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Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: TopAce on September 23, 2005, 02:41:13 pm

Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: TopAce on September 23, 2005, 02:41:13 pm
Just curious. I want to see how unpopular Win98 has become. I still have that. :)
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Thunder Hammer on September 23, 2005, 02:46:04 pm
I'm currently using XP but i would have a second drive with 98 on it if my 98 disk worked. I found 98 good for older games since XP aint so good at supporting them.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: CP5670 on September 23, 2005, 02:47:35 pm
XP SP1 on main computer and laptop, Me on older computer.

oh, and system 7.0 on ancient mac. :D
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Fury on September 23, 2005, 02:48:01 pm
You forgot to list Windows 2003, OSX and BSD. They are popular enough to be listed.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: neo_hermes on September 23, 2005, 02:49:36 pm
Xp SP2.

i hated the Blue screen of Argh on Win98se.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Tolwyn on September 23, 2005, 02:55:15 pm
windows XP, since I do not have to make a clean install every three motnhs now :D
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: DaBrain on September 23, 2005, 03:03:20 pm
I'm using XP, but I'll never use Vista!

Maybe I should have already voted for Linux...
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: karajorma on September 23, 2005, 03:24:35 pm
XP on my main machine, 2000 on the others.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: TopAce on September 23, 2005, 03:33:16 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Mr. Fury
You forgot to list Windows 2003, OSX and BSD. They are popular enough to be listed.


The 'Other' will do

[As for the poll]

Oh... I wasn't expecting this. Am I the only one who seem to be still using Win98?
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Ford Prefect on September 23, 2005, 03:53:04 pm
98? Wow, I thought I was the most antique with 2000.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: castor on September 23, 2005, 03:58:29 pm
Using mainly Debian GNU/Linux here.
+ Win 98SE as the secondary source of grief..
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: aldo_14 on September 23, 2005, 05:10:14 pm
Win 2k.  i'm considering setting up a second Pc running only Linux+Freeware as a little experiment in tinkyness.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: WMCoolmon on September 23, 2005, 05:15:08 pm
Linux mostly, Windows 2000 for the stuff I can't do on Linux, and Windows XP on my laptop.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Kamikaze on September 23, 2005, 05:46:28 pm
Debian primarily. I have Win2k on here too.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Martinus on September 23, 2005, 07:16:46 pm
[color=66ff00]A stripped down version of XP pro on my main, gaming machine and Gentoo Linux on my lappy.

Methinks tickboxes would have been a better approach. :nod:
[/color]
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Ghost on September 23, 2005, 07:32:55 pm
Should've used tickboxes, like Maeg said. Anyway; the main awesome computer(s, if you count my brothers) use Win XP, and I get stuck with the ****ty machine with 98 SE.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Grey Wolf on September 23, 2005, 07:49:06 pm
XP Pro SP2, probably switching to Vista Pro or XP Pro x64 at some point in the next year (i.e. next time Windows fails).
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Corsair on September 23, 2005, 08:08:58 pm
I got XP a couple years ago on my home system, upgrading that from 95. My laptop's been running XP for the last two years also, switching to that from 98.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: vyper on September 23, 2005, 08:37:24 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]A stripped down version of XP pro on my main, gaming machine and Gentoo Linux on my lappy.

Methinks tickboxes would have been a better approach. :nod:
[/color]


Define stripped-down.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: mikhael on September 23, 2005, 10:32:40 pm
XP Pro and FreeBSD.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: aipz on September 24, 2005, 01:00:38 am
I'm using Win98 because:
1. It wastes less resources of my old computer than XP
2. I've had troubles with soundcard drivers after intalling Win2000/2003, and the system crashed...
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: wolfdog on September 24, 2005, 01:39:21 am
98, 2K Pro SP4, XP Pro SP2....

With 2K as my primary OS, since XP is just a little too unstable for me...:blah:
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Scuddie on September 24, 2005, 01:50:47 am
XP unstable?  Maybe if you're not running with enough RAM, but otherwise, you shouldn't see that in XP.

Anyway, I've got XP SP1 for my primary machine, and a Server 2003 machine for tinkering with (though it hasnt seen much action lately).  

I would have voted Linux, but due to the fact that nothing in linux is commonly unified, I was driven away from it, with my most previous distro being Ubuntu.  Now that's pretty sad.  Why, oh why doesn't linux have a common library setup?  Microsoft had the right idea with DirectX and MSVC++ runtime libraries.  All you need to run Windows are essentially those two things.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Darkage on September 24, 2005, 10:30:59 am
XP pro, Solaris8,9 and 10.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Martinus on September 24, 2005, 10:44:09 am
Quote
Originally posted by vyper


Define stripped-down.

[color=66ff00]Hmmm, lets see.

I entirely got rid of WMP, as much of IE as I could do away with, all unnecessary themes and media other than the oldschool, less memory intensive classic theme. Got rid of as many windows components as possible without breaking anything.

I got rid of file protection as it's largely unnecessary and just keeps a folder full of identical files.



There's a few tools that allow you to do this, GreyWolf does it manually but that's a bit too much hassle for me to be honest as I'd rather invest my time learning more about Linux in any case.
[/color]
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Primus on September 24, 2005, 10:45:15 am
I apologize... I have the Win Me.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Martinus on September 24, 2005, 10:50:51 am
[color=66ff00]You have my pity Primus, nobody should have to go through that.
[/color]
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: kode on September 24, 2005, 10:53:36 am
xp/ubuntu

I have plans to give solaris a whirl, tho. if the download had been smaller than 2.5 gigs anyway. 500k "broadband" not ftw.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Martinus on September 24, 2005, 10:58:48 am
[color=66ff00]Ouch, haven't looked at Solaris myself.

Why such a large download?
[/color]
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: kode on September 24, 2005, 11:01:54 am
Quote
Originally posted by Maeglamor
[color=66ff00]Ouch, haven't looked at Solaris myself.

Why such a large download?
[/color]


they have it at uni, but I haven't seen the server side of it, and I'm a bit curious.

I dunno, but I figure it has something to do with it being "the most advanced operating system on the planet". I could order the dvd, but that costs money. they might not have online repositories. full set (non net-install) of debian is like 15 cd's or something, isn't it?
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: aldo_14 on September 24, 2005, 11:20:14 am
Solaris is Open Source now, IIRC.  Incidentally.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: kode on September 24, 2005, 11:35:00 am
Quote
Originally posted by aldo_14
Solaris is Open Source now, IIRC.  Incidentally.


yeah, it is.

what I really want though is a sparc server.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: wolfdog on September 24, 2005, 12:04:30 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Scuddie
XP unstable?  Maybe if you're not running with enough RAM, but otherwise, you shouldn't see that in XP.

yes, it simply crashes more on me than 2000 -'specially while gaming-
and explorer (not IE, I don't use that) also has a tendecy to hang at least a few times a day. Guess it just doesn't really like my hardware/drivers.
And unless 1GB is not enough.... oh, well.. I never really understood it myself either... and I  don't really care... 2000 works just fine.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Fury on September 24, 2005, 12:06:02 pm
wolfdog, your issue is starting to sound something like BIOS update and resetting BIOS settings after the update might solve.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: kode on September 24, 2005, 12:11:18 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Scuddie
XP unstable?  Maybe if you're not running with enough RAM, but otherwise, you shouldn't see that in XP.
 


your directx/msvc++ comments aside, what drugs are you on? I've succesfully running windows xp on 256mb of ram on two computers for weeks (only one computer now as I upgraded ram for this one...), without anything crashes. and then I've also run ram intensive java applications and abused the hard drive a lot. If you know how to set things up, you can run a stable xp on very little ram.

not to say that ram doesn't help performance...
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Darkage on September 24, 2005, 01:19:08 pm
The Solaris 10 Download is indeed rather big the 4 required CD's are together 1.69GB.

Although you can download Solaris 9 wich is 655Mb
You only need the CD1 and CD2 iso files.
you can also download the Software supplement wich is onmly 403Mb

Lucky for me i got Solaris 2.6, Solaris 7 Sever, Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 with tons of software on original CD's for both Intel Platforms and Sparc platforms the Solaris 9 pack i have the CD and DVD install packages.

And i Downloaded Solaris 10 Sparc version and the X86 version.


(http://img351.imageshack.us/img351/7910/software5db.th.jpg) (http://img351.imageshack.us/my.php?image=software5db.jpg)
(http://img351.imageshack.us/img351/4793/software16gd.th.jpg) (http://img351.imageshack.us/my.php?image=software16gd.jpg)
(http://img351.imageshack.us/img351/3329/install9mu.th.jpg) (http://img351.imageshack.us/my.php?image=install9mu.jpg)
(http://img351.imageshack.us/img351/5259/room3ct.th.jpg) (http://img351.imageshack.us/my.php?image=room3ct.jpg)

The las pic is a general view off my messy desk:D

Hosting 2x Sun Ultra 5 sparc stations and 2x 21" inch CRT Monitors.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: CP5670 on September 24, 2005, 01:22:43 pm
XP is quite stable. I haven't had it outright crash at all since I was testing overclocks several months ago. You just have to disable all the crap that runs in the background normally, which makes it similar to 2000 anyway.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Scuddie on September 24, 2005, 04:01:00 pm
Kode, do some thinking before you post.  When someone says "XP with not enough ram", they usually mean the bare requirements - 64MB or 128MB.  It is possible for there to be not enough ram for the OS to work, ya know.  256MB is plenty for moderate use, and is definately not "very little ram".  You should know that by now.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: kode on September 24, 2005, 04:08:15 pm
Quote
Originally posted by Scuddie
Kode, do some thinking before you post.  When someone says "XP with not enough ram", they usually mean the bare requirements - 64MB or 128MB.  It is possible for there to be not enough ram for the OS to work, ya know.  256MB is plenty for moderate use, and is definately not "very little ram".  You should know that by now.


64mb ram was a friggin lot years back. heck, when I started with computers, 8mb was a ****load of it. nowadays, 256mb is very little. 1024 is almost average.

with little ram, you increase pagefile size. then it'll run pretty stable, but slow.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: mikhael on September 24, 2005, 09:45:09 pm
*shudder*

If you run any 2k or XP machine with less than 512mb of RAM, you're either a cheapass or a masochist. With RAM as cheap as it is these days, almost anyone can afford to max out the slots on their motherboard (assuming of course, you could afford to buy the machine in the first place).
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Scuddie on September 24, 2005, 10:47:40 pm
I would beg to differ.  An XP, let alone 2k, office machine can easily get by with 256MB.  On the other hand, professional artist machines barely get by with 2 gigs.  Context is a beautiful thing.  For a general purpose machine, 256MB is just enough...  And I would not call running WoW with Photoshop in the background general purpose.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: WMCoolmon on September 25, 2005, 02:07:53 am
Hi.

Mr.XP Pro on a laptop with 128 MB ram here, works pretty well, although the constant VM usage is somewhat annoying.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Scuddie on September 25, 2005, 02:10:59 am
Quote
Originally posted by WMCoolmon
Hi.
Huh?  WTF was that?
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: WMCoolmon on September 25, 2005, 03:07:05 am
The use of language to indicate a greeting, to notify others of one's entry into a conversation or the other's current area, or simply to call attention to oneself.

In this case, used to reinforce the feeling of introducing the individual as a subset of their personality, in specific the part with experience in using the operating system under discussion.

:wtf:
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: CP5670 on September 25, 2005, 03:08:37 am
Bye.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: kode on September 25, 2005, 03:19:26 am
Quote
Originally posted by WMCoolmon
The use of language to indicate a greeting, to notify others of one's entry into a conversation or the other's current area, or simply to call attention to oneself.

In this case, used to reinforce the feeling of introducing the individual as a subset of their personality, in specific the part with experience in using the operating system under discussion.

:wtf:


so... a/s/l?

;)
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Kosh on September 25, 2005, 03:26:48 am
Win XP Pro on my laptop.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: TopAce on September 25, 2005, 03:48:04 am
I knew that XP would get the majority, but I wasn't expecting this proportion.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Genryu on September 25, 2005, 09:25:26 am
XP SP1, ever more stripped down. Shell was replaced by Geoshell, Windows Explorer by 2xExplorer, killed more services than usual. When I don't have a reason to shut down the machine, it can runs up to a month without too much trouble, and last reinstall was a year ago, at the same time I changed the motherboard+processor.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: Flipside on September 25, 2005, 09:42:46 am
Funny thing I've have noticed about XP though, doesn't seem to like Networks unless every computer has the same type of Network card :/

Never had that problem with '98 funnily enough.
Title: Quick survey - Operating system
Post by: mikhael on September 25, 2005, 10:08:23 am
Quote
Originally posted by Scuddie
I would beg to differ.  An XP, let alone 2k, office machine can easily get by with 256MB.  On the other hand, professional artist machines barely get by with 2 gigs.  Context is a beautiful thing.  For a general purpose machine, 256MB is just enough...  And I would not call running WoW with Photoshop in the background general purpose.

I disagree.

My job is doing outcall tech support. I come to your business and work on your machines, keep them clean, and running well. On an average day, I put my hands on twenty to thirty machines, and on some days its closer to sixty. Some are scratchbuilt, some are "name brand": IBM, Gateway, Dell, HP, etc. Some of the scratchbuilt ones are built by my company to the specifications of the client.

Many of my clients have 2k and XP machines in office settings. They aren't running much more than Office2k, OfficeXP, or Office2k3. I spend all day every day looking at these machines with only 256mb of RAM and answer questions about why the computer is so slow. Clean computers. Computers with no viruses, spyware, popup generators or adware. Slow. Invariably, the answer is, "you can run less stuff, or you can get more memory." Office users do not understand about closing application to free up RAM. They do not understand about GDI resource leaks. They don't understand anything beyond "its slow".

Naturally, you could get these machines to work comfortably in 256mb of RAM if you went through and disabled a bunch of services, trimmed a lot of OS fat, etc. However, these aren't machines run by tweakers, they're business users working business offices.

"Context", as you put it, is a wonderful thing--when its applied properly. In this case, the context is what's listed above. I stand by my minimum of 512mb with at least 1gb being the preferrence.

As an aside, the two studios of professional artists I support (one uses primarily Mac G4s and G5s, the other uses scratchbuilt PCs), are more modest than you might think: the only machines with more than 1.5gb are the rendering farm servers, which all ahve 4gb.