[Poll] What Operating System do you use

[linr76]

in these days, Microsofts grip of the market has diminished somewhat, so i would be interested which operating system do you use on your daily use device?
obviously i am not really talking about mobile OSes but laptop/desktop ones.
if you use multiple ones, choose the one you use most,
your experiences and stories on how you ended up using that particular OS are welcome! share your thoughts

[Sniper47]

Windows 7 64bit here. Have always been on Windows. Can't really see the benefit to Linux other than from a tech perspective of being able to build and develop. But most of that can be done virtually within Windows as well, yes?

[linr76]

i'd happily use Linux, as a matter of fact i did for years. but unfortunately with the newer laptops with Nvidia Optimus technology (combined chipset and dedicated video card) that does not work as good (some not at all). that's why i came back to Windows (8.1 in my case)
if you change from Windows XP or Windows 7, you might as well go for Linux instead of Windows 8. its really that much different.

of course you can always use a virtual machine, thats exactly what i do, it also helps keeping your machine clean*er* (i did the same while running linux also)

[vampirefo]

I use Linux, have used Linux since 2003.

[usblaidas]

[WuddaWaste]

I am a Windoze user.

Since my childhood with Windows 3.11 (and DOS 6.22), I've always been a Windows user. I read Dan Gookin's "DOS for Dummies" in its entirety in my grade school English class. I later in high school went on to certify under CompTIA for basic Windows and Networking stuff, then took some courses from Microsoft's MCSE program -- at the time focused on Windows NT 4.0. I happily used Windows 2000 for many, many years.

At the end of high school and throughout college I installed/used various Linux distributions. I even took my girlfriend in college to a local "Linux Install Fest" -- a really, REALLY bizarre environment to bring a girl into. (On the plus side, we got ALL the attention and help we could ever want and more.) I used Knoppix a LOT around the 2002-2005 time frame to recover crashed Windows computers. When I was a Computer Science major in college (before switching to EE), we used a lot of Sun Solaris (Unix) machines. My senior project in college was all done using Fedora Linux.

I fell off the Linux Bandwagon shortly after Ubuntu became popular. My computer at the time had Ubuntu/Vista dual-boot, but because an Internet connection was required to obtain Wi-Fi Network Card drivers (a Catch-22), I never completely finished bringing Ubuntu to a usable state. That was kind of my "last straw" with Linux so to say.

I'd love to go back some day, but staying in the Windows environment is so much more intuitive for me. I understand the old school file structure. I understand the ins and outs of the registry. I understand a whole lot of little things that just make it generally more usable. It just feels like home.

(I also admit: I tried using Windows 8 once. It was my uncle's computer. He wanted me to fix it. It felt like I was in some confusing Mac-hybrid world where I didn't know where anything was, how to get to anything, or even if programs were open, closed, minimized, or otherwise obliterated. I do not look forward to my future of learning Windows 8. I might go back to Linux in the next few years.)

Personal history with Windows on my PCs:
*Win 3.11
*Win 95
*Win 98
*Win 1.1 (an experiment)
*Win 2k
*Win Vista
*Win 7 (present)

Personal history with Linux/Unix, as best I remember:
*PHAT Linux
*LOAF Linux
*Sun Solaris
*RedHat
*Fedora
*Debian
*Knoppix
*Ubuntu (2007)

Personal history with OS/X, etc:
* I used my 5th grade teacher's Mac once.
* I used iMacs a LOT in college to check my emails and such. At that time, iMacs were brand new, all over campus, and nobody had any idea on how to use one yet -- so they were always open.

I have never used FreeBSD or ChromeOS.

TL;DR: WuddaWaste has piddled around with Linux, but is mostly an old-school Windows guy.

[vampirefo]

People should use the OS they are most comfortable with, but also need to realize if they are using a guide they must make their own adjustments per their OS and not expect the author of the guide to do it for them. I have on other forums written tutorials, then have people ask me how would you do that on windows? I say well the guide is written by a Linux guy, for Linux users, so you tell me LOL.

I used windows from 1998 to 2003, found it to be boring, slow not interesting at all, basically I used a OS, MS built and told me what I could or could not do with a OS I paid them for.

I started using Linux in 2002, made the switch in 2003 to Linux only, Linux is free and I truly own it, I can legally do with Linux what I want, while with windows you only rent it, MS will tell you for the rest of your life what you can or can not do with their OS that you paid for.

[linr76]

I have worked with SuSe, Ubuntu, Mint, Red Hat EL, CEntOs, Sientific Linux and Fedora, even installed Debian once. Probably tried out a few others too.. (like PC Linux, Knoppix etc.)
i ran YellowDog Linux on an IBM RS/6000 even....
My Samsung Series 3 ARM Chromebook runs Ubuntu 12.04.4 LTS instead of ChromeOS....

i am still trying to get Linux running on a Rikomagic MK802 TV-Stick, but it's resisting mightily.

personally i like Fedora, but a 6 month update cycle is a bit too short for me. Bleeding edge software and kernel also leads to a lot of problems.
Ubuntu LTS is ok (5 years) but Ubuntu does some things i don't really like.
when it comes to development/building stuff most tutorials you will find are based on Ubuntu though.

it basically comes down to rpm vs deb, unless you go crazy with ArchLinux or Gentoo (which is the base for ChromeOS btw.)
i can work with both and both have their pro and cons, i am not a fanboy either way.

i have successfully run Fedora with bumblebee-nvidia and primus/optirun
problem is - both my work as my private Laptop are Lenovo and the outputs are hardwired to the discrete graphics card. this does not work with bumblebee. meaning any presentation or connecting your laptop through hdmi is not working. that is not really acceptable for me.
so either you run only on the discrete card (turn off optimus in BIOS) and take the hit on battery life (about 50% and more) or you just give up like me and go back to windooozeee.
i did not try with Ubuntu after that, since the problem is Bumblebee really and not the distribution.
i still use Linux (Ubuntu atm) in virtualized environments.

[WuddaWaste]

Linux is free and I truly own it, I can legally do with Linux what I want, while with windows you only rent it, MS will tell you for the rest of your life what you can or can not do with their OS that you paid for.

That sounds really cool. But can you tell me... how would you do that on Windows?

It looks like you might have talked me into dual-booting again. I'd love to make the full switch to Linux if I can get all my sw and peripherals working with it.

[aus9]

Hi

Started PC life in 2000 with W 98SE

read that microsoft.com had been cracked in 2000 and MS denied anything had been stolen
XP came out in 2001 and had a tasty time fixing up a number of faults

I could not possibly comment on my thoughts about these facts.
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So I decided to switch and a computer magazine in Australia advised there was Linux. On my PC it was a bitch to install.
In fact the first time I installed I arrived at the Console prompt with no X running as I did not know what my Linux video card driver was......roughly equal to a MS-DOS prompt.

Then I tried a timeware Suse which told me my video card driver. Then I installed Mandrake. These distros no longer exist under the original names BTW.

Now on Debian sid AKA unstable.

Linux is free and I truly own it,

AFAIK In the United States, the name Linux is a trademark registered to Linus Torvalds
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However as most MS users fail to understand what little they can do with their EULA, I know your heart is in the right place.

I'd love to make the full switch to Linux if I can get all my sw and peripherals working with it

Linux drivers for most hardware come from the kernel itself or you install extra software that enable a driver for the kernel.
b) Wine can run a fair amount of Windows software without needing to install Windows.
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AFAIK it not able to run probably the most recent Windows web browser. And why would you when you can run
Google Chrome or Firefox. Nor can it run the latest games that need DirectX type layers without some fiddling.
YMMV

There are a number of sw alternatives to in Linux but there are still some that don't exist.
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good luck

PS The vote count is so small that Linux is (today) about 50%. The last major web browser survey done by Google donkey years ago had MS around 96% Linux 1%. Caused quite a chuckle