Operating System Choice - What do you use and why?

[Asmyldof]

Aaaahhh.
The expected arguments are kicking off!

Now the hard choice whether to click notify for entertainment value or not to because of the cost.

I think the people paying me would prefer the latter >.<

[Mechanical Menace]

Aaaahhh.
The expected arguments are kicking off!

https://youtu.be/ACga3t6O1KQ

But when can you expect when you start a topic about religion on a forum...

[Asmyldof]

Aaaahhh.
The expected arguments are kicking off!

https://youtu.be/ACga3t6O1KQ

But when can you expect when you start a topic about religion on a forum...

I was absolutely exactly thinking of this series of sketches when I clicked "post".

Next meta-post I make I'll try to sneakily reference the RAF pilots.

[nctnico]

Xbox RRoD resulted in a new hardware revision, eating an entire stock line and throwing it away and issuing free replacements to everyone. It cost a huge amount of money and they ate it.

But only after a LOT of pressure!

[at2marty]

Shortly I can say I use many!

I have two laptops, geared for Windows development. They both run Windows 7 natively and have a dual boot Grub set up for at least Ubuntu. (Fixing Ubuntu problems caused by Windows with the live disc is just too easy to ignore in my opinion).

Windows is there for the better supported drivers for high-performance gaming, because there's steam that sometimes just needs to go :-), for MS-Visual Studio, for Atmel Studio (if I may flame you a little: Studio hasn't been AVR for a while, since it also supports the SAMs now), for Adobe Creative Cloud stuff.
And of course for the contract work that I do which is often in some way in Windows. It's weird how much people develop Embedded Linux on Windows DevEnvs.

Linux is there because it's just better at some things and in my personal opinion more fun to develop in, because stuff stays consistent much longer than in Windows.
Linux, for example, is as far as I can determine still better at Disc images, internal copy and move, predictable set-up and maintenance (or continuous performance), localised set-ups such as multi-site development-related webhosting and special hardware tools, tricks and integration.

The old laptop grew up to having Debian and a Sort-of-SUN-OS as well over time and quite possibly the new one will as well.

Next to that for different assignments I have a 230GB dropbox folder containing a multitude of virtual machines spanning al kinds of flavours and set-ups, even a pure Microsoft DOS one running at i486 speeds. I should really get one with some sort of Apple OS, never had a use for one up to this point.

EDIT: Didn't really flame you there, did I? Disappointments all round, I suppose.

Not a flame at all.  You are correct, it is actually AtmelStudio.  Old habits die hard sometimes. 

[Sigmoid]

But where they do still have a monopoly they haven't changed. ActiveSync, DirectX, FAT32 are all examples of Vendor Lock-in.

How exactly is FAT32 Vendor Lock-in, as the single most widely implemented and supported file system EVER?! FAT32 is the opposite of vendor lock-in.

Yes, DirectX true, but there are open reimplementations in various stages of readiness.

WTF is ActiveSync? (I just googled it, and it was discontinued more than 15 years ago. You know what else was vendor lock-in? The Commodore 64 architecture for example.)

MS is doing nothing that others aren't doing.

Apple has always used open standards where it makes sense on the other hand. I mean many criticized them for not allowing Flash, everyone cried Walled Garden! But in the end their decision to stick by HTML5 is what gave HTML5 the boost it needed. And everyone including Android benefited.

Haha!

Hahahahaha!


BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Really now... have you tried to port a Cocoa application to Linux? Or, well, just run it on Linux? Newsflash: you can't. And not due to lack of interest.

As for HTML5, I hate Flash like the plague, but HTML5 is like something designed by a committee (most likely because it was designed by a committee). It's a TEXT DOCUMENT format (hyperTEXT markup language) adapted so it can do 3d games. It's like an office desk that had wings, jet engines and missiles added so it can function as a fighter airplane. It's a sad joke.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: Anyway I'm an Apple user at home, and I have an older machine with Windows 7 for the Windows-only audio stuff. I started off loving Apple, and now I'm patently fed up with them.

I use Linux for special requirements like embedded and security-critical stuff, for example in my ARM home file server / private cloud box. If Apple gets on my nerves any further, I'll move to Arch Linux as my desktop OS.

[smjcuk]

ActiveSync is Microsoft Exchange's synchronisation protocol. It isn't discontinued. It's also a fully open specification and thoroughly documented as well: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc425499%28v=exchg.80%29.aspx .... There are many implementations of clients and servers for it.

FAT32 is a nice filesystem for devices that are expensive to write i.e. through wear or throughput which is why it is used universally.

Also people don't realise there are several versions of FAT and only exFAT is subject to patent rights now as it's not even really FAT. As EFI specifies FAT32, it is by inference open for free implementation.

HTML5 is a turd. When you watch your web design guy smoke a whole pack in about 10 mins flat whilst swearing repeatedly, you get the idea.

A lot of public opinion isn't based around facts these days....

[at2marty]

Wow, I didn't expect this to run this long.  I for one will not "bad-mouth" any OS.  They all have their pros and cons.

[Sigmoid]

Also people don't realise there are several versions of FAT and only exFAT is subject to patent rights now as it's not even really FAT. As EFI specifies FAT32, it is by inference open for free implementation.

Wow, exFAT... For a filesystem purportedly designed for portable storage, it sure has the worst reliability of all file systems ever. Even the first FAT had 2 FATs for recovery. ExFAT cannot recover. It wasn't designed so it could recover from catastrophic failure, you just lose EVERYTHING on the drive.

MS has an extension that adds recovery, but it's ONLY implemented in Windows Phone, and NOT in any other version of Windows. I wonder if this changes with Win10.

[smjcuk]

Yes it's horrible. I use ext2 for portable storage, even on windows ( https://www.paragon-software.com/home/extfs-windows/ ). Superblock backups FTW.

Windows 10 and Windows Phone 10 have exactly the same codebase so you're probably right. Most MS stuff turns up as closed source and then gets fixed before they release it. Look at ReFS which is showing some crazy good improvements in Windows 10 server.

Also before we slate Microsoft, don't forget they were responsible for ISO9660 as well.

[G0HZU]

Windows at work (compulsory) and here on my desktop (Win 7) because it allows me to run similar CAD stuff here at home. So the software apps dictate the OS for me here.

Win7 Starter on my little netbook on my workbench. It actually seems to work really well and I use it mostly as a controller or data dumper to/from test gear.
It can also run some fairly powerful CAD SW reasonably well.

Win98SE (laptop) for my T-Tech 7000S milling machines.

Various dual boot laptops with Ubuntu and XP or Win2000.

I don't do much with Linux apart from web browsing with the laptops plus it is useful for doing the odd bit of disk formatting/management.

[Muxr]

ActiveSync is Microsoft Exchange's synchronisation protocol. It isn't discontinued. It's also a fully open specification and thoroughly documented as well: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc425499%28v=exchg.80%29.aspx .... There are many implementations of clients and servers for it.

FAT32 is a nice filesystem for devices that are expensive to write i.e. through wear or throughput which is why it is used universally.

Also people don't realise there are several versions of FAT and only exFAT is subject to patent rights now as it's not even really FAT. As EFI specifies FAT32, it is by inference open for free implementation.

HTML5 is a turd. When you watch your web design guy smoke a whole pack in about 10 mins flat whilst swearing repeatedly, you get the idea.

A lot of public opinion isn't based around facts these days....

Try writing an ActiveSync client for a desktop. And you will get DMCA-ed so fast it's not even funny. In fact I challenge you to find me an ActiveSync client that runs on Linux or OS X. I know because I scoured the earth to find one. And all I could find is dead projects that were taken over by MS.

[Muxr]

But where they do still have a monopoly they haven't changed. ActiveSync, DirectX, FAT32 are all examples of Vendor Lock-in.

How exactly is FAT32 Vendor Lock-in, as the single most widely implemented and supported file system EVER?! FAT32 is the opposite of vendor lock-in.

Yes, DirectX true, but there are open reimplementations in various stages of readiness.

WTF is ActiveSync? (I just googled it, and it was discontinued more than 15 years ago. You know what else was vendor lock-in? The Commodore 64 architecture for example.)

MS is doing nothing that others aren't doing.

Apple has always used open standards where it makes sense on the other hand. I mean many criticized them for not allowing Flash, everyone cried Walled Garden! But in the end their decision to stick by HTML5 is what gave HTML5 the boost it needed. And everyone including Android benefited.

Haha!

Hahahahaha!


BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Really now... have you tried to port a Cocoa application to Linux? Or, well, just run it on Linux? Newsflash: you can't. And not due to lack of interest.

As for HTML5, I hate Flash like the plague, but HTML5 is like something designed by a committee (most likely because it was designed by a committee). It's a TEXT DOCUMENT format (hyperTEXT markup language) adapted so it can do 3d games. It's like an office desk that had wings, jet engines and missiles added so it can function as a fighter airplane. It's a sad joke.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

EDIT: Anyway I'm an Apple user at home, and I have an older machine with Windows 7 for the Windows-only audio stuff. I started off loving Apple, and now I'm patently fed up with them.

I use Linux for special requirements like embedded and security-critical stuff, for example in my ARM home file server / private cloud box. If Apple gets on my nerves any further, I'll move to Arch Linux as my desktop OS.

There is an open source version of Cocoa called GNUStep, which predates most Linux Desktop APIs. There is also a wine like emulator called Darling, but it's pretty rudimentary and I suspect it's exactly for the lack of interest. I can't think of many OSX exclusive apps people would want to port that don't have at least working alternatives.

Listen Apple isn't perfect, they piss me off as well with some decisions. I hate iTunes for instance, but when it comes to Vendor lock-in, they can't hold a candle to Microsoft.

Maybe I am a bitter old vet because I've been around a block for a long time. I've started in the 80s, on your ZX-Spectrums and C-64s, and have worked in the industry for the last 30 years. So I've been plenty impacted by Microsoft's BS over the years.

[timb]

Plus, it's not like Apple picked Cocoa as some evil scheme to prevent cross-platform development... They picked it because it's what OpenStep used, which is, you know, what OS X is based on.

Cocoa is just a set of APIs for interacting with the system. The main language, Objective-C, can be compiled on pretty much any platform. There are also Cocoa bindings for AppleScript, Swift, Python, Ruby, C++ and at one point, Java! (In fact, in early versions of OS X, Apple supported native Java Cocoa apps, trying to make them first party alternatives to ObjC, but that was thrown out around 10.5 due to Sun not pulling their heads out of their asses.)

I can compile C# code on OS X or Linux, but not anything using .NET specific APIs. Why aren't you bitching at Microsoft about that? It's exactly the same scenario.

As for Xcode, it has really come into its own in the last 5 years. I know developers managing applications with hundreds of thousands of lines of code that have zero stability issues.

Your point about being able to call Microsoft for developer support, but not Apple, proves you have no idea what you're talking about, as Apple provides phone support for ADC Select members, and has for at least the last 15 years.

Finally, I've run HFS+ on my daily use Macs since 2003 and have never had a single corrupt file. Ever. Not once. Neither has any family or friends that I support. (Can't say the same about Windows machines, though I've always been able to recover the files, at least.)

If you have a real issue (and Macs do have some issues), that's one thing, but all you're doing is spewing BS. That's why I asked for citations in my previous post.



Sent from my Tablet

[grumpydoc]

And Pine is not elm....

And, in fact neither GNU nor Xinu are unix

I used to be a Unix/Linux zealot - still am a bit but generally now find that all OSes suck, just in different ways. At least with open source you have a chance of fixing problems which affect you although I think a lot of the Linux distributions are getting too complex for casual hacking.

My servers run Scientific Linux (ultimately a RHEL spin), I do day-to-day stuff at home on Scientific or Fedora - the Fedora machine dual boots Windows 7 for when I need to run M$ Office or Photoshop. My Wife's machine runs W7 for Office, my son's runs W7 mostly for games but for Office if he needs to do a project for school. However he's about to move up schools and the new place is heavily into Macs and iOs so I might be plunged (kicking and screaming, I afraid) into that world.

What would I choose to run - Fedora or Scientific, as long as the apps I need are supported.

Wine is OK but ultimately too painful

The various virtual machines have their uses but most of the time the emulated hardware is crap which has, in practice, stopped me using them every time I thought they might be the solution to a problem that I had.

[Sigmoid]

I can compile C# code on OS X or Linux, but not anything using .NET specific APIs. Why aren't you bitching at Microsoft about that? It's exactly the same scenario.

There's Mono...
Actually, .NET is a lot more open than a lot of what Apple is doing. Now the whole thing is open source, too.

As for Xcode, it has really come into its own in the last 5 years. I know developers managing applications with hundreds of thousands of lines of code that have zero stability issues.

Have you worked with Visual Studio? It's the definition of awesome.
I'm not saying that Microsoft is some kind of magical fairie unicorn, just that they aren't worse than any other big player - and sometimes they are better.

Finally, I've run HFS+ on my daily use Macs since 2003 and have never had a single corrupt file. Ever. Not once. Neither has any family or friends that I support. (Can't say the same about Windows machines, though I've always been able to recover the files, at least.)

Good for you, I did have. HFS+ is a badly engineered file system that has been outdated for about as long as FAT32. "I've never had any issues" is really not a valid argument.

[GreyWoolfe]

I started with Windows 3.11 and have been there ever since.  When you do something long enough, you get comfortable with it.  It's like being married for years, you love your spouse, grow comfortable together and get used to their idiosyncrasies.  My work environment is Windows-Win 7 Enterprise and Server 2008 R2.  My 2 work computers here at home are Win 7, my 2 computers are Win 7 and SWMBO and stepdaughter are Win 8.1, plus Android tablets, smart phones and a Nook HD+.  I prefer 7 to 8.1 as it is just easier for me to navigate for maintenance tasks.  Mixed feelings with Win 10.  I might upgrade my laptop as I don't keep anything important on it, but I am seeing too many minuses starting to pop up to upgrade my main/ham computer.  I am also starting to look at a Raspberry Pi for a low cost/low power simple NAS but I still need to do a lot more reading on the topic before I commit.

[Muxr]

Good for you, I did have. HFS+ is a badly engineered file system that has been outdated for about as long as FAT32. "I've never had any issues" is really not a valid argument.

You can't be seriously comparing HFS+ to FAT32. For all HFS+'s deficiencies it is lightyears ahead of FAT32.

Microsoft's reluctance to adopt an open standard is precisely the reason why everyone is stuck on a file system that can't support a file larger than 4Gb.

In fact did you know that every time you buy an SD card, external HD or a thumb drive you are paying the FAT32 tax to Microsoft. Even if you never intend to use a FAT32 on it you still pay for it.

On December 3, 2003 Microsoft announced[63] that it would be offering licenses for use of its FAT specification and "associated intellectual property", at the cost of a US$0.25 royalty per unit sold, with a $250,000 maximum royalty per license agreement.[64]

Yes, that's right you're paying $.25 per device for the privilege of using that horrible filesystem. Whether you're a Windows user or not.

Not to mention all the ridiculous limitations of FAT32 the world is stuck having to workaround because one company has the monopoly to dictate and force a use of an antiquated filesystem.

No company comes close to the shittiness Microsoft has managed to pull in the computer industry.

edit: FAT32 is just one example, but there are tons more, IE6 is another big one.

[Mechanical Menace]

No company comes close to the shittiness Microsoft has managed to pull in the computer industry.

*cough cough* Atari

As much as I loved the company they single handedly almost destroyed the games industry, a sector which has pushed consumer computing forward more than many realise. Then there was the Amiga and ST days when for most they were the only real option for a computer outside of workplace. Commodore and Atari both tried to make interoperability and porting as hard as possible. Yeah some of that was legitimate design choices but a lot of it was along the lines of "Y is brilliant, we've got to use it. Damn the other side is already on it, best use X instead..." In the eight bit era it was more dependent on where you were but things were only better due to simpler machines.

Microsoft are twats, they either try and buy and close down everything or come up with a competing "standard." Apple are tossers, they manage to patent rounded rectangles and have never invented anything, push standards then ignore them themselves, license software, reimplement their own version, then sue the people they licensed it from. Neither do anything first or better, only bigger.

Really if you think companies were better in the past you need to take of those rose tinted glasses, if you think they're better now you're deluded, and if you think they'll get better in the future you're insane.

[Muxr]

No company comes close to the shittiness Microsoft has managed to pull in the computer industry.

*cough cough* Atari

As much as I loved the company they single handedly almost destroyed the games industry, a sector which has pushed consumer computing forward more than many realise. Then there was the Amiga and ST days when for most they were the only real option for a computer outside of workplace. Commodore and Atari both tried to make interoperability and porting as hard as possible. Yeah some of that was legitimate design choices but a lot of it was along the lines of "Y is brilliant, we've got to use it. Damn the other side is already on it, best use X instead..." In the eight bit era it was more dependent on where you were but things were only better due to simpler machines.

Microsoft are twats, they either try and buy and close down everything or come up with a competing "standard." Apple are tossers, they manage to patent rounded rectangles and have never invented anything, push standards then ignore them themselves, license software, reimplement their own version, then sue the people they licensed it from. Neither do anything first or better, only bigger.

Really if you think companies were better in the past you need to take of those rose tinted glasses, if you think they're better now you're deluded, and if you think they'll get better in the future you're insane.

I agree with this. I guess the only reason I am especially pissed at Microsoft is because I can't escape their BS. Even if I am not their customer, I am forced to deal with it.

Microsoft's use of proprietary protocols and systems, wherever they have a monopoly to vendor lock you in:

- Corporate email monopoly (Exchange): Can't use ActiveSync on OS X or Linux.

- Desktop monopoly: FAT32, can't share files larger than 4GB. Also having to pay the license for products I make that (have to) use it.

- IE6, having to spend hours and hours to make the web app I am working on work in this pile of shit of a browser (luckly this is less and less true by day)

- DirectX, my favourite games are hard to port to anything other than Win.

the list goes on, and even though I have abandoned Windows 15 years ago I still can't escape their bullshit.

[Mechanical Menace]

I agree with this. I guess the only reason I am especially pissed at Microsoft is because I can't escape their BS. Even if I am not their customer, I am forced to deal with it.

I managed to not do for years, and when I had to start worrying about anything that isn't Linux or Solaris MS sorted themselves out a bit and Apple had gone mad with power lol. Luckily I mainly have the option of ignoring OSX though so I'm not as biassed as I would be if I'd had to buy a Mac^*.

- Desktop monopoly: FAT32, can't share files larger than 4GB. Also having to pay the license for products I make that (have to) use it.

You don't have to pay a license for FAT32 or vFAT, it's exFAT you need a license for, hence why a lot of things only support FAT32.



^*I've a typical Yorkshireman's view on that, why pay twice as much for a lower specced machine? I sort of get it but the style of the case isn't that important to me when it comes to computers.

[timofonic]

I use Linux because:

- Requires a lot less maintaining. No virus problems too.
-  Easier to upgrade.
- Works better on slower machines.

There's lots stuff I dislike about Linux, but I still have no clue of programming and this sucks less than everything else for me.

I wish to have some powerful software such as Altium, AutoCAD and some other electronics stuff.

Interoperability sucks, even some of my classmates bullied me because using Linux and Libreoffice ( Fuck them!). EDA format is full of vendor lock-in with these shitty different file firmats. LibreOffice struggles to reverse enginer filebformats and solve tons of bugs in the internal conversion.

Fortunately,  things are improving.
-KiCad is progressing, but needs more fullbtime devs and  LibreOffice is starting to get usable (but they forget about math stuff...) and there's nice tools such as Sigrok. The big problem is they're very underfunded,  but they do more with less and I hope the Open Source communities get even more organized and be able to get more financing.

[Muxr]

I quite like KiCAD. It is terrible at first but it keeps getting better the longer you use it. Like a lot of GUI open source software the UI has some major flaws and poor design decisions. (Like it took me an hour to figure out how to make a new footprint library) But you learn to work around them, also the keyboard shortcuts are well thought out.

But what I love the most about KiCAD is the file formats it uses. You can script pretty much anything in KiCad.

[Muxr]

Not to mention all the ridiculous limitations of FAT32 the world is stuck having to workaround because one company has the monopoly to dictate and force a use of an antiquated filesystem.

No company comes close to the shittiness Microsoft has managed to pull in the computer industry.

Why not mention them? It is hard to know whether you are making a convincing argument otherwise. As opposed to throwing opinion around.
Antiquated may be true in computer industry time but that is because it is old. Not always a bad thing. There was a time when 4GB file size limits didn't seem to be a ridiculous limitation. Particularly when disks were smaller than this. The FAT file system was introduced when floppy disks ruled, and a 10MB hard disk could cost several thousand dollars. Linux didn't exist and neither did MACs. It was a product of its time and the limitations of available machines which includes RAM measured in KB and CPU clocks in single digit MHz.  What seems ridiculous now wasn't so, then.

Now it mostly serves as a useful means to exchange data. If you could connect a floppy drive to your present day computer Windows could still read the disk even from 30+ years ago.

FAT32 limitations are well known, but I did mention the major one. The 4Gb file size did I not? How is that an acceptable limitation in 2015?

[suicidaleggroll]

FAT32 limitations are well known, but I did mention the major one. The 4Gb file size did I not? How is that an acceptable limitation in 2015?

Plus:
* No journaling
* No support for permissions
* 2 TB max partition size


FAT32 is a terrible filesystem by modern standards (hell, it's terrible by 10 year old standards).  Keeping support built into the OS for it for backwards compatibility is fine, forcing its continued use on all portable devices because MS refuses to support anything else is unacceptable.