What operating system are you running? Why?

XP, because I havn’t upgraded to a mac, and vista is horrible.

Mac OS X (10.5.2)
because I was too retarded to configure my wireless card on Linux. So I bought a Mac.

Mac. :D
Nothing else can handle me.

(And linux has awful tablet drivers)

XP because i’ve always been a PC guy at heart, and I have been told that getting vista for a laptop would be an unecessary strain on the batter life.

windows xp because its the best thing out there aside from linux which ive been way to lazy to learn to use. I want to get ubuntu. But id rather give up my computer than use a mac.

@foolaholic avoid vista like the plague dude. Its so horrible 2gb ram on vista is slow where as xp would fly.

Mac OSX 10.5.2, because Mac OSX is the most intuitive and pleasant system so i can get on with my life and my work without waiting for my computer to stop acting like a moron.

If it wasn’t Mac OSX it would be Ubuntu or an equivalent, then one of those archaic Xerox Palo-Alto prototypes and then maybe XP…

@uberbatman

heh, i don’t even have 2 gigs of ram…

I had to make sure I bought my new laptop with XP instead of Vista.

Windows because I game a lot and have Windows only programs (Guitar Pro and others) that have no linux alternatives. Plus I don’t really feel like messing around with wine. Although I will say that if I get a laptop it will run Ubuntu Linux primarily because it works fine for mobile music, video, and everyday activity and it’s faster than XP. Oh and Vista is not even an option as it flat out sucks right now.

currently running Mac OS X 10.5.1 on Dual 2 GHz PowerPC G5 ( for design), Ubuntu 7.10 on laptop, FreeBSD 6.3 on home server, BeOS 5 and Slackware double boot on my hack box, AmigaOS on my Amiga4000T (for old school games and all around geekiness).

OS X 10.5.2

I’m old and my computer pays my rent. It has to work. Fucking with scans and updates is time I could use to make money. And TextMate rules.

I’m running Mac OSX Leopard and Windows XP with boot camp to run games. I like Vista it just dosent run old games at all.

OS X Leopard, and I will sadly have to add XP in boot camp because we use a proprietary windows-only software at work. As for why? OS X is simply put, the most elegant operating system available. It’s certainly not perfect, but it is SO much better than anything else out there. I complained in a different thread about people proselytizing their religion. To avoid being a hypocrite, I’m going to shut up now.

/whispers (but if you’re Mac-curious feel free to start up a thread…) :P

OS X 10.5 on my MacBook with XP Pro and Ubuntu 7.10 running in VMWare Fusion.

OS X 10.4 running on my other Macs.

OSX 10.4 on my PowerBook G4 and OSX 10.5 on my iMac. I switched to Mac four years ago and could never see myself going back to a Window machine. Macs just work.

Windows XP because its the perfect OS for me
ps. any attacks on my comment will label you as a fanboy

I run MacOSX 10.4, haven’t upgraded to leopard cause I’m a poor college student, LOL. I then use rEFIt to dual boot into Ubuntu 8.04.
Linux has been slowly overtaking Mac as my main OS, but it may just be the newness of the OS still.
Mac = a beautiful OS, unparalleled in my opinion.
Linux = being pretty comp.sci. savvy, I was told to give it a shot. I love the sheer volume of possibilities it provides on every level. It’s not as polished, but that’s part of the fun!

I would have a triple boot with XP as well, but after trying it for a while, I decided to do without.

I too use Mac OSX10.4.11 because it runs beautifully for my needs and I will have to buy a new computer for Leopard (the only problem w. the iMac) because it has only one chip and not enough memory and I can’t add any more

OSX Leopard because its flippin sweet

I like windiws 2000 because it seems to run faster than xp on most of my equipment

@ninjaxmarc does your “equipment” use 5 1/4” floppy drives?

mac 10.4.11 on an old ibook
ubuntu heron on a dell d620 and a sony vaio
and xp on my desktop

I run Ubuntu 7.10 Tri-Booted with XP Pro And Media Center With 5 HDD’s on my Home PC
160sata – Movies Pr0n
160ide – Linux 7.10
250sata – Torrents
320sata – XP Pro/Games
500sata – XP Media Center/Music

I run Linux on my My laptop and my work PC also. They are also all dual booted with XP Pro also. I am still learning linux, so that why when i feel like learning or wanna have fun, ill just boot into the other side. Also, on the XP side, i have a windows driver so i can see my Linux EXT3 Partition and access it. And i might add, i love using linux. You just get such a better over all experience and time. When you go back to XP, your like “Wow, how boring and plan…” And the speed and memory usage is insane compared to XP or even Vista…

actually, does anyone like/remember the good old win 95/98? I may try adding that to my system at some point…

Leopard on a MacBook Pro, for all the reasons discussed on this thread.

Ubuntu Linux exclusively

Each release that comes out is more user friendly than the last. The next installment (8.04) is coming in two weeks. If you want to replace a slow XP or even windows 2000 with a free alternative, then this is the distribution for you.

Leopard on my ancient Powerbook; Tiger on my Mac mini; Ubuntu at work and on the server at home.

@gorillapaws
no all p4s XP just has a slight lag over 2000 so we revert all our computers to 2000 maybe its our networking equipment

Leopard and WinXP (Boot Camp) on a MBP. Occasionally I play around with linux/BSD, but mostly on older computers I use for servers.

Xubuntu 7.10 because I like being in control of my stuff. I want to upgrade to 8.04 but I’m way too lazy, and with no place to back my stuff up to, I need to take the time ;)

@Mirza – let me try being a fanboy… I’m curious as to the reason XP is perfect for you. Care to elaborate? ;-)

Xp on ThinkPad; Leopard on iMac; Tiger on Macbook.
Because: Xp and Tiger are awesome. And, I wanted to use the Time Machine feature on Leopard (that’s the only reason I am using Leopard instead of Tiger).

Ubuntu/XP dual boot. When the next Ubuntu release comes out, I’m deleting Windows, and using this: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Unite-Windows-and-Linux-With-a-Single-Mouse-Click-78535.shtml

I also have a Mac g3, with Tiger. I’ll prob install Ubuntu on that too, though.

Mint Linux and XP Pro (dual boot on a Gateway 600ygr laptop with 2 hard drives), and Mandriva Spring 8.1 (a.k.a Mandrake Linux) on an old P3 desktop to replace its former Windows 98.

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with the Linux versions because none of the dozen or so distributions I’ve tried so far have been able to correctly drive both channels of my sound card, an ESS Allegro 1988, and the Linux versions of media players aren’t as good as Windows MediaPlayer at managing my large mp3 collection.

As much hype as Ubuntu gets, it wasn’t as user friendly or Internet ready as Mandriva or Mint, and Fedora is so spartan, it won’t play Flash, use Java or open PDFs. So if your machine is old, try Mandriva. If it’s new and you want to be able to watch YouTube on day one, try Mint. But if you want to be able to do all of those things and use your wireless card and your sound card and your video card, stick with XP Pro, even though it’s slow and requires all kinds of firewalls, spyware removers, anti-virus programs and root kit removers.

I’m really wishing Sun would step up and make a driver-rich OS to compete with XP & Vista. I wouldn’t mind paying for something that worked.

Windows XP on Dell Vostro 1000 soon going to Mac OS X Leopard on MacBook.

sorry, to say, vista…
I’m a mac guy, but had to build a computer, so I got what I could…

Vista, it’s much better than XP, people!!!, we live in 2009 (almost), XP is 2002 year OS – it’s old and not secure

Lol. Just lol.

@netxm: I agree completely, can you believe that people have been using paper for thousands of years?

@netxm, sure; the UAC prompts and other security enhancements do make vista a more secure OS. A big problem lies in the wonky interface conventions that don’t make sense, the poor implementations of ones that do (start menu search anyone?), and the UI lag that comes with all of this fluff. Then there’s the taskbar: the least efficient way to deal with windows EVER!

Yes, vista is prettier than XP; but only by employing a bolted-on graphics framework that bogs the system to a near stand-still sometimes. On other nameless systems cough KDE cough cough OS X cough, the graphics systems run at a far lower level allowing every app to benefit from the glitz that they provide, not just an overly bloated explorer.exe.

XP serves the needs of what most people need to do. Plus, if the security updates are applied regularly, and one doesn’t act like a complete moron on the internet (going where drive-by attacks happen more than in East LA), than XP will run just fine. MS definitely missed the mark on Vista. Here’s hoping that they do better on Windows 7.

@blastfamy – what is a more efficient way to deal with windows? And don’t say it’s a dock, because I’ve found a task list to be way easier (e.g. say you have multiple text files open – how are you going to discern the different individual windows if you can’t see the names in one look?).

@vincent, you’re correct. A task list is rather efficient at seeing the titles of windows. Unfortunately, it only allows you to see the title of the window: enter the problem there. Effectively, what the task bar does, is provide a horizontal task list that shrinks the space for the title of each window until all you see is tiny icons with 3 letters and a (...). The merging of tasks by application has made an improvement on this, except that this requires extra clicks to get to the particular window you’re looking for. Plus, there’s the added motion of the mouse to pan through the popup menus associated with the compressed application’s windows. The horizontal taskbar is simply inefficient. I have seen people (smart ones, no less) flip through the thing for a minute looking for the window they want to use.

Vertical task lists are better. As a window of itself (which would force you to leave that window accessible), this system would allow more flexibility in both sizing and placement of tasks. Not to mention that you would be able to re-order the tasks you had running, to suit your needs; not the OS’s.

But what we’re really here to talk about is the idea of the ability to switch between windows. Hopefully, rapidly. Honestly, I think that OS X has the best window management system. IT IS NOT BECAUSE OF THE DOCK. I prefer OS X for a feature known as expose. This feature allows all windows to be moved to a single plain of existence (as if no windows could overlap). Scrolling over each window reveals its window title in big letters, so it’s easy to read, but most of the time you can still see the window title on the thumbnail.

The OS manages to scale all of the window’s views to fit in the largest possible area while maintaining relative size and screen position allowing you to quickly get to the window you want to use. Each individual window keeps its sharpness as well, promoting visability of the contents of the window. All of the windows are live, so video and games, or any other motion graphic in the window, will continue to work in this blown up view. This also works on an application level, which makes even more sense when dealing with multiple windows of plain text, as well as multiple photoshop windows.

The best part about this system is that it scales well for any number of windows without bogging the system down when you want to invoke the feature. And the feature is available to be activated by a single keystroke or by moving the mouse to a screen-corner. Effectively, it takes one click to switch to any running window. That’s how powerful this window management system is.

Believe it or not, the dock plays a very minor role in window management. It is more application-based, where you start, and switch to the last-used window of any active application. Commonly used applications stick to the dock at the appointment of the user, and all running apps have icons on the dock while they run.

Your thoughts?

I’m going to give you a GA if only for the detailed explanation, even though I don’t agree with your views:

I agree that a vertical tasklist is probably best, and I’d definitely use it if I had a wide screen.

However, I don’t. Still, I manage to organize my windows quite effectively, using a horizontal task list. The important part, though, is my use of multiple desktops. I’m usually multi-tasking in several distinct categories, and I sort that on different virtual desktops. For example, I often have several webdevelopment-related windows open on one desktop, then another desktop where I have webbrowsing-related windows opened on. This all happens subconsciously, automatically. In essence, I make sure (without extra effort) that there aren’t too many windows on one desktop so the task list has to be crammed, or even that multiple windows will have to be grouped (I truly hate that). The spatial ordering makes it easy to keep track of windows.

Additionally, tabs in applications (such as a separate tab for each website in my browser, and one for each file in my webdevelopment application) allow me to keep an overview of all the files in one application. It’s basically an additional task list for separate applications. Since there’s usually no need to have an overview of the separate tabs when not focusing on the application, this is very efficient.

I realize this system isn’t for anyone, but the same goes for Expose (more on that below). Of all systems, I still find the task list more intuitive, though obviously, having both methods available is best (which is exactly what I have – a task list and Expose, I even used to have a dock but I removed that because it wasted to much screen real estate without being that useful).

I’ve seen Expose being used by a teacher of mine who’s apparently an avid Mac user. Often, he’s got several files open in the application Xcode. When he wants to switch files, he opens Expose, then hovers over each window to see the name, until he finds the file he’s looking for. Since all windows look similar (white background, black code), he can’t discern them just by looking at the miniatures. Obviously, this is extremely inefficient.

In fact, even Alt+Tab’ing is more efficient, as you can just press the same key (Tab) each time to flick through another window and view the title, while with Expose you’ll have to move the mouse to a different position each time. On Macs, unfortunately, Apple+Tab’ing will multiple windows from the same application.

Thus, while I have Expose enabled, the only time I’m using it is when that stupid optical mouse starts making sudden movements to the corner of my screen, enabling it. In normal use, I find my uncluttered task list way more efficient.

Btw, this was written in one go without afterthought or editing, which is probably unwise for such a lengthy post, but ah well. I need to write a blog post on this subject some time.

so was mine…

Spaces on leopard effectively allows for a similar system… as well as multiple screens. Dock integration, once again, as an application manager, aids this a great deal.

In some ways, I agree with you, though…
In Opera (web browser), there is a vertical task list for tab management that works exceedingly well.

Though I have to say, most good IDE’s for coding have tab support anyways, which allows the user to group the windows into one…

On a side note, do you know of any good virtual desktop programs that are built for Vista? I’ve been looking for a good one for a long time…

Sorry, I’ve never used Vista, so I wouldn’t know :P

There seem to be plenty available though