What is your favourite OS?

[Ethanadams]

What is your favorite operating system? Or what is the one you are currently using?

 

mine favorite would have to be windows 7,  or Tails

[Hobbes Novakoff]

I prefer OSX (trackpad support and generally more pleasant to use, not to mention excellent integration with my smartphone) and Windows 10 (possibly the first actually nice-looking Microsoft OS. I don't know of Windows 8, we don't speak of it here.) 

*Raises heatshield*

[cantab]

Debian.

[Mad Rocket Scientist]

Windows 7.

[JedTech]

For doing productivity stuff, I like Windows 10

For doing casual stuff like internet browsing, I like Mac OSX El Capitan

I currently play KSP on Windows 10, but am excited to dive into Linux in the near future.

 

[zKrieg]

Windows 8.1 gives me fewer issues and increased performance than 7. I'm still afraid to take the plunge into windows 10.

I'd love to get into linux but for years I have been to afraid of the learning curve.

Edited February 17, 2016 by zKrieg

[11of10]

Win 7, for now, tho I'm flirting with idea of going for 8.1 for quite some time now, but still don't really have the guts for it... Once I tried Win8, Core version I think, and it actually had MUCH WORSE performance in gaming than Win 7.

@Ethanadams Why Tails?

[katateochi]

Ubuntu (currently 14.04LTS) is where I spend most of my time and do all my work. I like it because I can change it however I like and it's the little things like its window management which are just so fluid.  I used to be a real windows fan boy until I tried ubuntu, now I literally can't work in windows anymore, makes me feel claustrophobic and I keep feeling like I'm constantly tripping over it.  I like an OS that you forget about while using.
But I still have win7 for games (I actually have this a s rule, so I'm not tempted to play games while I should be working! gotta reboot first!)

[Evanitis]

Windows is my all time favorite operating system out of the total of one I ever used. My principle always was to only switch to a new version once an even newer is released. Though that trend is broken now,, still using 7.

[SolidJuho]

My favourite os is windows 7, but i am going to test win 10 atsummer and if it is worse than win 7, i will get linux or win 7

[GDJ]

2 hours ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

I prefer OSX (trackpad support and generally more pleasant to use, not to mention excellent integration with my smartphone) and Windows 10 (possibly the first actually nice-looking Microsoft OS. I don't know of Windows 8, we don't speak of it here.) 

*Raises heatshield*

Mac OS X El Capitan, for the same reasons.

Other than that, PASCAL.

[radonek]

USE="global-warming" emerge world

'nuf said
 

[Darth C3P0]

Windows 10

Also you should add poll to OP

[Nuke]

dos

[Camacha]

For productivity, Windows, hands down. It is never perfect, but whatever job you throw at it, it will do and generally will do well. Once you learn to massage the peculiarities, it becomes a powerful tool. Its main weakness, the fact that it knows the most malware of any platform, is also its biggest strength: everyone and their grandma uses it and writes for it. There is an app for that was invented by Windows. There is no task so obscure someone did not write a program for it. The same goes for hardware - even the most unreasonable peripherals and plug-in cards have been developed for it. The traditional advantage Linux, and to a certain degree OS X, had in the form of a comprehensive console is fading after the introduction of Powershell.

For browsing, general office and multimedia tasks, Linux, OS X and Windows perform about as well. I feel OS X can be constrictive if you do not fully commit and rummage around in its guts, though it is more polished than Linux distros. If you are happy to consume it the way it is served and no other, it works well.

[Dispatcher]

I use Win 10 at work, simply because its what the company uses.  My OS of choice (and what I use at home) is Mac OS X.

[Robotengineer]

OS X. It can be a pain in the poophole at times, especially if you are trying to programming stuff that requires libraries that have different names on OS X, or trying to compile something that doesn't compile on the first try. It is also the most polished and beautiful OS available, IMO. El Capitan has been a big pain though, especially since they have stopped allowing root to have complete access to certain areas. 

I have used Linux Mint, and it works pretty well, though it's not my preferred system. 

I haven't used Windows in years, with the last version of Windows I actually used as a pc being XP. 

[HebaruSan]

My preferred desktop environment is xmonad with a taskbar, so I use Ubuntu on my own system. It's nice to have every program I could possibly need (something like 77417 packages if I'm reading the stats correctly) pre-integrated into the OS in a coherent way and ready to be installed or uninstalled with a single command, and to be able to download the source for each one if I want to tweak something or backport an upstream fix. As long as I make my configuration changes correctly, all my settings persist across major release upgrades. And if anything goes wrong, I can just describe it to google and there's already a page on askubuntu.com explaining what to do.

tl;dr: I'm quite content with it.

My wife switched from OSX to Ubuntu's default desktop environment on a hand-me-down system, and the transition was surprisingly smooth. The worst part was migrating her BasiliskII install so she could resume her lifelong quest to finish Curse of the Azure Bonds; the "resource forks" of legacy MacOS caused much grief and gnashing of teeth when trying to transfer them through two newer operating systems. Hiding metadata is bad, mmmkay?

[Ethanadams]

@11of10 because it is very good protection if used on a public computer and you can easily have it on a flash drive or a cd ready to use

Edited February 18, 2016 by Ethanadams

[LN400]

Never had Win 7 but have been through DOS, Win95, Win98SE, XP, Vista, Win 8 and Win 8.1.

Of the bunch I have to say XP. To me it has been, by far, the most reliable system giving me the absolute least headache.

DOS/Win95: Great in their days except you really needed to know how to fiddle with them to get them to do what you wanted them to. Editing autoexec.bat, anyone?

98SE: For years my favourite mainly for its pretty good DOS compatibility (not perfect but near perfect). Add to that you could always start in DOS light if you had to. Pretty much all the games I played back then were DOS games so that explains why that compatibility was important. However, I did get pretty good at reinstalling the entire OS on a weekly basis near the end. So for that, good riddance.

XP: Just plain solid. After the service packs it never once went down on me big time, as opposed to 98SE and Vista. Still fairly good backwards compatibility.

Vista: I got home with my then brand new PC with Vista preinstalled. Wired it up and booted it up. BSOD. It never got much more reliable. By far the worst of the lot (never had WinME). Backwards compatibility also low, forget all about pre-XP compatibility.

Win 8: Just no. I have a PC, not a bleedin smartphone.

Win 8.1. Somewhat unstable. Right clicking on file icons will more often than not soft crash the OS back to desktop. Been that way since day 1. Too many auto updates resulting in a crash, roll-back and reboot. It also ticks me off to no end MS decided I should regard my own computer as their property in the sense that it can be a real PITA to give yourself the authorisations one would need. It was also Win 8.1 that on its own initiative changed my passwords to passwords I would use with MS services. That is a huge no-no.

 

[11of10]

@Ethanadams I know what Tails is and what it does, I was just curious if you really have to use it, however now that I think about it, maybe it's better to avoid that question.. 

@LN400 And CONFIG.SYS ... and endless wrestling matches with memmaker.exe to get Frontier (Elite 2) to work on my pitiful 486, only to realise it CAN'T work on EGA graphics

Anyway, for Windows XP, it wasn't really that good until approximately Service pack 2. 

Vista is supposedly ok with all the patches installed, but I really never dared to try it.

Anyone tried IBM OS/2? 

[Ethanadams]

@11of10 I don't really need to use it but i got it to see if i could and to see how it worked I basically got it because i can not really for the uses

 

 

 

Edited February 18, 2016 by Ethanadams

[Kobymaru]

Fedora Linux.

The newest software from the Open-Source world, but still rather stable. Great for Servers, Programming, Science, ... 

Beautiful. Visually beautiful because of Gnome 3.18, and architecturally beautiful because of systemd & dnf.

It's really the best OS I had so far.

 

The downside, as with every Linux Distro is gaming, in general. The offerings from Steam are still a bit meager, and obviously no "windows-only" AAA titles work. KSP kinda works with a little tinkering, but to be honest, I'm too lazy for that. I just dual-boot into Windows.

[Camacha]

7 hours ago, LN400 said:

98SE: For years my favourite mainly for its pretty good DOS compatibility (not perfect but near perfect). Add to that you could always start in DOS light if you had to. Pretty much all the games I played back then were DOS games so that explains why that compatibility was important. However, I did get pretty good at reinstalling the entire OS on a weekly basis near the end. So for that, good riddance.

That was what I loved about Windows 95 and 98. If it threw a fit you could always resort to DOS, circumventing whatever problem you had in the GUI. You could seriously hurt your Windows installation too, but that comes with the territory. The control was lovely. You get to do whatever you want to do, whether you break everything or not. Luckily, Microsoft is reinventing the concept with PowerShell. Moar control!

Quote

Win 8.1. Somewhat unstable. Right clicking on file icons will more often than not soft crash the OS back to desktop. Been that way since day 1. Too many auto updates resulting in a crash, roll-back and reboot. It also ticks me off to no end MS decided I should regard my own computer as their property in the sense that it can be a real PITA to give yourself the authorisations one would need. It was also Win 8.1 that on its own initiative changed my passwords to passwords I would use with MS services. That is a huge no-no.

Your installation sounds to be broken. A system that is constantly crashing and rolling back has severe issues, it is not normal for Windows 8 (or any other version). Regarding the authorisations, Microsoft sadly went down the path of software as a service. I advise you to avoid Windows 10 at all costs, because even though the actual technology is solid, you do give up even more control. You need to be running a dedicated server to gain full control over your updates.

[Rainbowtrout]

I'm a fan of Windows 7, but I'm currently using Windows 10 and I do quite like it. It looks nice, and functions well enough.