What operating system(s) do you use?

Science & Technology: Internet

Propertea April 22, 2014 at 2:30 am

Personally, I use Windows 8.1 (for some games) and Xubuntu on my desktop and Manjaro Linux on my laptop. I prefer to stick with open source operating systems as, especially linux in particular, are designed with security in mind.

Of course, there remains the issue of binary blobs, but that is the price of hardware compatibility.

Regardless, what operating system do you use? It is okay, if you aren’t a Linux enthusiast or if you need/prefer Windows or Mac.

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Prenna April 22, 2014 at 3:00 am

I used to use Ubuntu but my partner bought me a new laptop with Windows 7 and I haven’t bothered changing. Windows 7 is the first Windows operating system that I’ve actually enjoyed using.

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Not Required April 22, 2014 at 4:58 am

My preferred OS is Fedora. I used to use Ubuntu, but I don’t like the new Unity stuff. But I have to use a Mac for work.

I’m crossing my fingers that I’ll never have to use Windows again. But I doubt I’ll be that lucky.

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  Max Hill April 24, 2014 at 12:45 pm
  
  Yeah, Unity is horrible, but did you know they have brought gnome back as an officially supported GUI? That’s what I’m using right now. There’s also one called cinnamon that a lot of people have been using.
  
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Daniel Davis April 22, 2014 at 6:15 am

I use Windows 7 mostly, my school requires it for most assignments. I haven’t been very impressed by Windows 8. Microsoft seems to follow a pattern here. Windows 98 = Awesome, Me (or whatever it was) shitty, XP awesome, Vista shitty, 7 awesome, 8 shitty. So if we follow the Microsoft algorithm it stands to reason that Windows 9 will be awesome lol. For Linux I use Ubuntu. I haven’t been able to get into Linux as much as I would like. I love Ubuntu, if anyone knows some other awesome beginner friendly distros I would love to hear about them. I have also used a Raspberry Pi, it was a little slow for me (understandable for the hardware).

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Zain D April 24, 2014 at 12:18 pm

I’m long done with Windows. My next rig won’t even have a license. It’s time to go full-on penguin. Currently I’m using elementaryOS which is based on Ubuntu. ElementaryOS is clean as a whistle and the first distro I haven’t had to tweak to my liking. It just “worked”.

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Tom Utley April 24, 2014 at 1:09 pm

I’m a Mac snob. They are just so awesome. I have a MacBook Pro and it runs a CentOS VM and a Windows 7 VM for those times when I need them. I also have an Unraid NAS server and an Amazon cloud server, both running linux variants.

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Ooana Trien April 24, 2014 at 3:47 pm

I was a apple IIsi & e then switched to windows and was a die hard PC fan until 2008. I’m still on a learning curve – it’s difficult to really realize how simple the mac OS is by comparison. And I’m still way behind and using that same machine I got in ’08. And THAT was why I got a mac. But man…I’m ready for Maverick!

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Jp Cortez April 24, 2014 at 6:02 pm

I’ve used Windows my entire life. I’ve played with Linux once or twice and have enjoyed it. I’m thinking about making the leap over on my PC. Any advice?

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  Max Hill April 24, 2014 at 9:12 pm
  
  If you’re unsure, you could run linux in a virtual machine until you know for sure if you want to. I’d suggest ubuntu unless you have a specific need for something else. The biggest challenge for most people is that the Libreoffice suite can’t hold a candle to MS Office. Until it does, Linux will never be able to compete in a serious way with Windows. If you frequently exchange documents with people who use Office or if you need to make nice clean documents or presentations, you’ll want to at least have access to MS Office on a windows machine. I run windows in a virtual machine on my Ubuntu laptop and it works great. Stock ubuntu comes with a user interface called Unity that a lot of people hate, but switching to the gnome or KDE interfaces is really easy to do. Let me know if you need any help if you decide to move.
  
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  Bob Adams April 26, 2014 at 4:08 pm
  
  Create documents in LaTex and they’ll be far better looking than anything from MS Office or LibreOffice. It is harder to get along with (since it’s almost like HTML for documents) but it looks so nice. It’s very good to generate resume PDFs with it. There are some nice templates online.
  
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  Chris Pacia April 30, 2014 at 6:16 pm
  
  You can dual boot. It’s very easy to do even on old machines. Once you do it, you’ll find yourself using your windows partition less and less then cursing when you have to go back to windows for something.
  
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Rob Hart April 25, 2014 at 2:18 am

windoze has its time and place, but i do prefer linux — in all of its varied flavors. i’m kinda liking centOS at the moment.

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Daniel Davis April 25, 2014 at 10:41 am

They used open office in the past. Why did they switch to Libra? I like open office better.

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  Zain D April 25, 2014 at 10:54 am
  
  Apparently it was because Oracle bought-out Sun Microsystems (the devs of Open Office). A number of OpenOffice devs left the company because they (rightly) feared that the acquisition would spell the end of OpenOffice – which it did. OpenOffice has been discontinued for just over three years now.
  
  Libre Office is a “fork” of OpenOffice (based on the same code-base) and is maintained by a number of the same staff who left Sun after the Oracle buy-out.
  
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  Not Required April 26, 2014 at 2:39 am
  
  That is true, but shortly after it happened Oracle donated OpenOffice to the Apache Foundation. OpenOffice continues to live on as a viable open source project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apache_OpenOffice_Writer#History
  
  My preference is for LibreOffice though.
  
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Daniel Davis April 25, 2014 at 10:59 am

Oh I see.

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Daniel Davis April 25, 2014 at 10:59 am

Shame.

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Roger Browne April 25, 2014 at 2:47 pm

Fedora for my computer; OS/X for the rest of the family (to keep my support hours down).

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Parev April 26, 2014 at 9:04 pm

I run Gentoo (xfce4) as a server and have a laptop with Gentoo as well. I also have a couple of OSX machines, and I carry a Windows 7 hard drive that I can swap out on my work laptop when I travel. I guess I like a little bit of everything.

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John R. Meese April 26, 2014 at 10:33 pm

I use Google’s Chrome OS exclusively at this point. It’s wonderful, because it’s helped me gravitate towards using more and more distributed web-based services for most of my needs. I use a Chromebook for my laptop and a Chromebox for my desktop computer. If you use Google Chrome as your browser, the Chrome OS is basically that plus a number of offline apps. It boots up in 7 seconds and has an eight hour battery life, so I’m happy.

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Theodore Freysen April 30, 2014 at 6:21 pm

Linux Mint

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  Daniel Davis April 30, 2014 at 11:28 pm
  
  Yes I have heard good things about mint being super user friendly. I have never tried it myself though.
  
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Addie Hollis April 30, 2014 at 10:46 pm

I use Apple/Mac (Maverick) mostly, but I also have a Windows 7 PC.

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John Martinez June 6, 2014 at 4:12 am

I use Windows 7, Tails, and Debian. Windows 7 was installed on my thinkpad when I bought it and it is very convenient so I have kept it on there and use it primarily. I will occasionally live boot into Tails when I want to do some anonymous web browsing. I have Debian 7 on my other laptop which serves as my laptop I pull out when I want to get more familiar with Linux. I’ve also played with Ubuntu, Linux Mint, Fedora, and Kali Linux in the past.

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Josh K June 6, 2014 at 7:19 am

I primarily use Kubuntu linux. It’s a KDE desktop version of Ubuntu. I’ll sometimes boot into Kali linux or Win 7 for specific tasks when needed.

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