Preferred OS?

Miscellaneous Topics
#61

I use Explorer to do quite a lot of one-off file ops. The equivalent on the Mac is utterly despicable. Shell’s not so bad but it’s hardly “easy” or “intuitive” compared to drag and drop and my tiny brain is often busy trying to remember something else at the time.

Cas :slight_smile:

#62

I have to say, Windows Explorer on Windows 7 is not that bad, and in Windows 8 it’s even better (and yes, I will succumb to this, “shiny” and “pretty” ;D). Total Commander is awesome too but it’s so ugly :frowning:

#63

Then be aware that Windows 8 != Metro
Well… we will see…

I just posted some random old screenshot. It has endless customization settings.

http://img193.imageshack.us/img193/7109/asadsv.jpg

Maybe I’m just old school.
I like going back to Windows classic design.

#64

Metro just doesn’t work on desktop. Otherwise, the new ‘features’ in Windows 8 aren’t that bad, even though it’s too little too late:

  • new Task Manager, too late I’m already stuck to Process Explorer
  • better file copying, Teracopy is better than anything Microsoft tries to implement.
  • Windows Store…no comment… facepalm

I’m “new” school ;D My first own Windows was Vista. I used XP a little before getting my first computer but I never liked its UI compared to Vista.

#65

My first Windows was XP. Doesn’t look the greatest, but works really well on weaker machines.
Then I used Vista and hated it. UI is important, but not in the way Vista accomplished it.
Windows 7 is awesome. Even better than Vista’s UI, but also efficient.
Disliked Metro (give me my start menu back!!! ;D)

#66

Started with Windows 3.1 :persecutioncomplex:

#67

Lol
16-bit

#68

Remember those switches on the PC that would overclock your CPU?
And the MHz would be displayed on the PC itself.

#69

Put QTTabBar on it and it’ll be more awesome. Dunno about win8’s yet.

#70

Admittedly Finder lacks a few features: jumping to the correct file on multiple keystrokes, listing full file path, etc. Though it also has some very handy features that I use frequently – column view, spring loaded drag & drop (and smoother drag & drop in general, if you ask me), QuickLook (IMO superior, smoother and more reliable than Explorer Preview), color labels, Spotlight, etc. What makes Finder so utterly despicable?

Of course, the awesome new Explorer features in Windows 8 make the discussion moot.

#71

Pff. Started with Amiga Workbench 1.2.

#72

Pff. Started with:

http://www.porticus.org/bell/images/transistor1.jpg

#73

If you go back too far in time it isn’t l33t anymore, just cumbersome :wink:

#74

Yeah my uncle used this when I was really young, and I watched.
Everything was giant, even the cursor; you put in a floppy disk, and it takes like 5 minutes until you can even start it / look at the contents
and I remember a lot of flickering on the screen while it loads stuff
Guess it wasn’t 1.2 though, because I remember playing games like Shufflepuck Cafe later on.

#75

Yep, patience was a virtue, something that severely lacks nowadays. I remember waiting a whopping 8-9 minutes for the crappy Castlevania port to actually boot.

Busted! You were running cracked stuff. Those flashing screens were used to basically indicate to crackers that their unpackers were doing something.

NOTE: accuracy of that statement not guaranteed, it was a year or two ago that an actual cracker from the good old days (Fairlight) explained it.

You’re talking about basic Amiga usage which did not require the workbench for everything. The workbench was just a graphical shell to the OS which could be leveraged to have (multitasking, multiuser) applications with a windowing system. Most applications just had their own bootloaders on the disc to be able to run without any extra help.

To know if it was workbench 1.2: was the background a horrible green? If so: we’re talking about the same thing :slight_smile:

#76

Nah it was white or blue.
I remember a floppy disk symbol with the word amiga on it and a hand grabbing it. but maybe a lot versions had that ;D

#77

Blue was workbench 1.3, which was more of the same really but built for the kickstart 1.3 revision (basically the OS of the machine that was stored in a ROM) which was present in later releases of the computer :slight_smile: That hand was what the Amiga would show if the computer could get through its initialization steps successfully and if you booted it without any disc in the drive, inviting you to do just that :slight_smile: Aaaaaah memories.

In any case I would not longer prefer AmigaOS as its a bit… dated :wink:

#78

But I hear they are stil making them, with like AmigaOS 4 and stuff. Haven’t tried them though =P

#79

Unity/Gnome/KDE/etc are mediocre, but they are adequate. I am typically using a shell window, a web browser, email client, TeXmaker, a few Swing apps (IntelliJ), IM client (Pidgin), maybe Skype, and a text editor (geany, gedit, or vim). The GUI isn’t a work of art or anything, but it is completely functional and adequate. What do you want from the GUI that is broken or missing?

As a long time Windows user, I recently switched to Linux (Ubuntu). Huge upgrade, for programming and math/science work:

The advantages of Linux over Windows:

  • Command line. Linux shell is far nicer than Windows cmd.exe. Piping works better. All the command line tools work better and are fully designed to work with piping/chaining/scripting. Linux also has fancier shells like zsh, which I’m just now starting to learn and see benefits to (for example, the Git shell integration is awesome).
  • Command line is often so much simpler than using GUI apps. For example, when I need to convert an image from one format to another (like PNG -> JPG), on Windows I used to use Paint.NET, on Linux it’s just a simpler command line. Way faster, way simpler, and easily batchable.
  • Proper aliases. windows has shortcuts that don’t really work in the command line sense.
  • Free software repo. Often rather than scouring the web for the right shareware, I can just use the Linux repo, which is basically guaranteed to be malware free and nagware free and uninstallable.
  • Faster. Seriously, web browsing is faster, booting is faster, no virus checking which was necessary on Windows. Even though I scheduled it to run at 4AM, it would run at completely different times anyway, and stop me from cancelling it or using my computer when I needed to.
  • Less crap ware. For example, on Windows when I installed a printer driver or scanner driver, I’d see HP/Canon junk in my Windows tray and every time I had to reboot. On Linux, using printer/scanners is fully plug/play and completely crap ware free.
  • Works better with Python and Hadoop. These things can work on Windows, but they really work better with a *NIX system. Hadoop requires *NIX tools on Windows. Installing python and ipython and scipy on Linux is a breeze, where it’s a headache on Windows.
  • I plan to upgrade from the Unity window manager to xmonad when I am ready. This looks like a major usability upgrade over the overlapping resizeable window paradigm on Win/Mac.

Downsides:

  • Games. ~90% of PC games are Windows-only, and maybe ~9% are Windows/Mac. It is rare to have native Linux support.
  • On drivers: overall, Linux is great and ompletely plug-and-play. I’ve hit one significant exception. When I dock/undock my laptop, I have to manually switch between my desktop monitor and laptop screen where Windows would do this automatically.
#80

http://haiku-os.org/ :slight_smile: