Discussion on:

Poll: If you were building a PC for yourself today, what operating system would you install?

I'll start off. If I were building a PC and could choose any operating system, it would be Windows 7. I would choose Windows 7 64-bit because one of the main applications I use on my non-work related PCs are games. I am finding Windows 7 to be very stable and find it best fits my needs.

How about you? What operating system would you install?

Win 7 and some form of Linux.

A dual boot box is a no-brainer. I would likely use Win7 64 bit and Mint, which is built on Ubuntu and solves some of the issues I had with my current HW with straight Ubuntu.

Win7 for games and Mint or something similar for the real work. It would be 64bit.

With the ease and apparent popularity of 7, why bother with a dual boot system. If you want a separate cheap system to run Boxee or similar, that I could see.
BTW, that's how I roll

Even if it is Windows7, there are still things you can't do with it that justify a second bootable OS.

I have paid M$ for upgrades since Win3.1. Enough is Enough. Through working with Linux on servers, I became familiar/comfortable with Linux. I tried several really good distros. Linux being Linux, there are several choices. Mepis Linux turned out to be the one for me. You may very likely have chosen something different. That is OK too.

1.Wireless networking between home PC's is very simple.
2. Accessing files, music etc -too easy.
Regards
joe

II was so turned off by Vista that I swore Id never use a MS OS again. Then I tried 7. Its everything Vista should have been. Easy peasy everything.

Exactly. Win 7 and probably Ubuntu. In Ubuntu I would probably also have a WinXP virtual machine for everything else I may do.

using PCLinuxOS Minime09 (KDE4.3) and WinXP. WinXP for games and PCLOS for the other stuff I do.

I just finished 2 machines for my own use a laptop and a desktop - Both are set up with Windows 7 and Fedora 12 using Grub as the bootloader.

I would never consider a single boot machine with as inexpensive as drive real estate is these days.

If I was building a PC to a budget, and just wanted a home utility machine, I'd opt for Ubuntu -any recent version, it loads seamlessly, all drivers and settings-it really is a triumph of simplicity and efficiency. however I'd also be inclined to have a dual-boot to windows XP, just in case I needed to be 'Vanilla' in cyber-space etc...

My personal preference is to be more identifiable if it means being behind a more secure system. Obscurity of a vanilla system does not out weigh real security.

For me, WinXP is part of the standard dual-boot build though until games stop requiring DirectX. After that, it can be dedicated to a VM for running interesting software like Cain/Abel.

I hear you, however I have been running Malwarebytes as my chief protection -$40.00 for personal licence-for about 18 months now, with XP and have not had a single instance of Trojan/Attack/virus-, which I find remarkable.
My 'Vanilla' remark was largely whimsical.

I've been running without any protection since 2001 and i've never had any malware since then.. i think its because i dont download porn in exe format..

The threat is highly overrated, unless again you download porn in exe format

Is this a standalone system or what other protections do you have ahead of it on the network?

I do agree that much of the risk is mitigated with practicing safe hex but the user is also the weakest link and the number who are proudly disinterested in the minimum knowledge to operate a computer is astounding. Anything that can be done by the technology helps.

I have seen this silly claim before. I don't even _visit_ porn sites,... much less DL it. I have still found malware on my systems occasionally.

E-mail is like sex, and malware an STD. If you communicate with someone, who communicates with someone, who communicates with someone else who does silly things, you _can_ be infected. Not to mention 'drive-by cracks' that change javascript links to someplace you don't want to go. (That's why I use NoScript.)

And you call yourself an IT consultant???
How could anyone take you seriously and think that you have the slightest idea what you are talking about when you make statements like that???

I have been in the IT industry for nearly 10 years now and the only systems I have seen that are completely protected from malware are those that are not connected to ANY network (whether LAN, WAN or Internet) and do not have any external storage devices or optical drive.

A statement like this is equivelant to saying "I haven't locked my doors since 2001 and my house has never been broken into".

Grow a brain.

- I use that too. Dropped all my old anti-virus SW and just use that exclusively when I suspect something is amiss. Seems to be a great product.

I am dual booting a new laptop between Ubuntu and Win 7.
Win 7 doesn't get much use.
It seems like there are fewer and fewer compelling reasons, at least for me, to use Windows.
From my experience with Ubuntu, it seems like it may only be 2-3 years away from being a truly realistic option.

Actually it depends on the configuration of the PC. I think Windows 7 is the best of Microsot. Linux OS's are still not user friendly.

That you make the blanket statement "Linux OS's are still not user friendly" leads me to believe you have never tested a Linux distribution with an open mind or for more than a day. How many years has it taken you to become as familiar with Windows as you are? Do you expect to become that familiar with Ubuntu or Mint or Mepis in a day, or even a week?

I personally find several Linux distributions much easier to use than Windows 7, but that may be because I'm not yet that familiar with Win 7. The cost per license is much friendlier for Linux, though.

You are in fact right about the license, however as you pointed out people are not as familiar with Linux making the training cost and short term efficiency loss too high for people to switch..
The county i live in ran an Open Source project.. it was a complete and utter failure as 1; they had nobody to whine to once things broke as we whine to MS and get patches
2; People did not learn Linux as fast as expected, in fact they did not learn jack ****
3; Unstable, perhaps the biggest surprise for me, but everything crashed constantly.. might be a crappy IT guy setting it up but despite what people say about windows it usually works rather fine and it supports all kinds of retarded hardware configurations

How much planning went into that project? I'd be willing to bet that the IT people were told they would be supporting the open source project, but that none were interested in it.

"they had nobody to whine to once things broke as we whine to MS and get patches"

- they didn't consider support from Red Hat, Novell or any other service provider?

- they didn't have even one IT person knowledgeable enough to understand bug reporting?

- what was the training provided to your staff from which they did not learn jack ****? Did you consider configuring the desktop in a familiar way or hiring competent trainers?

- Unstable is interesting. What distribution was chose and what user programs in the general setup? Suse seems stable and Debian should have been like a rock but I can see issues if you where using Debian Testing or an Ubuntu based on it. It could also have to do with the hardware if you where re-purposing an existing machine with non-Windows hostile components in it. Anyhow, this is the more interesting of the three points so if you can post the distribution and general programs...

I can understand people not wanting to learn something new, but what I cannot understand, is your claim of instability.

The one thing that Linux is renowned for, is stability. In the past three years of using Linux (Debian) as my primary production system, I've managed to crash it once and frankly, that's because by that time, I had totally abused it, loading stuff on that should never had been there. Then deleting system files in error when logged in as root and trying to sort out the mess I had created. I think that can be forgiven!

I really don't go along with this training cost scenario. If we are going to be pedantic, then yes, there must be a cost (as there is with everything). But my experience is, about 15 minutes into using Linux, people are away, and the underlying system is irrelevant.

If we are going to pursue the cost argument, what about the constant maintenance and protection Windows needs. Is that not a cost?

Please accept, this is not an attack on you, just my observations and experience so far.

During my time with PACE Institute this year, we had 14 students who were new and fairly had a grasp on Windows OS's. We had 4 of them learn Linux for the sememsters ahead, needless to say, all 4 of them reported a high amount of crashes with Linux and 3 of them had a hard time understanding how to get decent drivers for the hardware they had. I had a few complaints that the drivers were crap for any serious gaming and then they complained that Photoshop/Indesign were total failures on Linux.

Now, I love Linux, but I do know for a fact, as every other IT Pro should, that Linux has it's faults like MS/MAC does too. It's not the all stable OS like it's far superior to MS. On the contrary, that part depends on the IT person running the show. None of my MS OS's on Win7/XP need to be rebooted unless it's the occasional patch. Like wise, my Linux boxes are premo too and don't crash on me etc.

However, like the mainstream masses for most consumers, they just want things to work, and when it doesn't make sure the process for fixing it is easy.

hardware or software too well. But, hey, it's the same problem you get when you work to a private standard and not an industry one.

A claim of Linux instability along with these other generic and unsuitable claims leads me to believe this is a bs post. The kind of post an agent of Microsoft would post.

I am always surprised by the amount of money Microsoft will spend to hire people to defame their competition. Their new tactic of making "grass roots" movements and "forming opinions at the user level" is just deplorable.

There is a reason these posts are made and never followed up on by the poster.

I've seen systems so unstable as to be utterly useless. That said, most systems that I deal with are higher end Dell/HP/Lenovo or custom built to purpose.

If people would learn to spend even just a little extra money on a computer they would have fewer problems with any OS. Linux and Windows have the disadvantage of having to support a massive quantity of hardware, something that doesn't affect MacOSX. On the flip side of that, Linux and Windows have the advantage of supporting a massive quantity of hardware; thus providing a much larger base to install on and gain market share.

My rule of thumb... don't build/buy cheap, build well for a fair price because quality does matter.

The users need to take into account of what they want to do with a computer before they purchase/buy.
L/we run XP and VISTA on both PC's and Noteboooks all set up to enable our users to complete their tasks in a timley and easy manner.

Too often U see computers (entry level min HDD, Memory, Video) that are expected to produce quality work in short time frames, and the managers wonder why the users are frustrated and they have a high turnover of staff.
AS I have said before we use XP/Vista and Office 2003 PRO and Corel Draw X5 suite.
We will NOT be going to WIN7, MS have removed the "CLASSIC" option, a setting on all our 115 systems, and the NEW WIN7 UI is NOT liked, same as in Office 2007/10 they have the dreaded "RIBBON" again NOT liked and make a competent user into a novice, they have to relearn how to perform tasks and find tools.

SORRY MS this has not endeared you to our 115 staff/managers and Owners.

I have been running Windows 7 64 bit for four months now with no problems, it is far faster to install than Vista and it does not have loads of updates to download, very stable (though i do have the Ultimate version) i have the motherboard (Asus P5K) on maximum memory of which is 8gb,
it runs nicely.

Ubuntu serves most of my needs except running MS Money (hence the virt)

You may be able to run it under WINE. On my system, once WINE is installed, I just rightclick the .exe and "run with Wine" and off it goes. I've not yet run anything that requires a full install though so it's up to you if you want to explore that option.

On the other hand, VM gives you an easy way to do a backup image from time to time.

I've found WINE to be acceptable only, as long as you aren't using an app that you make many changes to. Also, BBDM or Itunes need a full VM. Currently running Ubuntu 9.10 w/ Sun VB for my phone apps.

I hadn't checked for a while and it appears the KMyMoney now has the cash flow functionality that I needed. Win2K is now gone

Also dropped Virtualbox in favour of KVM

What keeps me bound to VMware rather than jumping over to Virtualbox is bridged networking; my virtual network cards appear on the network beside my physical network card instead of being behind NAT through the physical NIC. When I last looked at VB, it required some sad archane scripting.

Do you or anyone else know if KVM does simple NIC bridging similar to VMware's simple dropdown selection? I'd love to have something natively built for Debian Stable but with VMs containing server builds, bridged NIC is a requirement.

I just created the bridge interface in /etc/network/interfaces, disabled Network Manager and added some firewall rules to allow forwarding across the bridge. (Ubuntu 10.04)

FWIW I never had any issues with bridged networking under VBox (non OSE) but don't remember if there was any manual config.

With VMware, you literally select "Bridged" from a NIC type when you add it to the VM profile. Same on Lin or Win all nice and easy.

With Virtualbox it was a long arcane set of scripts and steps for creating the bridged device then adding each virtual NIC tapping into it.

With KVM, the steps appear to be more strait forward though still with the manual bridge0 creation. I'll have to give it a go and see when I get some hobby time available.

At this point, I like VMware but not having a native package has it's limitations. Given the same or greater feature set, I'd happily use something from the repository. Virtualbox would be my alternate preference due to coming 3D GPU support if they could provide a clean bridged networking setup. qemu-kvm I have to test and haven't confirmed it's 3D GPU support yet.

(edit): autostart also. I need at least one of my VMs to be started when the system boots up. Virtualbox is not well suited to that without yet more arcane gyrations. Easy bridged networking an VM autostart at boot would replace my VMware overnight even if it meant not being able to simply convert my existing VM images.

IMO, YNAB smokes MS Money, and it runs on Linux, Windows, Mac. www.youneedabudget.com

Ubuntu 10.04
openSUSE 11.2
windows 7 ultimate

I set up a test machine not long ago so I could play about with all sorts of different languages (HTML, JavaScript, Python, etc).
150GB XP Home SP3
100GB Win7 Ultimate (RC) 64bit
200GB "blank" NTFS for shared Windows storage
150GB Ubuntu 9.04 (then 9.10)

Now I'm on XP Home SP3, XP Pro SP3 and Ubuntu 9.10. I must say I miss Win7.

I love XP Pro. I also love to "play" with Ubuntu. I'd have XP Pro as my primary.

I'd like to try Windows 7 64 bit (not starter edition or whatever it is called) just to see if it's not as crappy as Vista, but I just haven't had the opportunity yet so I'm sticking with XP Pro for now..

u can use something called wubi to install ubuntu right into your XP, that part works. the bad comes later, ubuntu is just not ready for primetime...maybe never will be:)

If your doing a messy install like running Ubuntu off the same fat32/ntfs your Windows is installed on then you have to expect some odd outcomes. I'm suspicious of distributions installed on fat32 partitions let alone installed on a fat32/ntfs in the same mess of directories as another foreign OS.

It's amazing how that happens.

Perhaps, but I see no performance difference between a wubi'ed ubuntu and a ubuntu on a separate partition and on a different box per se, all three installs rot. Wubi is solid and at least innovative. Everything past that is just nonsense and the only thing it has going for it, is that it's free and can run on pig iron. Seems if u want a real OS, just bite the apple and get one.

Just drumming up sales...

Only the upper middle class elite buy macs here in Nepal, and after the revolution that starts May 1, there won't be many of those folks left.