What OS do you use?

Copper Bezel · Postby **Copper Bezel** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 5:15 am UTC

Wine is patchy and incomplete in operation, though. There are a lot of things that you can technically run, but wouldn't want to. For instance, the Microsoft Office suite will run under Wine with almost no problems - except a total lack of font smoothing, which makes it essentially unusable. Little bugs like that make it a lot simpler in practice to stick with native apps - whether that means native apps on Linux or using a Windows system.

Thesh · Postby **Thesh** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 5:22 am UTC

Windows 7 for my Desktop. Laptop is being repaired, but will install Fedora when I get it back.

Jplus · Postby **Jplus** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 11:57 am UTC

boXd wrote:What kind of software, besides games, generally only works on Windows (or OSX even) again?

Most commercial software, actually. For example everything from Adobe, Autodesk and Avid. As well as from Microsoft and Apple, naturally. There are free, linux-friendly alternatives for most of these applications, but I'd say the same is true of games.

Giant Speck · Postby **Giant Speck** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:35 pm UTC

Linux Mint 14 (MATE), elementaryOS Luna, and Windows 7.

I recently tried KDE again, but learned that QtCurve doesn't support GTK3, so theme integration is a bit worse than it used to be. I'm thinking of trying out Cinnamon again; I haven't used that in a while.

boXd · Postby **boXd** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 2:53 pm UTC

hotaru wrote:metro apps only work on windows (and only on windows 8). that's all i can think of at the moment other than games that won't work with wine.

Yeah, what CB said about using Wine. If I have to mess around with Wine before it sort-of-works (and stuff never *just works* with Wine), I generally consider it 'not usable under Linux'.

Jplus wrote:Most commercial software, actually. For example everything from Adobe, Autodesk and Avid. As well as from Microsoft and Apple, naturally. There are free, linux-friendly alternatives for most of these applications, but I'd say the same is true of games.

I have a PS3, so I don't care so much about the games. But, as an experienced Linux-geek, I'm just hoping to avoid those specific moments of "Oh damn, I *knew* that would stop working under Linux"-moments. Oh well, I guess I'll see soon enough.

hotaru · Postby **hotaru** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 4:19 pm UTC

boXd wrote:Yeah, what CB said about using Wine. If I have to mess around with Wine before it sort-of-works (and stuff never *just works* with Wine), I generally consider it 'not usable under Linux'.

everything i've used just worked... and all i did was "apt-get install wine" and then treat windows executables just like i would on windows.

Copper Bezel wrote:Wine is patchy and incomplete in operation, though. There are a lot of things that you can technically run, but wouldn't want to. For instance, the Microsoft Office suite will run under Wine with almost no problems - except a total lack of font smoothing, which makes it essentially unusable. Little bugs like that make it a lot simpler in practice to stick with native apps - whether that means native apps on Linux or using a Windows system.

font smoothing is purely cosmetic, and a quick google search turns up two very easy ways to enable it:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/29552/ho ... ng-in-wine
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1050920

Copper Bezel · Postby **Copper Bezel** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 10:58 pm UTC

I don't remember if I tried that particular fix, but I did look around when I encountered the problem. Still, even if a fix exists, that doesn't solve the whole problem; like boXd said, it's a matter of being able to trust that your software is going to work the first time, and still be working the second time. I don't have that assurance with Wine.

Font smoothing in an office suite is most certainly not cosmetic, any more than an image editor displaying at 256 colors would be. To get the necessary level of text legibility in MS Word, particularly while using the comments feature, I had to zoom to impractical degrees.

YouTube · Postby **phlip** » Sun Dec 16, 2012 11:45 pm UTC

hotaru wrote:[...] treat windows executables just like i would on windows.

But, given this is you we're talking about, I assume that means "with a great deal of suspicion, and only when absolutely necessary"?

hotaru · Postby **hotaru** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 3:28 pm UTC

phlip wrote:
hotaru wrote:[...] treat windows executables just like i would on windows.

But, given this is you we're talking about, I assume that means "with a great deal of suspicion, and only when absolutely necessary"?

of course, but that applies to any executable file from an untrusted source, not just windows ones.

boXd · Postby **boXd** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 4:41 pm UTC

Speaking of which, does anyone know of a viable alternative to IDA Pro on Linux?

(Yes, I'm aware it runs on Linux, but I can only find - ahem - free versions for Windows, so that's probably not going to be a thing.)

EDIT: Hm, it *does* get a platinum rating on the Wine AppDB. Maybe I should give Wine one more try.

Postby **EvanED** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 5:21 pm UTC

boXd wrote:Speaking of which, does anyone know of a viable alternative to IDA Pro on Linux?

Depends on how fancy you need. If all you need is a really basic disassembler, there's objdump and probably some GUI front ends on top of it or something. But if you actually use Ida's advanced stuff, then it's pretty fair to say that there isn't one.

boXd · Postby **boXd** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 5:30 pm UTC

EvanED wrote:
boXd wrote:Speaking of which, does anyone know of a viable alternative to IDA Pro on Linux?

Depends on how fancy you need. If all you need is a really basic disassembler, there's objdump and probably some GUI front ends on top of it or something. But if you actually use Ida's advanced stuff, then it's pretty fair to say that there isn't one.

Yeah, I tried objdump with some of those frontends, and even gave good ol' gdb a try. None of them really match IDA's features, of course, so I'm considering either running it in a virtual machine (which is a good idea anyway for malware analysis), or using Wine.

troyp · Postby **troyp** » Mon Dec 17, 2012 10:46 pm UTC

So I've put Windows 7 (back) on my thinkpad. I have Ultimate on a partition on my desktop but I never use it because it's a hassle having to restart, so this is more convenient. Plus, my thinkpad has an SSD so Windows actually starts up quickly.

I'm in Sydney with family, so now I'm stuck with Windows 7 for a while :-/ . I notice there's still the thing where you can't copy or unzip files when the full pathname is too long :roll:

. Is this some fundamental limitation of NTFS or something? It's really lame whatever it is. UAC is annoying as shit, but I assume that's fixable when I get around to it. The biggest annoyance is the time it takes to set the system up. There's so much to install and configure manually: no package manager, not many settings immediately available, you have to find software to provide simple functionality like scroll-under-cursor...sigh.

Still, I've noticed the Windows UI has improved considerably. In fact, I've found a pleasant surprise in the most unexpected of places: Windows Explorer. Specifically the address bar. It's quite well-designed with eye to detail. In fact, it's the best FM address bar I've ever used AFAICR (admittedly: not saying much). It works as clickable breadcrumbs, but click in an empty spot and it becomes copyable/editable text until it loses focus. Even better, the breadcrumbs are separated by clickable arrows that give access to the children of the folder to the left (with the one already in the path bolded). This gives you easy access to your siblings, ancestors and ancestors' siblings. The leftmost arrow gives the list of "top-level locations" (computer, home, network, etc). The icon at far left double-clicks to give history, which is also accessed by single-clicking the downwards arrow at the far right of the bar. And next to the bar on the right is the refresh button. It's all right there. It actually gives the impression that someone has thought about the design instead of just throwing something together. Now I can only hope it will inspire other FMs to greater efforts on their address bars...

Not that I think it's perfect: it could do with expanding menus/tree views instead of simple drop-down lists in between ancestors - that way you could navigate the entire system starting from your present location (making the folder view optional). It would be nice if you could drag to copy a location without having to click first. And especially, you should be able to switch back to breadcrumbs without having to go focus something else to do it, eg. by double-clicking an empty spot or the icon (this is actually a significant fuck-up IMO). Still, it's the best I've seen. And I become unaccountably excited when I encounter a UI that actually works ;-)

boXd wrote:Yeah, I tried objdump with some of those frontends, and even gave good ol' gdb a try. None of them really match IDA's features, of course, so I'm considering either running it in a virtual machine (which is a good idea anyway for malware analysis), or using Wine.

Haven't I heard of IDA having a Linux version? Or is it one of those "Linux versions" that are more or less jokes?

cjmcjmcjmcjm · Postby **cjmcjmcjmcjm** » Tue Dec 18, 2012 9:50 pm UTC

troyp wrote:So I've put Windows 7 (back) on my thinkpad. I have Ultimate on a partition on my desktop but I never use it because it's a hassle having to restart, so this is more convenient. Plus, my thinkpad has an SSD so Windows actually starts up quickly.

I'm in Sydney with family, so now I'm stuck with Windows 7 for a while :-/ . I notice there's still the thing where you can't copy or unzip files when the full pathname is too long . Is this some fundamental limitation of NTFS or something? It's really lame whatever it is. UAC is annoying as shit, but I assume that's fixable when I get around to it. The biggest annoyance is the time it takes to set the system up. There's so much to install and configure manually: no package manager, not many settings immediately available, you have to find software to provide simple functionality like scroll-under-cursor...sigh.

It's like my relationship with Windows. I can't use standard Windows installations well. Much more so, others cannot use my installation. I have no problems with this.

Copper Bezel · Postby **Copper Bezel** » Thu Dec 20, 2012 6:52 am UTC

hotaru, I want to thank you, and also mail a large number of bees to you, right now. I've been doing this for two hours, and now I have Office installed in normal Wine, as opposed to PlayOnLinux Wine, so that I could enable the font smoothing. But I am so not going to repeat that process when I upgrade my system in six months, or when Wine updates and breaks everything, or.

Eomund · Postby **Eomund** » Fri Jan 04, 2013 5:49 am UTC

As of yesterday, Arch Linux (and Windows 7, but I already had that).

Jplus · Postby **Jplus** » Fri Jan 04, 2013 9:05 am UTC

Lately I'm using my ipad so often that I'd add iOS if the option was there.

NieXS · Postby **NieXS** » Fri Feb 01, 2013 6:22 am UTC

I'm currently mainly using Windows 8 on my desktop and Arch on my netbook. I technically still dual-boot Windows and Arch on my desktop but I haven't booted into Linux to actually do things in a long while.

Jon_256 · Postby **Jon_256** » Fri Feb 22, 2013 9:05 am UTC

Mac OS is simple to use & troubleshoot.

dii · Postby **dii** » Fri Feb 22, 2013 6:49 pm UTC

Linux Mint 13 with cinnamon sprinkled on top.

I also have Lubuntu 12.04 on an older laptop, Android on my phone, and I also still have a windows xp gathering dust on my desktop, which I never boot into. It'll probably stay there until I need the space for something.

scarecrovv · Postby **scarecrovv** » Sat Feb 23, 2013 3:50 pm UTC

Well it's been a few years since I posted in this thread, so here's an update. Nowadays I use Arch at home, and RHEL 6 at work.

Paradigm_Arsonist · Postby **Paradigm_Arsonist** » Fri Mar 01, 2013 1:44 am UTC

I'm currently using Ubuntu with multiple desktop environments. I plan to move to FreeBSD and Windows 7. This is because I find that desktop distributions don't really solve all problems for newbies and I'd rather have Windows 7 for productivity and FreeBSD for learning to use UNIX semi-competently. FreeBSD is coherent and well-documented; this makes it seem potentially good for learning.

mittfh · Postby **mittfh** » Thu Apr 11, 2013 7:17 pm UTC

My history: Win 3.1 --> Win 95 --> Win 98SE --> Win Vista --> Mandriva --> Mageia --> Arch

Vista's a special case as it was on a notebook I bought (HP/Compaq F504) rather than my self-build PC (the original was built by the IT department at the university I was attending, then upgraded to the point whereby I fancied a new case, so everything else got upgraded as well and the old one sold off). I think I'm on my fourth box - the only original component being a Soundblaster Live! Player 1024. The original was a P75 with 8MB RAM and a 500 MB HDD, I then went through a few Cyrix 6x86 chips before settling on AMD.

My current box is a Gigabyte GA-880GM-USB3 with an AMD FX-4100 CPU, 16 GB RAM (4GB x 4), a 500 GB 3.5" SATA HDD plus an 80 GB 2.5" SATA HDD.

That 2.5" HDD? Salvaged from the notebook when it died after 2 years use (so out of warranty) - the Vista install is occasionally brought back into life via VirtualBox.

Anyway, the main system runs Arch Linux, with MATE, Compiz and Cairo-Dock. Browsers are Chrome (social media + xkcd fora) and Firefox (everything else), Mailer is Thunderbird, Video player is VLC, video editor is Openshot, audio player is Nightingale, graphics editors are GIMP and Digikam while my screenshot tool is Shutter.

bug sniper · Postby **bug sniper** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 6:50 am UTC

I'm still waiting to see an update to this poll involving Windows 7.

Giant Speck · Postby **Giant Speck** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 7:33 am UTC

bug sniper wrote:I'm still waiting to see an update to this poll involving Windows 7.

I'm just now realizing it's missing BSD, too.

hotaru · Postby **hotaru** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 5:32 pm UTC

bug sniper wrote:I'm still waiting to see an update to this poll involving Windows 7.

Other Windows system

Giant Speck wrote:I'm just now realizing it's missing BSD, too.

Other(FileMatrix, The Matrix(no lying, it exists), home-made, etc.)

Giant Speck · Postby **Giant Speck** » Sat Apr 13, 2013 6:11 pm UTC

hotaru wrote:
bug sniper wrote:I'm still waiting to see an update to this poll involving Windows 7.
Other Windows system

Yes, but the poll was made in 2007, so I'm pretty sure that option was meant for older Windows systems, like 2000, 98, 95, etc.

YouTube · Postby **phlip** » Sun Apr 14, 2013 3:36 am UTC

Unfortunately, adding more options would mean resetting the poll... phpBB automatically resets the votes whenever the number of options changes.

PhoenixEnigma · Postby **PhoenixEnigma** » Sun Apr 14, 2013 3:49 am UTC

bug sniper wrote:I'm still waiting to see an update to this poll involving Windows 7.

Windows Vista to cover "NT 6.x" isn't too far fetched, though - no more so than lumping all of OS X together, really.

hotaru · Postby **hotaru** » Sun Apr 14, 2013 4:04 am UTC

PhoenixEnigma wrote:
bug sniper wrote:I'm still waiting to see an update to this poll involving Windows 7.

Windows Vista to cover "NT 6.x" isn't too far fetched, though - no more so than lumping all of OS X together, really.

it'd really make more sense to just lump all of NT together... none of the other operating systems get different poll choices for different versions.

ManyPopes · Postby **ManyPopes** » Thu Jan 23, 2014 7:42 pm UTC

I'm currently running Arch Linux with Xfce at University. Just had to spend the Christmas holidays at home with Windows 7; Lack of workspaces was infuriating.

markfiend · Postby **markfiend** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 3:47 pm UTC

Interesting that my answers of "Debian" and "other Linux" still stand, even though which "other Linux" it is has probably changed since I answered.

I run Arch on my home computers and on my work desktop machine. The servers at work are RHEL (although the most I do on those is a few git commands and maybe change the chmod flags on a file or two).

And I run Raspbian on my Raspberry Pi (which I reckon counts as Debian) although I did have it running Arch too for a while. (Long story.)

I'd imagine that when I answered originally I had Debian on one home machine and Mint on the other, and Mint at work. Maybe. I went through quite a lot of distro-hopping before I settled on Arch. Fortunately the high-ups at work don't mind what distro I'm on as long as the work gets done.

Giant Speck · Postby **Giant Speck** » Wed Jan 29, 2014 10:26 pm UTC

I seem to have migrated to exclusively using OS X now. I barely even bother logging into Windows anymore unless it's for work, and my Linux laptop is still sitting abandoned in the corner. :/

Flumble · Postby **Flumble** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 7:28 pm UTC

~~Windows 7 master-race reporting.~~
I run windows 7 and debian exclusively. Win7 on my laptop and debian on my raspberry and beaglebone. And even if I didn't like windows, I'd probably use it because of nvidia optimus. (although the bumblebee project has come a long way already)

Giant Speck wrote:I seem to have migrated to exclusively using OS X now. I barely even bother logging into Windows anymore unless it's for work, and my Linux laptop is still sitting abandoned in the corner. :/

Oh no, how could this have happened? :O
Please tell me you have some WP7/iOS/Android/BlackBerry OS/Windows 8 (RT) device lying around.

Giant Speck · Postby **Giant Speck** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 10:13 pm UTC

I have a Mac Mini with OS X and Windows 7 on it. For other regular use, I also have a Nexus 7 (2012) and an iPhone 4S. I'm getting ready to buy a Moto X sometime in the next week or so.

Thesh · Postby **Thesh** » Thu Jan 30, 2014 11:23 pm UTC

Last weekend I dumped Fedora for Debian; ocassionally I would get updates that broke my laptop, and I was tired of dealing with it. So now, I'm going with good ol' stable Debian.

Neil_Boekend · Postby **Neil_Boekend** » Mon Sep 01, 2014 3:56 pm UTC

It says Dell.

Xenomortis · Postby **Xenomortis** » Mon Sep 01, 2014 4:06 pm UTC

At home, Windows 7 (desktop) and Debian (laptop).
At work, RedHat (desktop) and Windows 7 (laptop).

Quercus · Postby **Quercus** » Thu Sep 25, 2014 4:56 pm UTC

Jplus wrote:
boXd wrote:What kind of software, besides games, generally only works on Windows (or OSX even) again?

Most commercial software, actually. For example everything from Adobe, Autodesk and Avid. As well as from Microsoft and Apple, naturally. There are free, linux-friendly alternatives for most of these applications, but I'd say the same is true of games.

Lightroom and photoshop are the more or less only reasons I still have windows 7 on my desktop, and yes, I know that there are plenty of Linux alternatives, but for anyone semi-serious about photography they are just not anywhere near as good (or at least not as quick to use, which in photo processing == not anywhere near as good).

cjmcjmcjmcjm · Postby **cjmcjmcjmcjm** » Sun Sep 28, 2014 6:37 pm UTC

I have Windows 8 at work. I spent far more time than I should be proud of messing with Auto Hot Key to make the shortcut keys match my muscle memory from using Macs for so long. The ugly Metro UI doesn't bother me, but I can't see why anyone thought it sensible to make the start screen cover the whole screen and make you forget what windows you were looking at.

What operating systems do you use(or want to use)?(2 max)

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