OS WARS MEGA THREAD (Now debating proprietary vs. open-source!)

[computerex]

...the Linux jumper has to decide wether to use army boots, Ski, diving shoes or sandals. And gets so frustrated that he instead goes on hiking for years through the country with his army boots, without needing to re-boot.

xD That is actually true. The wide assortment of choices offered to a linux user is both a curse and a blessing. It is awesome because variety encourages innovation. As far as innovation is concerned, I don't think anyone here can argue that the linux community takes the cake.

But the bad side is the lack of standardization, something that Apple has done very well (they might have overdone it). Using a Mac is a very nice experience, because everything just fits together in a nice blend keybindings are similar for all applications, etc. This is nice, but it severely limits the user in customization.

Linux - Complete customization
Windows
Mac - Standardization

But one has to realize that linux is no longer the mess it used to be in the old days. Ubuntu for example has done an excellent job in making linux available to the average user, and their support forums are more then enough for any problem you can come across. I don't think if you take an average user and put him on an ubuntu desktop he/she will have any problems.

Am i the only one who think that there is a pointless argument about words and ways of saying going on here instead of attempts to unify opinions?

That is the point of OS wars, artlav Operating systems are tools, and some tools are better situated to some tasks then others. So OS wars are really pointless by their very nature, but still fun to participate in . Especially with M$ hippies.

 

[Artlav]

I don't think if you take an average user and put him on an ubuntu desktop he/she will have any problems.

An average user? Please, we're talking about people with read-only memory - he/she will learn once, and when things change a bit (and they certainly will pretty quick), the system will be blamed for becoming "broken".

The Linux is flexible, so it carefully follows the crookedness of the user's hands.

 

[cjp]

Am i the only one who think that there is a pointless argument about words and ways of saying going on here instead of attempts to unify opinions?

I think there is actually near-consensus about the factual situation. And because consensus is boring, people start playing word games / wars. There is a small philosophical difference behind it though, about whether you compare things based on what it is capable of under equal circumstances, or whether you compare it under actual circumstances (which are never equal- as in "the world isn't fair").

An average user? Please, we're talking about people with read-only memory - he/she will learn once, and when things change a bit (and they certainly will pretty quick), the system will be blamed for becoming "broken".

Made me think about what 'read-only' means. You probably meant 'write-once'. What would real 'read-only' mean? What would 'write-only' be like? I guess 'write-only' is something like /dev/null?

 

[Linguofreak]

I guess 'write-only' is something like /dev/null?

Or, say, an output device. The user can read the data that has been outputted, but the computer can't, unless the user copies it into an input device. Once data has been written to an output device, it has left the system and can no longer be read back.

 

[T.Neo]

Especially with M$ hippies.

Or Linux hippies, for that matter.

 

[Urwumpe]

No, the exactly behavior of the average user mimicks /dev/full.

 

[Face]

Or Linux hippies, for that matter.

Yeah... hippies!

LOVE AND PEACE, EVERYONE! :bighug:

 

[computerex]

Or Linux hippies, for that matter.

Eh, it's no fun with them, they tend to always win :thumbup:

 

[Urwumpe]

Pah, Linux hippies... senseless New Age stuff.

The truly spirited are the AmigaOS monks.

 

[Arrowstar]

Dualbooting a Laptop: OS Selection

Hi all,

In the next few months (after I finish my undergraduate work), I'm planning on wiping the harddrive on my laptop and installing Windows 7. However, like many people, I also primarily use my laptop for websurfing and to a lesser extent, email. In order to facilitate these activities, I'm looking for another operating system that I can dualboot to. The idea is that the second OS should be quick to boot and lightweight on my harddrive. Clearly it has to be free to use, as well.

Besides Google Chrome OS (which I understand will be released later this year?), I've also been looking into a vanilla Ubuntu installation and Jolicloud. I thought I might pose the question here, though. Does anyone have any suggestions or preferences for a secondary OS that fits my needs?

 

[doggie015]

Hi all,

In the next few months (after I finish my undergraduate work), I'm planning on wiping the harddrive on my laptop and installing Windows 7. However, like many people, I also primarily use my laptop for websurfing and to a lesser extent, email. In order to facilitate these activities, I'm looking for another operating system that I can dualboot to. The idea is that the second OS should be quick to boot and lightweight on my harddrive. Clearly it has to be free to use, as well.

Besides Google Chrome OS (which I understand will be released later this year?), I've also been looking into a vanilla Ubuntu installation and Jolicloud. I thought I might pose the question here, though. Does anyone have any suggestions or preferences for a secondary OS that fits my needs?

On my laptop I have Windows 7 amd Ubuntu 9.10 co-existing peacefully. Ubuntu is VERY fast to boot and you can customize it beyond what you can do with windows (I have my ubuntu desktop looking like a mac's thanks to this: http://www.howtoforge.com/mac4lin_make_linux_look_like_a_mac )
So I would suggest to go with Ubuntu

 

[garyw]

Personally I'd recommend NOT dual booting, it just causes too many headaches and issues.

What I'd suggest is you install Win7 then install sun virtual box. You'll then be able to run any OS you like on top of windows 7 (or several operating systems). You also have the ability of taking a snapshot before doing something risky on the internet or elsewhere - it's nice to be back up and running in seconds.

 

[Hielor]

Why don't you just try using Win7 by itself to start with? For the fast boot times you can use sleep or hibernate instead of fully shutting it down, and Win7 boots faster than Vista anyway.

If that doesn't work for you, Windows 7 can shrink the partition that it's on, giving you room to install a second OS.

 

[dbeachy1]

If fast boot times are what you're after you can spare yourself the hassle of dual-booting and just install an SSD drive into your new laptop and then install Windows 7 on that. I'm running Windows 7 on my laptop on this SSD drive and it boots to the login screen in 25 seconds flat -- and 10 seconds of that is the BIOS initializing the hardware and doing the memory test. So it's 15 seconds from the time Windows 7 starts loading until the login screen appears. And more than that, all the disk I/O is screaming-fast. Yes, SSD drives are a bit pricey, but if it's fast booting and fast disk I/O you want, you can't beat 'em.

BTW, if you do decide to go with an SSD drive be sure each OS you install has TRIM support (Windows 7 does).

 

[Face]

A Linux distro with small foot-print and fast boot-up is DSL. I used it myself for the things you mentioned (fast boot-up to browse and read mails).

regards,
Face

 

[Cerebus]

DSL is good, especially if you want portability, since it'll happily run on a usb flash drive, my secondary laptop is an old 500MHz compaq armada e500, which mananges to run XP and Zenwalk ( Slackware based ), reasonably quickly, in fact with a light window manager like XFCE almost any Linux distro should be pretty fast and responsive.

 

[computerex]

Ubuntu is very easy/fast to install, but it is also one of the slowest linux distributions. Mind you, it is still pretty fast and responsive. If you have some time to spare, I would recommend you go ahead and try to install arch linux on your system. In terms of speed and general experience it is the best distribution I have tried. It makes Ubuntu look like a snail.

 

[doggie015]

Going a bit off-topic here... but a couple of days ago I heard of someone who has a TRI-boot setup, XP, Windows 7 AND Ubuntu 9.10 on the same computer. He says that it is like a dual-boot on top of another dual-boot as he has to select the windows 7 loader, which takes him to the choice between 7 and XP.
Personally I never thought that was possible

 

[garyw]

You can have as many OSes installed as you like. if you have all windows OSes then they will play nicely together in the boot.ini - if you have other OSes then it gets more complex.

 

[Linguofreak]

You can have as many OSes installed as you like. if you have all windows OSes then they will play nicely together in the boot.ini - if you have other OSes then it gets more complex.

It's good to have your Linux and Windows installs on two separate hard drives (or whatever storage device you're using). You boot from the Linux drive, and if the user chooses windows at the boot menu, GRUB hands off to the Windows drive. If you are having big problems, you can select in BIOS to boot from the Windows drive, or even disconnect the Linux drive, and the machine will become a single boot Windows machine and act like Linux was never there. The most trouble I've ever had with a dual boot setup was caused by my own stupidity and not reading the installer options carefully when installing Ubuntu.

Dual booting isn't all that bad as long as you maintain physical separation between the OS's involved. Windows doesn't play nice with other OS's, so it's good to make it think that it's on a single boot (or all Windows multiboot) setup, and to be able to return the computer to a normal single-boot state via a BIOS setting or hardware disconnection.

---------- Post added at 10:32 ---------- Previous post was at 10:18 ----------

Hi all,

Besides Google Chrome OS (which I understand will be released later this year?), I've also been looking into a vanilla Ubuntu installation and Jolicloud. I thought I might pose the question here, though. Does anyone have any suggestions or preferences for a secondary OS that fits my needs?

Your wording is a bit unclear here. Are you saying that you're looking at the possibilities of both Ubuntu and Jolicloud as secondary OS's, or Ubuntu as a primary with Jolicloud as a secondary?

Ubuntu makes a good primary, but is a bit heavy for the type of secondary OS you're looking for.

Also, before using Ubuntu as your primary, make sure your hardware plays well with it. Not all manufacturers release Linux drivers for their hardware, and 3rd-party drivers are often buggy, since manufacturers tend to not release the full specifications for how their hardware works and developers have to reverse engineer things to write functioning drivers.

The candidates for a secondary OS aren't as likely to have as many problems with hardware, since alot of secondary hardware will go unused. For instance, you probably don't need a working 3D card for websurfing and e-mail. You might have some hangups with network drivers, though.