Which OS are you running and why?

[ACS]

Win 7 on the laptop, XP Pro on the netbook.

 

[rh100]

All my day to day pc's are now upgraded to win 7, except for one which still has XP as it's mostly left alone and would have been a waste of a licence. The server is Windows Home Server and the media center is using win7 also.

Work is still an XP/office 03 environment.

 

[Tigerbiten]

All my computers run Windoze XP pro.
Then I run VMWare Player with stripped down version of CentOS inside it.

 

[Bird Brain]

I think what really put me off with XP was it just got slower and slower starting.On my main machine it would take ten minutes on a 3GHZ 4 gig ram.Been running windows 7 for 5 weeks now which is much longer thsn I ran Vista.This is definitely an improvement on Vista.

I quite like the look and layout of the MAC OS.I suppose for surfing the interweb it can't be that bad till I get used to it.

 

[Dewi]

XP SP3, pro version at home and work. I don't like Win 7 but it does seem better than Vista. A lot of people don't like Win 7 and I've helped out friends by setting their new Win 7 PCs to dual boot XP

 

[beanzontoast]

I think what really put me off with XP was it just got slower and slower starting.On my main machine it would take ten minutes on a 3GHZ 4 gig ram.Been running windows 7 for 5 weeks now which is much longer thsn I ran Vista.This is definitely an improvement on Vista.

I quite like the look and layout of the MAC OS.I suppose for surfing the interweb it can't be that bad till I get used to it.

An OS can get cluttered over time. If you've changed nothing about your machine other than adding programs down the months/years, it can still cause a gradual deteroration of startup times. The more software you install, the more likely it is you will have a bunch of software-title-related processes running at startup (even if you aren't going to use a particular piece of software, it may still run a 'just-in-case' routine during startup. Multiply that a few times and you see the problem). There are programs that can let you choose which of these startup routines run - essential ones obviously have to - and which don't. Also, some people advocate reinstalling the OS every 2-3 years as a fresh install generally runs faster.

 

[threebikesmcginty]

OSX at home
Just got 7 at work
Vista on my laptop which everybody slagged off - seems ok to me, but I'm a user-lite and it's just used for college work: Word, Excel, surf and itunes and that's about it.

 

[terry_gardener]

media center = ubuntu 10.04 LTS + XBMC
mams pc = ubuntu 10.04 - because it has stopped the IT support questions.
My pc 1 = win xp home for hardware using serial port connection which only works under win xp
my pc 2 = win 7 and ubuntu 11.04 dev (win 7 for games and ubuntu for testing and general purpose)
server = ubuntu 10.04 server edition

 

[Amheirchion]

Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop and 10.10 on my netbook, I did run Crunchbang 10 alpha on my netbook but couldn't get the wireless toggle to work. I think I may have a way of fixing it now though, but lack the will to change again.
I mainly run Linux because I'm too damned cheap to pay for a windows licence, and also because I simply like it.

 

[beanzontoast]

Ubuntu 10.04 on my laptop and 10.10 on my netbook, I did run Crunchbang 10 alpha on my netbook but couldn't get the wireless toggle to work. I think I may have a way of fixing it now though, but lack the will to change again.
I mainly run Linux because I'm too damned cheap to pay for a windows licence, and also because I simply like it.

+1. I love the concept of Linux as a community-evolved and supported OS. The fact it is 'free' is very important in promoting its popularity, and it has become so much more non-expert friendly and - most importantly - capable of dealing with different hardware down the years.

I pay for Xp and Win 7 because they still enable me to do some things that I need to more easily than Linux does (currently). I don't dislike them as such. The beauty of Linux is it allows you, if you are so minded, to constantly try out software and ideas (cost of downloading / media aside) that otherwise would prove expensive if or when they didn't work out. I wouldn't dream of doing this in Xp or Windows.

In my case, the number of tasks I can do in Linux is steadily increasing. I just wish I had more hours in the day to experiment!

 

[Carwash]

What would be best for running dos progs?

DOSbox is very good. It's free, cross-platform, and will run most DOS programs.

 

[XmisterIS]

I have XP on one desktop, Debian Etch on the other and Win 7 on the laptop.

 

[Bird Brain]

DOSbox is very good. It's free, cross-platform, and will run most DOS programs.

Tried that and although it did run on my main machine,when I was half way round the world I couldn't get it to work plus it wasn't that good on a slow 1.6ghz laptop 2gig ram.I think in the end i really run out of patience.

 

[Bird Brain]

An OS can get cluttered over time. If you've changed nothing about your machine other than adding programs down the months/years, it can still cause a gradual deteroration of startup times. The more software you install, the more likely it is you will have a bunch of software-title-related processes running at startup (even if you aren't going to use a particular piece of software, it may still run a 'just-in-case' routine during startup. Multiply that a few times and you see the problem). There are programs that can let you choose which of these startup routines run - essential ones obviously have to - and which don't. Also, some people advocate reinstalling the OS every 2-3 years as a fresh install generally runs faster.

I never went 2 or three years without having to do a blasted reinstall...Nowhere near that.In fact if I went a year that was good going.

 

[ASC1951]

XP which is ideal for my basic requirements

Same here. I find that XP works all the time, every time. Never a single crash or wobble.

I'm afraid I also find MS Office hugely better than the OS clones; in the real world of home and SoHo, most of us do.