Free Flight, Free Speech

Hi I'd be really interested what os you are using....

I have Linux opensuse (12.3 and Leap) in each of my two laptops.
Both of these, also have Windows 7 and or 10 on the dual boot.
The windows 7 machine never gets boot. Honestly.
The windows 10 is used by my wife for her MMORPG game. And she boots it back about twice a week. I never use that attempt of an OS.

Windows XP was the last decent Windows, IMHO. Windows 7 had a good vibe to it, but Micro$oft forced Windows 10 on all of us. (I assume to implement their flash-new scamming techniques)

Then my work PC has Windows 8. Sometimes I could really cry at that irony. And it is not my PC so, not much I can do about it, but used as I'm required == To connect via cygwin to ca CentOS server where I do the real work

Finally, I set my Mom with an old PC running Slackware 14, and I help a cousin on Ubuntu. Slackware was my first linux ever, like 12 years ago, so not that I began sweet and easy.

One day I installed Gentoo on one of my machines, and I felt too much the hardware. I had to back up like 3 days later, when I miserably failed getting the X-server going.

My wife owns a Mac, and sometimes I accept using it to watch streams (NETFLIX is bad sport, by not offering linux streams). I never ran much anything on her laptop, nor install much stuff there, including FG. So I have no idea how FG goes in MacOS, except the horror stories Falcon and F36 post here everyonce in a while.

IMO, Mac is the demostration that a *NIX derivative can and will go wrong, if corporation greed runs it.

Punchcard? No. I never even seen one. The earliest PC I ever had the chance of keying with ran on DOS. Back like in 1991, in HighSchool. Nowadays, I really wonder, why would my high-school teachers school me on DOS and QBasic, if they could have schooled me on Linux and C++? :angry-face:

That's basically my life described from the OS perspectives. Really, for me, Linux all the way.

One time I was discussing with a colleague at work why I persisted using linux. He found it to be a system that was much harder to use. In reality, nowadays, most of my "way of doing things" involve the tools that are there for me under linux, natively, like ssh-ing, gpg-ing, git-ing, emacs-ing, tex-ing, bash-scripting, compiling my own software, and using consoles and command lines. There are tons of tasks that are natural for me while using a computer that I get totally --oh-oh how you do this and that, when I sit on Windows and even Mac.

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PS: D-ECHO you forgot listing Others. Examples, Free-BSD or Other BSD derivatives, Chrome OS, Minix, Unix, DOS, Sparc, Amiga, and -why-not- Android... come to mind.

Win7 is actually pretty OK to me, aside from the many many drivers that took too long to support the peripherals for my work use. Other than that I just didn't use it for anything for my home computer running it. It's basically a big doorstop now, literally.

I have a Mac and FG works fine on it.... well I haven't gotten around to update it for quite a while.. to even fly it even.. because 1. I got so frustrated paying for non-existent internet I just stopped it altogether and used my phone instead for the times I needed to; so no update downloads and 2. work work work no time to do stuf other than work or family.. sad story of my life..

You got me to remember something.. in 1991, I was in primary school learning QBasic as well... and that didn't get me anywhere :/

I converted some of my office computers to Linux because around that timeframe (2004) Windows was getting viruses almost every week (those copmuters were set up to receive customer drives or files, and oh the horror stories). I also have a linux machine at home jut for experimentation, but sadly it wasn't powerful enough for FG.


So in short I used all 3 major OS... Linux is good, the moment you get it up and running correctly. And yes I cheat and use its GUI...

Hmmm, I can't vote for 3 of the poll choices.. oh well. I chose Mac because I'm mainly on that one then..

I can relate HJ1an

Ok I like (wait for it.....) WINDOWS <RUN SM RUN>
And for mobile/tab OS I like Android (Linux Kernel). (DEFINITELY NOT WINDOWS OR iOS)

1. Linux
I know its awesome.
I have used it during the Scenery development.
Its definitely advanced. But most of the time I don't use it that much.
Many of the programs/games I run aren't supported by Windows (I don't want to install Wine )
I'm not much of a command line guy (I use it if I've to, that is it).
My NAS still runs off Linux kernel


2. Mac
My sister owns one.
I never understood the logic why I should get one.
You pay a lot for a poor hardware. On the other hand you could just hackintosh it.
Definitely not meant for gaming. That thing thermal throttles whenever its pushed to the limits.
For daily usage of web-browsing, social media, movies.... etc it is fine.


3. Windows
Windows is the first OS that I have used (from Windows 98) so its what got me hooked into Computers.
All my games/simulators work out of the box.
I can custom build it to my liking. All in all you can make one very beefy PC for a lot less than a Mac. (Hardware wise, I know it applies for Linux)
The only windows I hated was Vista

I dont know why the hate is against Win 10. Can anyone tell why?
I don't know if it chokes your hardware but on my Rig it works splendid and I have only found improvements, also I have only heard people say that it has improved their performance.
Its much better to look than the previous versions (IMO)

In my mind there is a huge difference in importance between servers and clients. Servers contain important stuff that is also in the backup. Clients are like mere browsers used to access the servers. Basically i do not care much about clients. There is nothing important on them, so if they break down or get a virus, then they can be reinstalled without any loss of data.

Servers on the other hand must be robust and secured against attacks from clients as well as from the outside world. My OS of choice on them is Linux CLI-only installations. This way you get more server on less hardware. There is no GUI overhead that eats half of the resources. I chose CentOS for it's long term support (10 years). It really makes me wonder why on earth some businesses use Windows servers. They are horribly inefficient with resources. Apart from that, securing them is not very clear cut. So there are huge chances on mistakes and thus leaks in security.

As said, i really could not care less what clients browse my servers. Just pick the client that suits your needs. Most customers use Windows clients because they have software that is not available for Linux. Often for Windows and Mac it is available. But i must warn against Mac, because it does not always play nice in a network environment. e.g. The samba client implementation is horrible and does not handle large directories on a server well.

Apart from servers, i use one laptop for humanly interfacing with them. On it is Windows, just to stay current with most of my customers. Any other client (old laptops) gets Linux on it. I even put my old mother on Linux. Her laptop is secured against herself, so i do the updates when i visit. When she was still on Windows, i had to update each program separately. Now i just run yum, and i can go doing other things while it does all the updates in one go.

For maintaining the Linux servers it is no problem that my client is Windows. All i need is to install a terminal (PuTTY).

Basically there is nothing wrong with Windows on a client. It is just one of the OS-es, and it works just fine. The issue with Windows 10 is that at installation it has all data stealing services on, so you have to opt-out from all of them. Opt-out is morally despicable, because ordinary people have no idea what private data is sent to Microsoft's nosy servers. And in Windows 10 extremely much is sent, like complete files. Linux never turns on such services (at least not in CentOS). With Linux nothing bad happens, until you opt-in.

Considering all this, i voted Linux and Windows.

Kind regards, Vincent

Yah! I share the same opinion. Just not Mac

Ow well, a Mac can be ok in a stand-alone environment for people that have too much money and do not mind throwing it away on weak hardware. But as i said, in a corporate network a Mac client can have it's issues.

Heat problems are not exclusively for Macs. All my business laptops suffered heat problems at some point in time. Last time i chose an ASUS ROG laptop. It is perfectly suitable as business laptop too, because it has a discrete design and a discrete ROG logo. And best of all, it really stays cool with the two huge fans.

Kind regards, Vincent

Okay,
let me explain why I like Linux and don't like Windows....
1. Usability: I can use Linux much easier and more effective than Windows, though probably also coming from my long experience with it, but also from the fact that it is more understandable and one can "dig deeper" into it. When a program on windows runs wild and doesn't want to close itself, you have to open a task manager, of which the gui takes some time to load, find the program, click on stop and hope it works.... on linux, I can just switch to a console session or open a console and type in killall "programname" (-9) and it is closed.
2. Security: Linux is in fact more secure than windows, because there are only very few people using
1. Linux
2. the same distribution (Debian, Ubuntu, Mint, ....)
3. the same version
If you multiply these factors it does not make real sense anymore to program a virus for this. Also, as the code is open to everyone, security leaks can be fixed really fast.
3. Mentality: Windows is a product of Microsoft, a company, so naturally the main interest is to make money. Linux is made by volunteers keen to write an amazing operating system, so making money is not the first interest.
4. Spying: Per standard settings, Windows (10) saves and maybe sends all inputs, mails and everything you give into your computer, which also comes from the interest to make as much money as possible
5. Space: Windows in fact uses more space than Linux, also, windows' updates are much bigger because it always reinstalls the whole program...
6. Speed: I have a Lenovo Z360 running dual Linux Mint, Kubuntu and WIndows, and Windows runs v....e...r...y s...l...o...w
I think these are the main reasons for Linux IMO.