Best Operating system

Kethinov · Jul 11, 2005

dpence said:
While I do not have access to their buisness model, It appears they are moving away from that somewhat...

They're not. OS X will still only run on Apple hardware. The difference between now and then is that it is very possible that people will employ some hackery to force OS X to run on non Apple hardware. In fact, I am certain that it's inevitable. However, officially, Apple is not sanctioning this and thus their business model has not changed.

dpence said:
Besides what is the limiting factor for most to go into the Mac realm?? Cost...

Cost is only a minor player. The major reason people don't buy Macs is because Windows software doesn't run on them. Ask the vast majority of the members of these forums why they don't run Macs and I would imagine your most frequent response is that they can't play their favorite games on them.

Interestingly though, the architecture switch opens up hoards of possibilities pertaining to the running of Windows software on Macs. With emulation no longer necessary, projects like WINE and VirtualPC will be able to run natively on Macs. This will allow people to play many, many Windows only games on Macs. And I imagine with the vast amount of extra resources the Apple crowd will be bringing to the WINE project, we may actually begin to see a sharp increase in the amount of Windows software that can be run outside of Windows.

Supa · Jul 16, 2005

I think you guys are missing the trees while looking at the forest.

If Apple switches to x86, then I also wouldn't be surprised to see people running Windows and FreeBSD on their Mac's in a few years. At the very least, MS might make some of their software OSX compatible, like Window Media Player, in an attempt to get rid of iTunes.

Kethinov · Jul 16, 2005

Windows Media Player already exists for Mac. (Though it's a pretty bad port.)

General Plot · Jul 16, 2005

For me, this one's a toss up. I love Debian, and if everything were as compatible in Linux as it is in Windows (not to mention no DirectX

), I'd never let windows into my hard drive again. However, multimedia tends to run better on XP than on a Linux box. I keep a dual boot system because I really can't make up my mind. I wish M$ wasn't hogging all the fun to itself.

Master Chief · Jul 16, 2005

I parked my ass in front of an old computer with Linux trying to get things to work. I spent a good amount of time with it. I was compiling Samba....and after waiting for like 25mins i get a nice big fat error at the end. Wow, it wasnt even worth waiting. You tell me how thats free? You tell me wasteing CD-Rs for Linux distros is free? You tell me how waiting for the damn downloads is free? If I need help with something in Linux, I have to go to the Linux community which really isnt that nice...

Its such a pain in the ass...With Windows, everything is so simple. Double click to install(not all this make crap, or these damn packages).

Kethinov said:
Market share is not an indication of OS quality

In my book, Windows is very high quality. It seems like Linux is trying to keep up with Windows. So I guess Linux is the underdog...or should I say underpenguin lol.

ChaosBlade · Jul 16, 2005

Thats the plague of linux communities. "RTFM n00b" is something you will NOT hear from most communities supporting issues on the Windows platform..

Linux gurus usualy behave in a very bad way to fresh users. Non User-friendly communities to a non user-friendly OS.

VRiD · Jul 16, 2005

Just a question
if linux uses less resources
do linux compatible games work better then the same game for windows ?

General Plot · Jul 16, 2005

Yeah, it does seem like th open source community is filled with children who can't help but to make a linux noob feel stupid. I'll admit that, but just as the software (support forums aside) Linux does have alot going for it.

Kethinov · Jul 18, 2005

Master Chief said:
I was compiling Samba....and after waiting for like 25mins i get a nice big fat error at the end.

At your proficiency level, you shouldn't have been using a source based distro; they're meant for experts. You would have had a better experience with a binary distro like Fedora or Ubuntu.

Kethinov · Jul 18, 2005

VRiD said:
Just a question
if linux uses less resources
do linux compatible games work better then the same game for windows ?

There is no definite answer to your question. In some cases, yes. In other cases no. It depends on the hardware, the game, what APIs were used, and what platform the game was optimized for.

Ramsus K · Jul 19, 2005

Well, I've installed Fedora Core 4 (finally, a PPC port) on my iBook in place of Debian GNU/Linux to see what the Fedora camp has been up to.

Some bad things I noticed:

The installer now needs 5 CDs. Almost reminds me of installing Slackware Linux with floppy disks. I'll need a DVD+RW drive now.
fontconfig only uses the autohinter. Apparently the Fedora guys are more touchy on patent issues than the Debian volunteers. Not a big problem unless you want to use well-hinted fonts.
The only decent looking fonts are the standard bitmap fonts. To get things looking nice, I disabled all the crappy Type1 and TTF fonts Fedora made default and added the 75dpi bitmap fonts to /etc/fonts/local.conf. Yes, even Vera leaves something to be wanted, but maybe I've used Mac OS X for too long.
GNOME now runs twice as many little services than it did the last time I tried it. So much for desktop environments. At least Nautilus is noticeably faster than ever.
There's a kernel module for my iBook fan that works, except the CPU temperature threshold for turning the fan on is a little low. The only way to tune it seems to be editing the module itself, since the settings are compiled in.

And the good:

Misc Fixed is already set up to work in fontconfig. I don't have to edit a few BDF files and convert them to PCF then reconfigure stuff.
My wacom tablet almost worked out of the box. I just had to edit xorg.conf and add the necessary configuration. They even symlink /dev/input/wacom to the appropriate input event device.
Everything works just as well as Debian GNU/Linux or Gentoo from there. Some things I installed from source (bigloo, CLISP, mplayer, etc), but yum has a fairly complete selection of packages available by default.

Kethinov said:
At your proficiency level, you shouldn't have been using a source based distro; they're meant for experts. You would have had a better experience with a binary distro like Fedora or Ubuntu.

Maybe the version of samba that came with his distro was broken or outdated. Packages are only nice when the distribution provides them, but for other stuff, it really is better to build from source.

I've almost never been unable to get something working from source, but I've had to hack hundreds of source files and Makefiles over the years as a result.

generalplot said:
Yeah, it does seem like th open source community is filled with children who can't help but to make a linux noob feel stupid. I'll admit that, but just as the software (support forums aside) Linux does have alot going for it.

Ironically, support forums can be the absolute worst place to find helpful open source users. You might have better luck on a mailing list.

Kethinov · Jul 19, 2005

Ramsus K said:
The installer now needs 5 CDs.

The installer doesn't need 5 CDs. You can just burn the first CD, install nothing but the base system, and use the package manager to get the rest, just like the Debian net install CD.

Ramsus K said:
Maybe the version of samba that came with his distro was broken or outdated. Packages are only nice when the distribution provides them, but for other stuff, it really is better to build from source.

No, not really. The solution is to use a better and/or more up to date distro, not to attempt to compile crap yourself, especially as a novice.

Ramsus K · Jul 19, 2005

Kethinov said:
The installer doesn't need 5 CDs. You can just burn the first CD, install nothing but the base system, and use the package manager to get the rest, just like the Debian net install CD.

Nowhere in the installation guide or the release notes does it say that the installer will skip discs that it doesn't need. There isn't even a guide explaining what the organization of the packages on the discs are.

But if it makes you feel better, I was only meaning to compare the number of discs required to previous versions of Fedora and Red Hat Linux.

Besides, I kind of wanted to see how the standard installation method handled itself, and if it'd let me selectively install exactly what I wanted without breaking.

No, not really. The solution is to use a better and/or more up to date distro, not to attempt to compile crap yourself, especially as a novice.

Not everyone's needs is as simple as "all the latest" vs "completely stable." sometimes you need a stable distribution with a few very recent bits of software. That usually means installing some parts from source.

marc_lye said:
Besides, its very rare indeed that anybody will NEED all CD's of a modern Linux distro. True, you can only install the 'complete' system by having them all but seriously, I ask you to find me somebody would would use every feature from every disc or to even use a mix of features from each disc.

Fedora 3 was 4 discs, but the layout of the discs is so that all software is appropiately grouped into relevant uses. You'd only need CD1 for the base system and then whatever disc applies to your needs, usually 2 discs in all will suffice. I found that I only needed the first two discs, if I remember right the 3rd and 4th (which you're not even meant to have without subscribing to the official Fedora community) were very specific software sets that most users wouldn't require at all.

Gee, it was so intelligently grouped that I only needed the 4th and 5th CD for a few packages.

I'm not a regular user with regular needs though (I ended up needing all five discs with my selections, which didn't make for anything close to a complete installation), so I can see how it might be a good organization. But then, that would only be the case if the documentation noted what discs you needed for what software before you start downloading the ISOs, and if the installer also gave you hints so you could avoid selections that involve discs you don't have and install those specific packages via yum.

Also, I downloaded Fedora 4 via the torrent available on the page they linked to from http://fedora.redhat.com/

The FTP mirrors have all five ISOs available as well, and there was nothing about any subscriptions to anything.

Kethinov · Jul 20, 2005

Ramsus K said:
Nowhere in the installation guide or the release notes does it say that the installer will skip discs that it doesn't need.

I also installed FC4 to my iBook back in its test1 release. Back then there weren't 5 cds. There was one 100mb boot iso for a net install. I managed to get a fully working FC4 desktop on my iBook with one CD and so can you.

Like I said before, go to "custom" and then at the bottom of the software selection, pick "minimal". After it installs, you can install everything else with yum. For example, you can yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment" and so forth.

IMHO yum sucks compared to apt, but it certainly works. I had no trouble getting FC4 working on my iBook. Hell, it even installed the 3d drivers for my radeon card for me.

I still prefer OS X on my iBook though because Broadcom / Apple won't release Linux PPC drivers for the Airport Extreme.

But I digress.

Ramsus K said:
Not everyone's needs is as simple as "all the latest" vs "completely stable." sometimes you need a stable distribution with a few very recent bits of software. That usually means installing some parts from source.

I'm having a hard time rationalizing that statement with Master Chief's Samba anecdote. Seems to me he wanted a Linux distro that "just works". There are plenty to choose from, none of which require compiling Samba or any other major packages, and most of them highly up to date to boot.

Ramsus K · Jul 20, 2005

Kethinov said:
I also installed FC4 to my iBook back in its test1 release. Back then there weren't 5 cds. There was one 100mb boot iso for a net install. I managed to get a fully working FC4 desktop on my iBook with one CD and so can you.

Like I said before, go to "custom" and then at the bottom of the software selection, pick "minimal". After it installs, you can install everything else with yum. For example, you can yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment" and so forth.

IMHO yum sucks compared to apt, but it certainly works. I had no trouble getting FC4 working on my iBook. Hell, it even installed the 3d drivers for my radeon card for me.

I still prefer OS X on my iBook though because Broadcom / Apple won't release Linux PPC drivers for the Airport Extreme.

But I digress.

Feeling impressed with yourself for doing such a simple task? There's no other reason for you to mention it.

Considering I have plenty of blank CDs and lots of University bandwidth, the method I chose was simply the easiest and quickest. Download 5 CDs and run the installer. If I had seen a net installation CD, I would have used that instead.

Besides, Red Hat-based distributions have tended to do all their system configuration in the installer (X11 configuration, et al.), so it's usually best to get the important things you want installed at that time, instead of installing it afterwards (base install implies no X11 to me). Without knowing how the software is organized on the CDs, that means you could need any of them. I also wasn't expecting yum to be as nicely developed and setup as it was, making installation of addition software from the net easy and simple without some monstrosity of a graphical tool that might expect the CDs to be used, break a bunch of RPM dependencies, and use a few hundred MB of memory.

Sure I could configure things by hand, but Red Hat-based distributions also have a habit of overwriting config files with all of their "easy to use" configuration tools and that kudzu nonsense. Another reason I prefer NetBSD and distributions like Slackware.

Which is all irrelevant to my original point anyway.

The fact is, there's nothing telling a regular user they won't need all five CDs and which CDs they might need.

I'm having a hard time rationalizing that statement with Master Chief's Samba anecdote. Seems to me he wanted a Linux distro that "just works". There are plenty to choose from, none of which require compiling Samba or any other major packages, and most of them highly up to date to boot.

Even if in his case he was just going out of his way, there are situations where you do need:

a.) Something with a stable ABI and support (i.e. RedHat Enterprise) or for an end user, something popular and well documented
b.) Something that won't break your current, very specialized configuration, whenever it automatically updates packages
c.) And a very recent, very old/stable, or very rare piece, of software, especially if it needs a custom setup

And thus have to resort to installing a few things from the sources.

I was simply pointing out that his could have been such a situation. Given he tried Linux in the past, it might have been around the time distributions were moving from Samba 2.x to Samba 3.

Kethinov · Jul 20, 2005

Ramsus K said:
Feeling impressed with yourself for doing such a simple task? There's no other reason for you to mention it.

I mentioned it because you were complaining about having to burn 5 CDs. I'm trying to tell you you only actually need the first one. You didn't seem to get it the first time I said it so I explained how its done.

But hey, if forgoing any actual discussion, jumping to conclusions, and acting like an elitist prick gets you off, be my guest. Sure seems to be the norm around here.

Ramsus K said:
I was simply pointing out that his could have been such a situation.

Maybe. But I doubt it. Read his post. Seems to me he was comparing desktop Linux vs. desktop Windows and given the implied motives, he should have been using a real desktop distro instead of something obscure that makes you compile something as basic as Samba.

Ramsus K · Jul 20, 2005

Kethinov said:
I mentioned it because you were complaining about having to burn 5 CDs. I'm trying to tell you you only actually need the first one. You didn't seem to get it the first time I said it so I explained how its done.

But hey, if forgoing any actual discussion and acting like an elitist prick gets you off, be my guest. Sure seems to be the norm around here.

All I did was explain why I had assumed the five CDs might be necessary and why I didn't bother just using the first one. Read:

by Me in reply to you:

Nowhere in the installation guide or the release notes does it say that the installer will skip discs that it doesn't need. There isn't even a guide explaining what the organization of the packages on the discs are.

I assumed you were intelligent enough to realize that I had read what you said and then knew that the first disc contained everything for a base install, the installer skips unnecessary discs, and yum can install everything via the net afterwards.

From my perspective, you were just being a patronizing little jerk when you went into unnecessary detail about something that isn't even relevant to me now (considering I already have everything installed, talking about installation methods isn't even helpful).

I'm not an elitist. You're just blind. It seems a self-imposed affliction too.

Apologies for mis-interpreting your post though.

Maybe. But I doubt it. Read his post. Seems to me he was comparing desktop Linux vs. Desktop Windows and given the implied motives, he should have been using a real desktop distro instead of something obscure that makes you compile something as basic as Samba.

He was obviously using it as part of his argument, but that doesn't mean he didn't need to build Samba from source for some specific reason, like you so boldly assumed.

Betamax · Jul 20, 2005

Can we please keep the topic civil folks. :nono:

tookers · Jul 20, 2005

I chose Windows XP purely for ease of use, easy to navigate when lazy, compatability with games & apps etc.
However I prefer using Linux (suse 9.1 or redhat 9) for desktop & server use, purely because the OS can be expanded greatly and the the UI can be customised exactly how I want it.
I use HPUX on a daily basis for administration and runs near flawless.

alexusbas · Jul 20, 2005

Windows Server 2003

Best Operating system

Which do you think is the best OS for you?

Windows XP

Windows 2000

Windows NT

Windows 9x series

Windows 3.1? <<-- I wonder if it was worth putting on...

UNIX

LINUX

MAC OS

MAC OS X

Kethinov

Supa

Kethinov

General Plot

Master Chief

ChaosBlade

VRiD

General Plot

Kethinov

Kethinov

Ramsus K

Kethinov

Ramsus K

Kethinov

Ramsus K

Kethinov

Ramsus K

Betamax

tookers

alexusbas

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