could do even this without freezing the whole machine:

I'm not sure if you're being facetious, but OS/2 used a virtual machine to emulate DOS, so there is nothing special here.

Code: [Select]

label: cli
       jmp label

(Disable all interrupts, again and again in an endless loop.)
This little code was an instant killer for Win95 (and also for pure DOS, of course)

I'm a bit surprised that Windows 95 allowed the execution of privileged instructions like CLI (that is, that Windows 95 apparently ran DOS "boxes" in ring 0). By the way, there is a more efficient way to hang the [strike]system[/strike] processor:

Code: [Select]

CLI
HLT

[Mnemonix]

I'm not sure if you're being facetious, but OS/2 used a virtual machine to emulate DOS, so there is nothing special here.

Not trying to be facetious. I believe OS/2 just let IBM-DOS run in a VM86 mode environment, but I didn't care about those details then.
Still, even in 1997, it was special to have multiple DOS instances running on a PC (I had a 80486) and not having to reboot just because your DOS program did something stupid. So convenient!

I'm a bit surprised that Windows 95 allowed the execution of privileged instructions like CLI (that is, that Windows 95 apparently ran DOS "boxes" in ring 0).

I always viewed W9x to be MS-DOS with a (not so) fancy GUI running on top. It was possible to run just the DOS part of it, but defaulted to booting into the graphical desktop. Heck, you could even continue to use DOS drivers if necessary.
But since you could run multiple instances of DOS even on Win95, I think there was also some kind of virtualization going there, which was similar, but not quite as good as on OS/2.

I guess privileged instructions were allowed to be executed directly for backwards compatibility with older DOS software.

By the way, there is a more efficient way to hang the system:

Hm, that may work, too; but the HLT instruction could be trapped by the OS, possibly resulting in an improperly trashed system.

[ricercar]

I'm a bit surprised that Windows 95 allowed the execution of privileged instructions like CLI (that is, that Windows 95 apparently ran DOS "boxes" in ring 0).

Win 95 ran DOS boxes as a fully pre-emptive multi-tasking environment. That was an important marketing bullet point at the time, but essentially worthless for real-world Windows consumers.

[ch_123]

So, I managed to kill my OS/2 installation by installing the VirtualBox tools for it (one of the main reasons I tried it with VirtualBox is because it has official support for OS/2, which is supposed to be notoriously difficult to virtualize). Attempts to reinstall it failed randomly... Might try a later version of it.

[microsoft windows]

I think I'll load OS/2 on my old crumby computer for fun and see how it goes.

[keyb_gr]

BTW, the stupid control panel is nothing new in Windows 7, this came along with Vista. Deserves a Designed By Monkeys award in gold.

[timw4mail]

BTW, the stupid control panel is nothing new in Windows 7, this came along with Vista. Deserves a Designed By Monkeys award in gold.

Microsoft should take a leaf out of Apple's book when it comes to designing a Control Panel.

[ak_nala]

Oh, they will. The problem is, usually when they do they try to "make it their own" in some way and end up making it awkward and fugly. It's just in their nature.

At least when Apple steals from MS, they usually make it easier on the eyes, and often with better functionality in the bargain.

[microsoft windows]

I like Windows better. It can run on almost any machine and many Windows computers beat Apple in both price and quality.

[HaaTa]

Anything, if it can follow these points:

• Can give me 100+ days of uptime,
• with no memory rot
• Almost bleeding edge,
• with efficient mechanism for compiling/installing/upgrading software from source repos (e.g. git, svn, etc.) so I can use bleeding edge
• Never have to reboot for anything, especially for updates
• Mouse is optional
• If something bad happens, gives me an error message, so I can at least try to fix it (I used to call this the Mac-Effect, but the Microsoft started to copy it with Vista/7)

7a. Do NOT try and fix the problem for me (Ubuntu)

• Vim must be available
• Multi-Monitor support (with hi-res support)
• If there is GUI it must be fast (i.e. All menus open virtually instantaneously)
• Relatively easy to setup a dev environment on
• Doesn't waste obscene amounts of my time setting up (Gentoo == Fail)

Brownie Points:

• Rolling Release
• I can do everything from a terminal
• Supports Qt4 and ZSH
• If it has a bug I can look at the code, fix it, then recompile it
• GTK, and KDE are optional
• Settings are file based, not daemon based (Gnome is generally guilty of this)
• Does not try to hide things under the guise of being user friendly (Mac and Ubuntu outright fail at this)

List of Failures (Numbers in []'s are for some desktop environments):

• Dos: 1?,2?,3,4,5,9
• Windows (all versions): 1,2,4,5,10,11
• Windows (Vista/7): 7,10
• Mac OS(9+): 1,2,3,4,5,7,10
• Ubuntu: 3,4,5,7,7a,[10]
• Fedora: 4,5,[10]
• OpenSUSE: 3,4,5,[10]
• Arch: 5
• Gentoo: 5,12

Brownie Point Achievers:

• Windows (XP+): 3,5,6,7
• Dos: 2!,6,7,8
• Mac OS X: 3,5,6
• Ubuntu: 3,4
• Fedora: 2,3,4,7
• OpenSUSE: 2,3,4
• Arch: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7
• Gentoo: 1,2,4,5,6,7

Apparently my favourite OS does not exist :P.


But for kicks lets apply some scoring:

• Failure Points = -2
• Brownie Points = +1
• Base Score = 12

And the standings are:

1. Arch: 17/12 [142%]
2. Gentoo: 15/12 [125%]
3. Fedora: 10/12 [83%]
4. OpenSUSE: 7/12 [58%]
5. Dos: 4/12 [33%]
5. Windows (XP): 4/12 [33%]
7. Ubuntu: 2/12 [17%]
8. Mac OS(9+): 1/12 [8%]
9. Windows (Pre XP): 0/12 [0%]
9. Windows (Vista/7): 0/12[0%] (this is a tad unfair to 7, it deserves at least the same score as Windows XP)

Twisting scores to further reflect my unfair bias:

1. Arch
2. Fedora
3. Windows (7)
4. Dos
5. Windows (XP)
6. Gentoo
7. OpenSUSE
8. Ubuntu
9. Mac OS(9+)
10. Windows (Vista)
11. Windows (Pre XP)


This is reflects the best OS for me...I don't think I would be considered an average user. If there was a best OS for the average user, I would probably hate it, or crash/freeze/hang/guillotine/kill it within 5 minutes.

[Mnemonix]

Anything, if it can follow these points:

Your list is missing Debian GNU/Linux. According to your criteria, I think it could be among your top three OSes.

[bigpook]

KDE and Gnome are optional in Ubuntu. Just use the server install cd.

[timw4mail]

@HaTaa

Gentoo make take some time to set up, but it certainly is fast once you get it set up.

[ch_123]

Yeah, but it's not faster than something like Arch relative to how long you spend trying to get it set up and keeping it updated.

[didjamatic]

@HaaTa

It depends on what you're trying to do with it.  There is no one OS to rule them all, if you had to choose only one to do absolutely everything, the only one that has the potential is Windows.  Though it's not best at everything, it can do everything.

I've never used Arch, it sounds interesting... but many interesting linux flavors come and go over the years because they're mostly pet projects that people tire of.  For Linux I stick to the time tested and fully supported RHEL/CentOS.  But that's for my uses, everyone is different.  I've been burned too many times by linux servers that have unsupported software or the OS itself that is unsupported and since I'm not a programmer, I'm not delving into fixing code on my own.  I also disagree with fixing it yourself IF it's in a business production environment.  Example - You start a new job and everything seems fine at first, then you discover the previous admin has gone through and done custom this-and-thats to the code all over the place.  That is unmanageable.  On a few servers, sure, no prob but any sizeable environment that spells D I S A S T E R.

For home use or playing around, there are literally thousands of viable options.  But for a business it comes down to Unix/Linux Enterprise OS's (which their stability and work is why the respun flavors are stable) or, drumroll please... Windows.

Try supporting a few hundred servers that are anything but Windows and you'll know what I mean.

Or, try having thousands of employees and several manufacturing sites relying on the stability of the solution you provide... then something breaks and time is ticking.  Who do you want on the phone?  I would want to be calling someone who is instantly available and who has the resources to support me until we are fixed.  Only large companies like Microsoft or RedHat

If you're doing everything from a terminal (which I think you mean CLI, not terminal, a terminal could be running Windows then you probably have no use for an HP multifunction printer, itunes or geekhack.

But I'm glad there are so many OS's out there.  The competition and new perspectives each bring to the table benefit everyone.

[didjamatic]

One critical thing we often forget is that the problems we experience on a computer are usually not the operating system, they are nearly always an application.  But the OS takes the blame for it.  If Weatherbug consumes system resources and makes your system slow and annoying, it's your fault because you told the OS to allow Weatherbug to do that.  The OS performed perfectly in this case.

Modern OS's better protect themselves from rogue apps, but you can't buy a Porsche, fill it full of heavy crap and expect a good driving experience.

[itlnstln]

One critical thing we often forget is that the problems we experience on a computer are usually not the operating system, they are nearly always an application. But the OS takes the blame for it. If Weatherbug consumes system resources and makes your system slow and annoying, it's your fault because you told the OS to allow Weatherbug to do that. The OS performed perfectly in this case.

This.

[ch_123]

For Linux I stick to the time tested and fully supported RHEL/CentOS.  

I looked at CentOS once, and lost interest when I looked at the package list. There's a difference between 'stable' and 'three years out of date'

[HaaTa]

Your list is missing Debian GNU/Linux. According to your criteria, I think it could be among your top three OSes.

Whoops...

I always forget about Debian, usually for two reasons:
Not bleeding edge enough
Always pissed off at apt-get @#$%-ups made (I really don't like having to use the force option) when I worked at Xandros.

The most stupid thing about apt-get is not being able to install local packages with it. You have to use dpkg, so, if your missing dependencies you have to manually call apt-get to install the dependencies then be able to install the package rather than it just asking you whether or not you want to install the package with its dependencies.
Apparently, this was decided as the normal behaviour by one of the developer with Debian whose ego is too big, but I digress.

apt-get (aptitude is very useful) is decent overall but I prefer pacman (Arch invention, really fast) or even yum (better integration of features overall).


@didjamatic:
Yeah, I would never use Arch for production servers or for managing ass-loads of workstations.
However I really find it annoying, that so few IT admins will accept Linux boxes as viable workstations. I understand that supporting the average user is very difficult at times. But I work in a damn software division that writes drivers for both Linux and Windows. I'm pretty sure 85% of us can take care of our own problems, minus email server screw-ups (Both Outlook and Scalex piss me off, the Outlook client will freeze, while you are writing an email, if the server goes down).
Oh, well.

Also, the Windows Command Prompt is severely lacking (Power Shell is somewhat usable I guess), I wouldn't even know where to start if I wanted to change my screen resolution (but that's what goggle is for ).

[ironcoder]

Just saw this on another forum.

http://img255.imageshack.us/img255/5486/howfanboysseeoperatings.jpg

[microsoft windows]

That's pretty accurate.

[D-EJ915]

oh god Yum makes me want to rape myself with a rusty towel rack, well that and red hat based stuff in general lol.  It is soooo slow.  Anyway pacman is great but I haven't used arch in a few years.

[pikapika]

i use archlinux on my laptop, but when i have to spend more tahn one hour to set up X, i get bored and usually install debian or ubuntu.
it was fun younger to learn things with distros like gentoo, but now i don't want to feel the pain to spend hours to set up basic things (and gentoo can be specially boring for that and other things too)
at work we mostly use debian and a few freebsd boxes, but they're all servers

[bigpook]

i use archlinux on my laptop, but when i have to spend more tahn one hour to set up X, i get bored and usually install debian or ubuntu.
it was fun younger to learn things with distros like gentoo, but now i don't want to feel the pain to spend hours to set up basic things (and gentoo can be specially boring for that and other things too)
at work we mostly use debian and a few freebsd boxes, but they're all servers

so true. I no longer want to **** around getting things working. I did way too much of that years ago, and that was cool. Nowadays I take the easier path, ubuntu or mint. Mostly, it just works.

[ch_123]

I had that same thought process when I needed to reinstall Linux on my machine the last time. Problem was that it didn't like my sound card. Tried doing what I did to get it working under Arch (Installing OSS instead of ALSA and configuring it... a 5 minute job) but Debian already had OSS installed, and my configuration attempts had no effect. So I go to look up Debian's documentation. The full entirety of their wiki page was basically 'OSS is a sound system'

Put my Arch disc in and hit Ctrl+Alt+Delete...

[bigpook]

stuff like that is annoying. I have a problem with mint 8 on a mobo with integrated graphics (nvidia 7025). Mint doesn't like that at all. So I put in a nvidia 6200 that I had laying around. Mint is happy with that.

I haven't had issues with sound like some other users have had. Maybe I have just been lucky.

[HaaTa]

Well, the easier distros are faster to get up and running (usually). But I've wasted more hours trying to clean up the extra crap they usually put in (Pulseaudio anyone), than I'd like to count.