OS wars... which one is more exciting...

[commodorejohn]

I just can't get into Linux. It suffers too greatly from open-source's greatest weakness: programmer-centric UI. By which I mean that the UI of any given application is very likely designed by the programmers thereof, who, being programmers, would much rather be tweaking the backend functionality than working on boring stuff like interface design and usability testing, so the cool technical bits get all the effort, and the user is left talking to them through an interface that's essentially an afterthought.

That varies from application to application, but it's distressingly endemic to the Linux developer community. Add in the fact that nobody seems to coordinate with anybody else on anything but the very most general standards for shortcuts, menu arrangement, interoperability, and so on, and it often makes even what should be simple tasks into anything from a chore to an ordeal. And also take into account the fact that Linux is a slavish reimplementation of forty years of Unix cruft accumulated in turning an OS for PDP-11s driving VT-100 terminals and teletypes into a modern-ish desktop-capable OS, and it's all really just far, far more complicated than it has any reason to be.

(And despite its techy nature, it's not even all that fun to tinker with, since the Unix cruft-architecture is so labyrinthine that playing around with one single component of the OS can bring the whole house-o'-cards crashing down and leave you tapping at a command line from a rescue disk trying to figure out what went wrong and how to fix it.)

I still like the idea of an open-source operating system, but Linux isn't it and I don't think it will ever be - it's so over-complicated that it'd be simpler to throw out everything but the original design elements from the '70s and rebuild from there. That's why I'm setting my hopes more on projects like Haiku, which has a strong focus on usability and attainable simplicity (as opposed to destructive dumbing-down,) or ReactOS, which is at least reimplementing a baseline that's somewhat comprehensible by mortals and has a wide array of software designed for users instead of being designed with users as an afterthought.

 

[Buzzfuzz]

Of course, being in IT I always buy OEM OS, but the average consumer doesn't. I was speaking relatively to the market as a whole.

Well not here in the Netherlands, even the most basic users know how to get the OEM.
Most shops here sell it with a few basic parts, and off you go.
I even got mine without buying any hardware.

 

[Powerpie5000]

Of course, being in IT I always buy OEM OS, but the average consumer doesn't. I was speaking relatively to the market as a whole.

Well not here in the Netherlands, even the most basic users know how to get the OEM.
Most shops here sell it with a few basic parts, and off you go.
I even got mine without buying any hardware.

You can buy OEM Windows without purchasing any extra hardware from main online retailers here in the UK (which probably violates MS rules/laws/agreements or whatever :roll.

 

[Paul_s]

Of course, being in IT I always buy OEM OS, but the average consumer doesn't. I was speaking relatively to the market as a whole.

Well not here in the Netherlands, even the most basic users know how to get the OEM.
Most shops here sell it with a few basic parts, and off you go.
I even got mine without buying any hardware.

You can buy OEM Windows without purchasing any extra hardware from main online retailers here in the UK (which probably violates MS rules/laws/agreements or whatever :roll.

Yeah, I've purchased several copies of Win7 OEM without so much as buying any hardware! I think at minimum you need to buy a mouse and keyboard with it! (I do make the effort to be legit though when building PCs for folk )

Back to the thread I'm itching to buy an os4.1 machine. Fed up with Windows and everything else at the moment. I need some Amiga in my life... even though it ain't C= Amiga.... at least I can play with a later version of the OS.

 

[Justin]

Well not here in the Netherlands, even the most basic users know how to get the OEM.
Most shops here sell it with a few basic parts, and off you go.
I even got mine without buying any hardware.

You can buy OEM Windows without purchasing any extra hardware from main online retailers here in the UK (which probably violates MS rules/laws/agreements or whatever :roll.

Yeah, I've purchased several copies of Win7 OEM without so much as buying any hardware! I think at minimum you need to buy a mouse and keyboard with it! (I do make the effort to be legit though when building PCs for folk )

Back to the thread I'm itching to buy an os4.1 machine. Fed up with Windows and everything else at the moment. I need some Amiga in my life... even though it ain't C= Amiga.... at least I can play with a later version of the OS.

or try AROS

 

[Paul_s]

You can buy OEM Windows without purchasing any extra hardware from main online retailers here in the UK (which probably violates MS rules/laws/agreements or whatever :roll.

Yeah, I've purchased several copies of Win7 OEM without so much as buying any hardware! I think at minimum you need to buy a mouse and keyboard with it! (I do make the effort to be legit though when building PCs for folk )

Back to the thread I'm itching to buy an os4.1 machine. Fed up with Windows and everything else at the moment. I need some Amiga in my life... even though it ain't C= Amiga.... at least I can play with a later version of the OS.

or try AROS

I'm sure I tried that out some time ago... maybe I need to fire it up again

 

[cardboardboxer]

EDIT

 

[Firthy2002]

I'm primarily a Windows user. XP and 7.
I've tried Linux but it's too user-hostile to gain a wider market.

I have dabbled in many OSes over the years, and intend to keep dabbling!

 

[chiark]

Sad innit, have Microsoft ever produced anything of their own entirely from scratch.....NO

I was going to argue your points, but it's simply not worth it
People can read the wikipedia article on NT for themselves.

Yes, I work for Microsoft.

 

[quarkx]

Actually none of the above, but I prefer XP and WB3.x.
Actually a "Fun" OS to "play" with (shocking as it seems) is BOB
If you have a powerhouse 486DX 100 with 72 megs of ram, BoB ran just fine. It was a fun experiment, but way too "Out there" to be an everyday Gui. Remember BOB was not a true OS, it ran on top of 3.11. But I found it fun to mess around in.

 

[commodorejohn]

Sad innit, have Microsoft ever produced anything of their own entirely from scratch.....NO

I was going to argue your points, but it's simply not worth it
People can read the wikipedia article on NT for themselves.

Well, there's the fact that NT was allegedly based on VMS - enough that I've seen claims that you can read through some of the VMS architecture manuals and have a working knowledge of the NT kernel by swapping out a few key terms. I don't know exactly how true that is, but given that Dave Cutler designed both, and that Digital successfully sued Microsoft over it...

 

[80sFREAK]

Can't see OS/2 and Contiki on the list :huh:

 

[bdb]

I bought OS 4.1 for my A4000 on a whim while in Germany and it was 6 months before I tried to install it. I have had installs from heck (HE l_ l_) with Microsoft products and phone calls to India that the support person spoke with such an accent that it was more than a complete waste of time, BUT that compared to the pale with my install of OS 4.1; I'm talking about 4 weeks to get a running version of OS 4.1 working. I got help through the OS 4.1 forums, but in the meantime I ripped that OS apart trying to understand it -- I read the actual programs in ASCII and HEX to find references or options. I poked and peeked around that OS until I knew by inference what the programmers were thinking. Of course now I use it 99 percent of the time and it feels just the same as the using all the Amiga OS's (from Version 1.1 to 3.9); they all have that feel of complete submission to customization. Only Amiga (OS) has that "feel;" not Apple OS, not Linux, not Windows, and not MorphOS. The latter should not be discussed, just like politics and religion. I have at home versions of all of the above, plus 8/16-bit stuff like DOS 3 thru 6, CP/M, GEOS, and Basic 2 & 4. I loved my DEC PDP 11/40 from college and the similarity of it and the MOS 6502 asm language, but those were tinker toys. DOS was a remake of CP/M, Win 3.11 a poor version of Mac OS, Win 95 an equivalent to the Mac and so on. None makes feel "at home" as I do with the Amiga. I so much enjoyed OS 4.1 that for the first time I want to own a Next Gen machine just to see what a bit of horsepower will add to it. I'd love an accelerator for my A4000 that gave me the ram and CPU punch of the NG computers, but that won't happen (although an Ultimate PPC would be a great opportunity). So I have opinions like everyone else and I know a bunch of folks are laughing at them and calling me "stupid" and "uninformed," but all I can say to them is, "Eat it raw."

 

[WHiZZi]

Before 2005, I actually used every OS there was available. Including Workbench up to AmigaOS 3.1. Starting with MS Basic on my Tandy CoCo-2, then to IBM-stuff running DOS 4.01, 5.0, 6.0, 6.20, 6.22 with Windows 3.0 till 3.11 for workgroups while also playing with Workbench on the Amigas and CP/M on the Philips P2000C.

On the IBM I went to OS/2 2.11 -> 3.0 but finally went to Windows 95 and so on. I did have a moment BeOS, but it wasn't good enough for me. Also tried V2_OS which never actually became big..
I quit using Windows after Windows XP. Back then I already was playing with several Linux distributions and basically went into Linux only mode.

Until approx 3 years ago, it was Linux only. Tried them all, including Gentoo, Redhat, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu. Then I tried Mac OS X on my hackintosh. Which was fun to try and worked absolutely great. So, I decided to buy a Macbook Pro and from that moment on, it's only Apple Mac OS X for me. At work I still use Ubuntu, at home it's OS X for me.

Since a few months I own a nextgen Amiga (MicroA1-C) which run AmigaOS 4.1u5 at this moment. I really like the system and I could use it for everyday use, though it lacks software support a bit.

So, my vote goes to MacOS X, AmigaOS 4.1 and Linux. In all fairness, I can't say anything about Windows 7 (though, ran it inside VirtualBox) or Windows 8 (never seen it)

 

[joe384]

I actually never intended to use Windows on any of my Home PCs. When I got my first PC in 1998 I was going to install Linux (I had read about it in the Amiga mags). Unfortunately someone convinced me to get one of them all in one motherboards instead of getting a Matrox Mystique + Soundblaster, and the All in one motherboard was not supported.

Windows 98 was awful for getting any serious work done, so when Linux support came out for my motherboard a couple of years later I started dual booting, only using Windows for quake

However, as the years went by I ended using windows because 99% of companies use this on the desktop.

I now completely fed up with Windows and I'm going to fully go back to Linux 100% (Although I can't avoid it at work)