What Operating System is Everybody Using?

[Lawrence]

Good to be in the company of Mac/Linux/Ubuntu Geek-toids!

 

[chillout]

The EO office staff made the switch to MAC a few years ago. I just changed last month.....and I LOVE IT!!!!

My productivity has increased at least 20%!!!

Shouldn't a company provide computers, specifically MACs, for all its employees?? Even lowly support staff???

 

[RLENT]

Someday I'd love to have a MAC just to use for graphics (a hobby passion of mine). I've heard that they are so much better for that than Windows.

That comports with my experience with using both systems (various Mac's and Mac OS's from the Mac Plus onward - and various PC-boxen and iterations of Windows - from Win95 onward) - I did 2D design (commercial artwork), video editing, 2D motion graphics and special f/x, and 3D work (modeling, animation)

I didn't think so, I get just as much graphic performance with Linux than I did with the MAC I had on my desk at work. I had all three on my desk for development work.

What kind of development work were you doing - and what (graphics) apps were you using ?

As far as performance goes, it was often certainly true in the past that hardware running Windows (or other OS's) had an edge, in terms of raw performance - however one component or aspect of performance is how the software (including the OS) is designed and how well it interacts with the user and the hardware ..... for graphics, the implementation on the windows side was often ..... inelegant ....

Or maybe just ungainly would be a good way to describe it ...... hence the "Macs are better for graphics" saw .....

And afterall, the Mac was designed (from Day One - back in the mid-80's) to be a graphical computer .... and Windows ..... ?

Well, just one word: DOS .... need I really say more ?

JMHO ......

 

[greg334]

Taking Windows out of the equation, I am leaning on the side of Linux not just because of the near equal performance of the OS but the fact that MAC OS 10.x is Linux with a slightly different kernel and some extras.

I think apple with the Motorola instruction set was the overall best but the move made to intel improve the speed but may not allowed the same performance that could have been reached if the Motorola chips were at equal speed.

Not beating up on Apple but their mistake has always been with the development and deployment of applications. They have through their developer agreements had a 'close shop' and in some cases required approval of an application before it was sold. You see this with their iPhone and how they control the process and sale of the apps - note that some apps are not approved and never make it to their store while others are pulled because of Apple. Microsoft didn't force Windows on people as many have beleived, it was a hard sell for many with competing machines - Apple v. PC. What they did was say "sure you can develop anything you want on a pc, in fact here are some tools for you to do so" and handed us the tools and freedoms to do so, no approval, no app store, no process - just develop and sell.

 

[MentalGiant]

I need to get something on the server, nothing seems to like it so maybe bsd?

Bsd is good OS. Actually probably more stable than most. The only thing about bsd, is you have to make sure you have all the hardware they support. Because they won't put have baked drivers in their system. If the drivers don't work, they won't include them until they do work. Which makes their OS more stable for the cause. And if you do have all the hardware to support bsd, I think you would be happy with it being a server.

But, I like Debian based systems because of the way it does it software installation. You can use aptitude (apt-get or synaptic package manager) to make sure it gets the right dependencies installed so there are no conflicts to mess everything else up. Its not perfect by far, but I have less issues in the long run.

 

[MentalGiant]

Good to be in the company of Mac/Linux/Ubuntu Geek-toids!

So am I Lawrence. I was starting to wonder if there was anybody in here geeky like me. I'm always fiddling around with my computer, trying to tweak it to make it the best computer around. But, sometimes it blows up in my face and I'll be off line for a few hours trying to correct my mistakes. Good thing I have about 4 hard drives with me to back up everything.

 

[RLENT]

Taking Windows out of the equation, I am leaning on the side of Linux not just because of the near equal performance of the OS but the fact that MAC OS 10.x is Linux with a slightly different kernel and some extras.

Well, actually ..... no, it's not .....

Mac OS X (with the Mach Kernal) is based on BSD Unix, specifically from the NeXT OS (NeXTSTEP), which came out of FreeBSD ..... 4.3 ... IIRC

(Such a statement as above would probably cause Linus Torvalds to be blowing spit-bubbles .... since the code and OS that Mac OS X is based on predates Linux ..... and Linux came out of MINIX, another Unix OS)

They are both Unix operating systems however ... that much is true.

I think apple with the Motorola instruction set was the overall best but the move made to intel improve the speed but may not allowed the same performance that could have been reached if the Motorola chips were at equal speed.

Probably true - at least initially, on the switch to Intel chips - as some apps ran in emulation, not being coded natively to run on Intel .... Dunno that that is necessarily the case at the moment .... at least to any significant degree ....

In any event, it became clear that Motorola's PowerPC chip group wasn't getting the job and Intel was ..... so ........

Not beating up on Apple but their mistake has always been with the development and deployment of applications.

Ya gotta be kidding right ?

They have through their developer agreements had a 'close shop' and in some cases required approval of an application before it was sold. You see this with their iPhone and how they control the process and sale of the apps - note that some apps are not approved and never make it to their store while others are pulled because of Apple.

Yeah .... but that doesn't necessarily stop them from being developed, sold, and/or distributed - it's plenty easy enough to "jailbreak" an iPhone and use 3rd party, unapproved apps that are not distributed thru the App Store .....

Besides, it's kind of hard to argue with this kind of success:

"Within a month, the store sold 60 million applications and brought in $1 million daily on average, with Steve Jobs speculating that the App Store could become a billion-dollar business for Apple. Three months later, it was announced that Apple had become the third-largest mobile handset supplier in the world due to the popularity of the iPhone."

There is a reason why that is happening .....

Just as there is a reason that Lawrence dumped Windows and became (if I understand it correctly) an all Mac shop .... read his post in this and other threads to understand why.

Microsoft didn't force Windows on people as many have beleived, it was a hard sell for many with competing machines - Apple v. PC.

That's true - what they did do however was convince alot of people in corporate Amerika that they were the "standard" .... (whatever that means) ..... not the better technology mind you - although they often tried that too ..... but folks actual real-world experiences many times led them to come to a completely different conclusion ...

This "buy-in" often came as a result of corporate IT folks wanting to have their own little fiefdoms that they could control .... better to have something that requires lotsa specialized knowledge and tech support ... that way the kingdom expands ....

What they did was say "sure you can develop anything you want on a pc, in fact here are some tools for you to do so" and handed us the tools and freedoms to do so, no approval, no app store, no process - just develop and sell.

Well, ok .... and you see that as the "better" model ... that's fine .... doesn't mean it's the only route to success .... (.... not that I agree your characterization above is totally accurate ....) ... I'll let the eventual products that resulted from the different models speak for themselves.

Like nctrails said, Apple certainly does have it's shortcomings and flaws .... and has no doubt made many missteps along the way .... but on the otherhand it's hard to argue with success.

Again, I'd be really curious to know what apps you were using and what kind of graphics work you were doing, that would cause you to make such a statement, as the one you originally did.

 

[MentalGiant]

For the Linux users, KDE 4.2.2 is a nice bloated GUI, but for some reason they have not worked in the ability to turn off the Synaptic touchpad in this version for some reason. So, if that is a concern for you like it was for me, stay away from it for now, because I tried everything to disable it, even messed up my xconfig file trying to do so. So, I went back to gnome for the stability. Not as pretty as KDE, but I'll live.