xkcd

by **zmatt** » Tue May 10, 2011 3:20 pm UTC

Windows 7 64bit. best ting since sliced bread. At work I have to use XP due to compatibility with shit 3rd party medical software. We tried rolling out Windows 7 earlier this year but we have hit a lot of speed bumps on the way. Mostly lazy developers who refuse to support anything but XP with IE 6 (not joking) or devs who no longer exist.

by **hotaru** » Tue May 10, 2011 7:37 pm UTC

zmatt wrote:At work I have to use XP due to compatibility with shit 3rd party medical software. We tried rolling out Windows 7 earlier this year but we have hit a lot of speed bumps on the way. Mostly lazy developers who refuse to support anything but XP with IE 6 (not joking) or devs who no longer exist.

did you try using xp mode?

by **zmatt** » Tue May 10, 2011 8:57 pm UTC

doesn't work that way unfortunately. Many of the applications don't operate in a vacuum and merely emulating xp is sufficient only in a few cases.

by **Dason** » Tue May 10, 2011 10:12 pm UTC

Has anybody given tried Ubuntu 11.04 yet? I tested it but I have to say I don't really like their decision to use Unity as the default. I could try out the classic environment while testing but I'm just not liking what I'm seeing. Looks like I'll stick with 10.04 on this laptop for the time being.

by **Giant Speck** » Wed May 11, 2011 1:25 am UTC

I haven't tried it yet because I can't get Unity to work in VirtualBox. I'm going to have to install it on a partition or something.

I'm not really all that happy with them deciding to use Unity so soon. It reminds me of when Kubuntu was so quick to start using KDE 4, which was a disaster.

by **hotaru** » Wed May 11, 2011 1:50 am UTC

zmatt wrote:doesn't work that way unfortunately. Many of the applications don't operate in a vacuum and merely emulating xp is sufficient only in a few cases.

i don't think you understand how it works. it isn't emulating xp, it is xp.

by **Meteorswarm** » Wed May 11, 2011 5:38 pm UTC

Dason wrote:Has anybody given tried Ubuntu 11.04 yet? I tested it but I have to say I don't really like their decision to use Unity as the default. I could try out the classic environment while testing but I'm just not liking what I'm seeing. Looks like I'll stick with 10.04 on this laptop for the time being.

I'm enjoying Unity. It took a little while to get used to, but it feels pretty natural.

Also, changing to the classic environment is just a drop-down box at the log-in screen, and it preserves your choice for later log ins, just like choosing a different desktop environment if you have multiple installed. Seriously, it takes two clicks to go back to classic.

by **Dason** » Wed May 11, 2011 5:51 pm UTC

Oh I know it easy at least when installed. I couldn't get it switched while doing the 'test ubuntu 11.04 without installing' option. I suspect maybe if I created a new user and then logged out of the default ubuntu user for that testing period and then logged in with the new user I might be able to but it just wouldn't let me go to the classic environment while testing. It was annoying.

... I typically have quite a few DEs and Window Managers installed because I like to change things around quite a bit so I definitely know you can switch it pretty easily. I'm just wondering why they made the default Unity even for desktop users.

by **Meteorswarm** » Wed May 11, 2011 5:54 pm UTC

Dason wrote:Oh I know it easy at least when installed. I couldn't get it switched while doing the 'test ubuntu 11.04 without installing' option. I suspect maybe if I created a new user and then logged out of the default ubuntu user for that testing period and then logged in with the new user I might be able to but it just wouldn't let me go to the classic environment while testing. It was annoying.

... I typically have quite a few DEs and Window Managers installed because I like to change things around quite a bit so I definitely know you can switch it pretty easily. I'm just wondering why they made the default Unity even for desktop users.

Because it works well, at least for me, on the desktop? The idioms it uses are actually pretty natural.

by **zmatt** » Thu May 12, 2011 12:48 pm UTC

hotaru wrote:
zmatt wrote:doesn't work that way unfortunately. Many of the applications don't operate in a vacuum and merely emulating xp is sufficient only in a few cases.

i don't think you understand how it works. it isn't emulating xp, it is xp.

It isn't as pure as a virtual machine. The problem we have is that a lot of the applications are either hosted through citrix are web based, or are a combination of the two. By trying to use xp mode to host otherwise incompatible citrix apps, some interesting things happen. As for web apps all of the incompatible ones I have to deal with require IE 6 and XP. I can do the XP part, but I can't get IE 6 to work right. It does and it doesn't. This could all be solved with VMs of course, but our users are not tech savvy so this would only be a hindrance and the machine are not necessarily that new so there is no guarantee that they can even run a VM with reasonable performance. I've been fiddling around with it this week, but I haven't been able to get it the way I want. To make it deployable it has to be as reliable as it is in its native environment and be no more complicated in operation. Convoluted workarounds aren't acceptable.

EDIT: I didn't want to make it sound like IE 6 isn't there. It's just that with Citrix for some reason when you have it with XP mode and windows 7 it breaks a lot of things. It doesn't like coexisting.

by **hotaru** » Thu May 12, 2011 8:13 pm UTC

zmatt wrote:It isn't as pure as a virtual machine. The problem we have is that a lot of the applications are either hosted through citrix are web based, or are a combination of the two. By trying to use xp mode to host otherwise incompatible citrix apps, some interesting things happen. As for web apps all of the incompatible ones I have to deal with require IE 6 and XP. I can do the XP part, but I can't get IE 6 to work right. It does and it doesn't. This could all be solved with VMs of course, but our users are not tech savvy so this would only be a hindrance and the machine are not necessarily that new so there is no guarantee that they can even run a VM with reasonable performance. I've been fiddling around with it this week, but I haven't been able to get it the way I want. To make it deployable it has to be as reliable as it is in its native environment and be no more complicated in operation. Convoluted workarounds aren't acceptable.

EDIT: I didn't want to make it sound like IE 6 isn't there. It's just that with Citrix for some reason when you have it with XP mode and windows 7 it breaks a lot of things. It doesn't like coexisting.

the problem with what you're saying is that windows 7's xp mode is just windows xp running on a virtual machine. that's all it is. it isn't some "convoluted workaround". it isn't a compatibility layer. it's the same windows xp that you're running now. if something doesn't work on one, either you've configured it incorrectly or it won't work on the other.

by **cjmcjmcjmcjm** » Tue May 17, 2011 1:20 am UTC

Just updated my Ubuntu and now my touchpad won't work and some of my defaults are all screwed up

by **Meem1029** » Tue May 17, 2011 3:54 am UTC

Currently using Ubuntu, but I'm likely going to switch to another distro come fall (I don't really like the look of Unity, Gnome 3, or KDE and from what I've heard other distros will probably be better for me for whatever reason). I currently have vms of Debian, Gentoo (although that's not actually installed yet), and Fedora to see which I like.

by **flying sheep** » Tue May 17, 2011 12:23 pm UTC

Meem1029 wrote:Currently using Ubuntu, but I'm likely going to switch to another distro come fall (I don't really like the look of Unity, Gnome 3, or KDE and from what I've heard other distros will probably be better for me for whatever reason). I currently have vms of Debian, Gentoo (although that's not actually installed yet), and Fedora to see which I like.

i think you should try arch, too, to have the widest possible range of reasonable choices.

by **Dason** » Wed May 18, 2011 12:31 am UTC

Meteorswarm wrote:
Dason wrote:Oh I know it easy at least when installed. I couldn't get it switched while doing the 'test ubuntu 11.04 without installing' option. I suspect maybe if I created a new user and then logged out of the default ubuntu user for that testing period and then logged in with the new user I might be able to but it just wouldn't let me go to the classic environment while testing. It was annoying.

... I typically have quite a few DEs and Window Managers installed because I like to change things around quite a bit so I definitely know you can switch it pretty easily. I'm just wondering why they made the default Unity even for desktop users.

Because it works well, at least for me, on the desktop? The idioms it uses are actually pretty natural.

I ended up trying Unity for a good two days. I got most things set up in a way that seemed alright. But I just didn't really enjoy it. At all. Going back to classic.

by **colinrmitchell** » Wed May 18, 2011 8:20 pm UTC

I put a check for 'Ubuntu' and a check for 'Other' for FreeBSD.

I've been using Ubuntu for about 3 years now as a desktop and love it. Also used it as a home server to learn about those types of things.

I've recently been tinkering with FreeBSD. I now use it on my home server as well as an old P4 desktop hooked to my TV for YouTube videos and playing DOOM. I really want to try using it on my main desktop, but I'm really spoiled by the ease of hardware detection of Ubuntu.

by **hotaru** » Wed May 18, 2011 8:59 pm UTC

colinrmitchell wrote:I really want to try using it on my main desktop, but I'm really spoiled by the ease of hardware detection of Ubuntu.

try pc-bsd. the last time i tried ubuntu on real hardware it had all sorts of problems with my graphics card and wifi adapter, while pc-bsd just worked perfectly.

by **Ashleylharnett** » Thu May 19, 2011 11:05 am UTC

I selected Mac OSX and Ubuntu. Although my primary OS is Mac I love to play with Ubuntu (as well as trying out variations thereupon). I have a mac-person love of mac but I also hate every one of its failings from the depths of my existence.

by **Hoest** » Sat May 21, 2011 5:34 pm UTC

I use Windows 7 on my desktop for gaming and one of my laptops, and I use Arch Linux with Xfce4 for my other laptop.

by **archeleus** » Thu Aug 04, 2011 10:54 am UTC

OS X, now OS X Lion.
Gentoo

by **Anonymously Famous** » Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:00 pm UTC

I use Vista on my home computer and XP on my work one.

Why do I use Vista? Because it came with the computer and I haven't found any overwhelming reason to switch. I do every once in a while make a Linux partition for fun, but the poll allowed a maximum of 2 choices, and those are the 2 operating systems that I use the most.

by **JuEeHa** » Sun Sep 11, 2011 8:10 am UTC

I use mainly OSX but most of the time it could be FreeBSD, becouse I only do web surffing and playing games in the Quartz enviroment (I actyally sometimes surf in X11 using links2) and everything else in X11. I use linux on my netbook, old tower and my server(100MHz pentium I, 40MB RAM, 1GB hard disk). Also I sometimes use FreeDOS, ReactOS, DexOS and my owm OS, but I could only select two.

by **userxp** » Tue Dec 27, 2011 4:53 pm UTC

Poll results: 45% Linux, 39% Windows, 17% others... this is a perfect proof that this forum does not represent the average user very well...

I use Windows 7 on my laptop and Windows XP on my older desktop computer. I also have several virtual machines including Windows XP, Ubuntu and Mac OS X (that last one never worked very well...), along with a few Linux LiveCDs.

by **FLHerne** » Fri Jan 13, 2012 10:23 pm UTC

Aw, I only got two choices! :cry:

I'm using, in order of use:
Kubuntu 11.10 (also with LXDE)
Windows Vista
Lubuntu 10.10
Debian Etch (PPC/Nubus)
Windows XP
Windows 2000
Ubuntu 10.04
Debian Sarge (PPC)
Mac OS 10.4 (PPC)
Mac OS 7 (PPC)

I have quite a lot of computers and use them pretty much at random except my Kubuntu machine, which stays as my primary through being twice as fast as any of the others :wink:

.

by **JonnyTHM** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 12:13 pm UTC

OS for me has been an interesting journey

2007: got the first computer I can call my own, ran windows Vista was rather high performance for it's day
2008: graduated high school, couldn't take my giant desktop to college so I got a MacBook Pro as a graduation present, found OS X to be a huge step up from vista, absolutely loved the darn thing, installed so much software and tinkered with every app I could find, it was pretty ridiculous how much I used the sucker.
2010: MacBook fires itself due to a factory defect. Warranty expired a month earlier so I would need an entirely new motherboard ($900!) Opted to not go for the new motherboard for such an out of date device (plus I hated the fact that it became as hot as the fires of Mordor when I ran anything requiring high graphics). Still needed a laptop however so I got one for the same price as the motherboard.
Still 2010: over the summer when I was at home with my folks I decided that I had enough of just hearing about linux and wanted to try it out for myself, installed Ubuntu 10.04 on my old crappy bloated desktop, fell in love with U.I. customization, decided to make my career in understanding cognition and applying it to U.I. design
Still 2010: partitioned the hard drive of my laptop, installed Ubuntu 10.10, probably the best my laptop ran, kept windows 7 as well because I occasionally game
2011: Ubuntu 11.04 comes out, not a huge fan of unity, the system install screws up my laptop's performance and my backup hard drive fails meaning I'm stuck with the broken OS for a while.
Still 2011: Stop using Ubuntu on a regular basis until I get a new backup disk
Still 2011: start experimenting with other Distros, not really finding anything different about them except for default environment, which is pretty easy to change
Still 2011: do a reinstall of Ubuntu (11.10), whiping the HD after backup, still hate Unity, uninstall unity as soon as update finishes
2012: winter break, so I start experimenting with new desktop environments, KDE is awful IMO, start using GNOME again, find that it works to the point of where I shouldn't change.

Why I use Ubuntu primarily: Boot time, sleep/wake time, U.I. Customization, being sleightly snobbish to Mac users, can't really find any reason to switch to other linux distro (gentoo seems cool though)
Why I keep windows around: Compatibility with everything, SKYRIM

I have two computers (both hopelessly out of date) and use Ubuntu as my main OS, however I recently ditched the default desktop environment in favor of GNOME 3.

by **NotThatDork** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:19 pm UTC

I remember writting here or there in this forum about OS. for the time (2 years ago, I think, I was using Windows 7 70% of the time, some Ubuntu depending on month of the year for testing purposes and a partition with Hackintosh 10.6.0 which was a pain in the *** to install and run, only for learning purpoeses.

Things have changed since I took the personal goal to switch to Open Souce fully. Not that Windwos 7 is bad (in fact, is the best thing they made since they exist) it's just because I needed a lot of hacking and I was becoming bored with gaming... and.., I should have had to pay for it, remember?

Such was the will to let Windows go, that now is rare for me to start a Windows session (and I find it shockingly boring compared to Gnome 2.x with Compiz)

I've tested so far a lot of distros: Ubuntu 10.04,10.10, 11.04 (it really hurt my eyes), Kubuntu 11.10, Sabayon 7-KDE, Mint 10-Gnome 2.x, The Mint 12 RC and Final and Fedora 15. Hated Gnome 3 no matter how, except for Mint 12 adaptation but, yet, there are problems with 3D card acceleration and ATI hardware for Gnome 3 that ATI are reluctanct to solve. Besides, the whole paradigm change in Gnome 3 was rough to say the least, and disrespectably forceful. You can give someone the option to start working another way, not force him to.

... Seriously, how could you screw Gnome 2 that much?

Unity was subpar at best and had, as Gnome 3, the wrong idea to give the impression that your desktop PC is a playstation (the big app icons on Gnome 3, really, felt as a gigantic smartphone at best). Never liked too much KDE, too much panels, too much glamour but menus are a chaos compared with gnome 2.x simplicity & elegance.

Therefore, I stuck to Ubuntu 10.4.3, which is LTS until 2013. Then I think I'm gonna switch from some of the below mentioned:

- Mint 12 with that mixture of GNOME3 and Gnome 2 IF they solve ATI 3d card drivers bugs.
- Xubuntu 12.04, I've testing XFCE so far, and it seems almost like Gnome 2.x
- Arch Linux, with whatsoever (I've been testing Enlighment 17, in Ubuntu, and seems to worth a run for it's mone) but XFCE seems to be the winner these days. - OpenSuse with (sight) KDE if nothing of the rest really goes for me.

Oh! I also had a server with a FreeNAS installed on a 1.5 Tb disk. I think I'm gonna dismantle it and keep the booting disk added to GRUB. Thing is, FreeNas can be updated to FreeBSD (IIRC), does it worth it? Which version should be? 9.0?

Still there are some some things I've been unable to accomplish so far:

-Office suite: Libre Office, Open Office, is subpar to MS-Office (a very long way, s painful to admit as it is), and running it with Wine have been problematic.
-Photoedditing: GIMP cannot be compared to Adobe Photoshop, except if you are cracking jokes. Sad as it is, Linux is really subpar in this specific matter. And I couldn't execute properly Photoshop with any emulator (playlinux, Wine, or whatever).

by **NotThatDork** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:23 pm UTC

JonnyTHM wrote:OS for me has been an interesting journey

Still 2011: do a reinstall of Ubuntu (11.10), whiping the HD after backup, still hate Unity, uninstall unity as soon as update finishes
2012: winter break, so I start experimenting with new desktop environments, KDE is awful IMO, start using GNOME again, find that it works to the point of where I shouldn't change.

Why I use Ubuntu primarily: Boot time, sleep/wake time, U.I. Customization, being sleightly snobbish to Mac users, can't really find any reason to switch to other linux distro (gentoo seems cool though)
Why I keep windows around: Compatibility with everything, SKYRIM

I have two computers (both hopelessly out of date) and use Ubuntu as my main OS, however I recently ditched the default desktop environment in favor of GNOME 3.

Try installing on whatever Ubuntu Distro you have (don't need Xubuntu) XFCE, is light, really feels like Gnome 2, and seems that can run on old machines. At least, it's possible to do it in Ubuntu 10.04, don't see why it can't be possible on 11.10... it just a matter of adding a PPA and a bit of Apt.

And if you want to smoke rare things, you should try Enlightment 17, again, possible on 10.04, don't know eactly if can run on 11.10 (for example, running Gnome 3 in 10.10 made a disaster on my pc).

by **EvanED** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 10:53 pm UTC

I totally recommend giving a tiling window manager a chance for a few days if you're in the market for a WM. I currently use Xmonad and have used Awesome in the past (don't hold it against Awesome that I've changed; that was partly external forces), and there are some others like RatPoison and Ion.

by **Endless Mike** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 4:26 pm UTC

I installed Windows 8 on my old Macbook. It's...certainly an OS.

by **NotThatDork** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:18 pm UTC

Endless Mike wrote:I installed Windows 8 on my old Macbook. It's...certainly an OS.

Meaning?

Evan ED wrote:I totally recommend giving a tiling window manager a chance for a few days if you're in the market for a WM. I currently use Xmonad and have used Awesome in the past (don't hold it against Awesome that I've changed; that was partly external forces), and there are some others like RatPoison and Ion.

Oh, meh, I'm human, and I think we have abandoned caves since we discovered air conditioning.

Nah, seriously, it's not my love (except if it were for financial follow up (still, other WM /DE would do better for me). Besides, my wife also uses my PC on ocassions, and even if she doesn't have a tity clue on what "sudo" means, at least with gnome 2 nothing seems very complex while web browsing, playing music, doing social and mailing, and ocasional use of libreoffice writer doc. et al.

by **Endless Mike** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 9:32 pm UTC

NotThatDork wrote:
Endless Mike wrote:I installed Windows 8 on my old Macbook. It's...certainly an OS.

Meaning?

That I have no idea why MS thinks the Metro interface is in any way a good idea that people want.

by **phlip** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 1:03 am UTC

Endless Mike wrote:I installed Windows 8 on my old Macbook. It's...certainly an OS.

Oh, man. Yeah. Ugh.

I put my opinion of Win8 in FaiD a while back... the short version is: everything makes sense if you think your computer is just a smartphone that's too big to fit in your pocket.

by **Giant Speck** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:08 am UTC

I like Metro.

I haven't tried Windows 8 yet, so I really don't have an opinion on its implementation on the desktop.

by **phlip** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 3:32 am UTC

I don't have any experience with Metro on an actual smartphone... I can only imagine it's entirely adequate, if it behaves similarly to the Metro half of Win8. It just translates horribly to the desktop interface. This shouldn't be surprising... a direct port of the iOS or Android interfaces the the desktop would be a similarly poor idea.

For instance, on a smartphone it makes sense for buttons to be oversized, to account for the inaccuracy of finger-on-touchscreen, and for controls to hide when you don't need them, to allow for the small screen. On a desktop machine, with a mouse, and a large monitor, these considerations make less sense.

by **Steax** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 1:36 pm UTC

I've tried Metro on both a touchscreen handheld mesmerglobber (tablet, whatever) and a desktop machine.

On the handheld: It's cool, makes sense, useful, a sane alternative for iOS/android. I actually liked it over android, it has many things iOS lacks and I want - and by "has", I mean has the UI to support it, 'it' mostly being app-specific flexibility (not all apps are created equal), some should indeed have special home screen power, etc.

On the desktop: It looks cool, but that's it.

I've always mentally pulled the line between portable OSes and desktop ones based on the rate of information they output. Mobile OSes show things as required, bite-sized, because that means least battery use, least processor power, least memory use, least space use, etc. Desktop OSes try to display a lot of different information at a time. Can't just copy one to the other.

by **Endless Mike** » Wed Jan 18, 2012 2:34 pm UTC

Yeah, the WP7 OS is pretty good. Hell, the Metro interface on the XBox is pretty good, as well. It just doesn't really translate to a desktop experience. Granted, the Windows 8 Start Screen (whatever they're calling it) is closer to the XBox version, but it's still not really the best way to do it since the interfaces are entirely different. It's clear that it's intended to be usable on touch interfaces, which will make it a huge improvement over previous Windows on those kinds of devices, but that still makes it less than ideal for a desktop or laptop where a keyboard and mouse are the main interfaces.

by **Copper Bezel** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:29 am UTC

Yeah, as much as I don't see myself actually using a Microsoft OS, I'm really curious to try the Windows 8 UI, but I don't think I'd be giving it a fair shake without using it on a touch device. I really, really like the way the tiling is handled, and it's something I "miss" in Gnome Shell. It's not infrequent that I have two windows up and want to make one a little wider than the other without micromanaging anything. The general chromelessness is laudable, too.

At the same time, I don't actually think I could live without workspaces (or, from what I've seen of Windows 8, multiple windows of the same app.) And while I like iOS's indicators-and-a-clock panel, and Android's and Gnome Shell's interpretations thereof, I don't think I'm ready to just not have a panel quite yet. I like knowing what time it is.

NotThatDork wrote:Unity was subpar at best and had, as Gnome 3, the wrong idea to give the impression that your desktop PC is a playstation (the big app icons on Gnome 3, really, felt as a gigantic smartphone at best)

I fell in love with Shell at first tap, because I really think it's doing a good job at getting the best out of both desktop and mobile UI metaphor sets, and it gets as many of the little things surprisingly right as surprisingly wrong. The icon size in the dash was a surprisingly wrong thing; on my netbook, 96 px is a full sixth of the vertical viewing area that isn't panel, which is just absurd. And that's far from the only thing that's sent me into editing .css and .js files (while knowing neither CSS nor Javascript) and messing around with extensions. I'm not really content with anything at default, though.

by **EvanED** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 3:42 am UTC

Copper Bezel wrote:Yeah, as much as I don't see myself actually using a Microsoft OS, I'm really curious to try the Windows 8 UI, but I don't think I'd be giving it a fair shake without using it on a touch device.

That would only be true if it was only (or largely) going to be used on a touch device. As long as it's presented as a primary UI on the desktop as well, it's eminently fair to evaluate it in that environment.

One of these days maybe I'll see if I can get my hand on whatever preview release people seem to have and give Win 8 a shot.

by **PhoenixEnigma** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:25 am UTC

Win8 looks like it's going to keep my on my every-other-version upgrade cycle. I tried the developer preview, and generally had it come up with one minor pro and two large cons vs Win7.

Finally having an "Up" button alongside "Back" for navigating filesystems is nice.

Replacing the start menu with that horrid, horrid screen is not nice - I tried both with a mouse and a fairly large (9x6" ish) touchpad, but no touchscreen, and it was not a pleasant experience. Microsoft's justification is that, when you're looking to launch a program, you aren't doing anything else, and therefore it makes sense to use the entire display. They entirely missed the fact that having stuff spread all over the place is a hassle - there's no reason I should be mousing all over the screen.

Adding that damn ribbon interface to Windows Explorer also sucks. It's more clutter for people who just want to do the basic things, and the people actually using the extra functionality are better served by the faster keyboard shortcuts they already have. And it's big - I don't really care that MS moved stuff so there's no net loss in lines displayed in a given height, but they could have had more of an improvement - and with 768p screens so bloody common, every step in better vertical space efficiency is a blessing.

by **EvanED** » Thu Jan 19, 2012 4:49 am UTC

You can do this to minimize them.

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

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