OSNews

because my wife doesn't want to learn a new system. If I had my way, I'd use OSX.

I have many OSes/machines here which I use for different purposes or for articles or pleasure, but my main OS is WinXP PRO. If I had the money to buy Win2k3 Server, I would have switch to it though as it is more solid/optimized than XP.

My second OS these days is MacOSX. My powerbook is always next to our couch, so when I am watching TV or sitting in the living room, I turn it on to check my mail and stuff.

I have a dual 1 Ghz Mac and I love it. I switched to Macs in 1997 and haven't looked back. I have also recently gotten into QNX, which has an awesome GUI (and amazingly enough) works with my digital camera.

This is gonna be good - I'm sure people are already warming up their flamethrowers

As for me, it's Windows XP for now, though I am starting to make a migration plan towards Linux .. but that will all depend on how many of my 'Windows-only' apps I can get running under Wine, and how much time it takes for me to port all my VB utils to Python. This is very much a 'hobby' project for me when I have time to get around to it, so it won't be any time soon most likely. However, as time goes on, so will Linux mature, so it's gonna be that much better when the time for me to switch comes

>> because my wife doesn't
>> want to learn a new system.


There's a trick to that! Make the windows on the family pc die Its funny though, my five-year old can't tell the difference, and is comfortable, for what she does, on either linux or windows. But moving adults is a lot more harder. Merely changing the icons makes some uneasy!

Gentoo of course.

...but that will probably change soon. I'm gonna try *another* Linux distro tomorrow and I hope I'll finally like that one. I like Linux, but every distro I've tried tend to have one small issue that is annoying me like no tomorrow...

I totally understand that the biggest war is between the three majors : Windows, Linux, OSX. Then the rest, logically, goes to all commercial unix flavors.

But there's still 2% of the voters that use something else as THEIR PRIMARY OS !

I mean, 2% of the people use all the time QNX or BeOS. That's so bizarre. I'm the first to like playing with alternative OS. But to use them as primary OS is a huge leap.

Someone from the 2% can explain to me what is their primary occupation on a PC ?

No option for "paper and pen"?!?!?

</sacarsm>

" I'm gonna try *another* Linux distro tomorrow and I hope I'll finally like that one. I like Linux, but every distro I've tried tend to have one small issue that is annoying me like no tomorrow... "

Lol exactly like me ! I keep trying distro over distro over distro for like 8 years now, but never find the "coup de foudre" that I got from many others, like BeOS, QNX, EPOC/Symbian, etc.

As you seems to be like me : let me know if you find the "love" with a distro ! Thanks :-)

>I mean, 2% of the people use all the time QNX or BeOS

BeOS is totally usable as a main OS, I don't understand your problem. BeOS is not a hobby project, it was a commercial OS, therefore it did receive care. Today, its browsing skills are kinda outdated (Mozilla port is bad), but other than that, BeOS is fully usable. Something that is not true for OSes like Syllable for example, which have very limited hardware support and apps. QNX doesn't have as many apps as BeOS either. About 300 apps (BeOS has about 3000). OS/2 is also fully usable, as it also has thousands of apps and a good port of Mozilla.

I'm the computer equivalent to a friend with a pick-up truck... Everybody who knows I can fix computers eventually calls me. I inherit old systems / pieces and cobble them together. My new project will be LTSP or OpenMosix. I'll prob'ly start with the clusterKNOPPIX disk and work my way up to a full install. I run various versions of RedHat, with a couple ClarkConnect and a SmoothWall thrown in the mix. At work, I'm forced to administer Windows... 2000 on a few desktops, and XP on a few laptops. We even have a P100 running Windows-for-Workgroups 3.11 that I've been nursing along for the last 8 years. Our billing program runs in Access 2, and the boss finally gave permission to get it updated. Hopefully, it will be done soon... Then I can sledge-hammer that stupid box.

Why always listen to the women? You deserve better, have it your way:) Unless you really don't know how to use another system and use this as a lame excuse:)

I might yet answer the poll, but I haven't because I use several OSes as my "primary"

The most time on my eyeballs: a tie between Win2kPro (at home -- games and surfing OSNews) and Slackware/E-Smith Linux (at work)

The most time involved in my computing experiences: OpenBSD 3.2, running as a gateway/firewall/router.

Neat poll =) We should get some interesting discussion here..

GG

If everyone was to vote ONCE and HONESTLY, this is going to obviously be a landslide for Windows OS'es. But of course people will vote for what they like the best or what they wished they were using full time.

My guess is that this poll will come no where close to matching Market Data Numbers that say 90% of the Worlds Computers run Windows. And another 5% Are Macs. We can see already that Linux is neck and neck with Windows. BS...

eE

I was a Win user for some time but then I saw the light and got a mac. While I was in the PC world I also tried out a few Lunix DIstros and I really like what I saw but I really loved the way the macs looked and worked. I can see my self doing PC again unless its with Lunix. ANY other then WIN crape... just my 2 cents

After becoming with disgusted with Microsoft after Windows 95 I discoverd Slackware and went to Linux and never thought I would go back. Then OS X came out and I was drooling, but when the TiBook came I had to switch. Now I'm even beggining to get sick of Linux, like many others I've tried all the distributions and haven't found one that was acceptable, also the fragmentation in the Linux community is quite annoying. Thats why I'm now migrating my servers over to OpenBSD... It's just so clean.

Hmm, this was tricky. I actually use Windows XP and Linux about equally and I use about 1 day a week. Also, my server runs BSD. I voted Windows only because I didn't want to vote Linux.

Not that I think Linux is bad, but rather I believe it is overly hyped. It's also very coloured by the GPL for me, and I'm not a huge fan of the GPL. Yes, the general Linux community, full of rabid supporters, unlogic supporters, and others has actually made me want to associate with Windows rather than Linux. I realize that there are many very down to earth and nice Linux supporters, but unfortunatly the *vocal* majority of Linux supporters really irk me.

Anyways, Unix is my work OS and Windows is what I use for entertainment. Of course since I'm a comptuer science grad student, my work requirments are actually perfectly filled by Unix machines. No need for word processors, user friendly apps, plug and play. For my desktop Unix I use gentoo. I find that it is very similar to the BSD in terms of system design and organisation, something I find missing in many Linux distributions. Additionally it tends to have the latest software avaliable via portage, which satifies my curiosity.

I use Windows 2000 Pro mostly, to surf the web (w/ the unsecure IE) and for some (plenty) Windows multithreaded applications (dual processing) on a dual Pentium III. Never thought about XP Pro, doesn't had much for me.

I also like to have a DOS partition on all my machines to switch files via hard drives or LAN between Linux and FreeBSD. Mostly gimp guillotines and picture html mapping, some Java (Linux Java) and some little MySQL scripts because of the possibility of having a true apache running for imediatelly testing web pages. (This is a personal question, right ? - What is Your Main Operating System?).

I can't say which I use the most. Depends, I voted on Windows mostly because it handles easily my modest Olympus digital camera and an HP SCSI scanner for 35 mm film photos. Never could do that fast on Linux.

I will never consider Mac OS X, only if you had the option of drawing the windows with the old Mac OS 9 style; I don't like the look of Mac OS X and never will.

(I wrote too much, but I love OS reasoning).

It's what I use most of the time for work. 5 Years ago it was Windows 95 on my trusty Compaq 133MHz. lol

At home, it's eComStation (OS/2), Windows XP home and Mac OS X(iBook). On P4: I use mainly eComStation for my old IBM compilers (C++ and COBOL). Then dual-booting to Windows XP home for PC gaming. With each new release, Red Hat is usually found on the hard drive. The iBook gets the best of the best: Mac OS X. Emails and all the important stuff are on the Mac. The P3 get Win2k until I sell the suckers. The lonely P233MMX has MS OS/2 1-3 installed on it. The bloody thing boots fast(6 secs max)! That's about it.

I run Redhat Linux at work and home. I do have to boot into Windows when I need to play games.

re: Tell the Truth all
I'm not sure if you are correct here. OSNews.com readers probably don't reflect the 'average' computer user and therefore I think there will be more non-Windows users than other samples of the population.

This site is visited by geeks, developers, flamers and OS zealots, not by the kind of people you see everyday. Eugenia once said that it's the second biggest Linux news site on the 'Net after Slashdot, so the current result was expected, IMO.

Lindows! Now on 4.0 beta. Used to use Windows XP, but I dropped it a few weeks ago.

This is not a random sample of people on the planet, so if these numbers are skewed one way or the other, I wouldn't be surprised.

People looking for the perfect linux distro will probably never find it. I think every OS will have some annoyances. If you use that annoyance as an excuse not to switch then you will never switch. I have been using linux for almost a year now. In the beginning there was some growing pains but once I learned how linux worked, things got real easy. The reason why I switched was because MS Windows had annoyances that I didn't like. The best way to switch to a new OS is build a PC that will use nothing but the new OS. If you want to try OSX, you will probably have to buy hardware anyway. Force yourself to learn the new OS. Try not to force your old OS habits on to the new OS. Right now, linux suits me fine. Some time in the future, I am going to try one of the BSDs.

I have a dual boot machine...win XP and SuSE. I use SuSE primarily, but have to boot to windows if I want to scan....my HP Scanjet 3570C isn't supported by Sane. Other than that, I can do anything in linux I can in windows...and I just prefer screwing around with linux more. I'm just a home user hacki and bashin my way around...but I'm having lots of fun with it! Various linux distros have been my primary system for just about two years now...love it...the thrill of learning something new was extremely refreshing...though somewhat frustrating too.

I was MacOS for 10yrs, gave up on that when HD was scrubbed & it was always bombing anyway.

Did NT4,5 for 5yrs, still use it sometimes but my true OS has been BeOS more or less for last few yrs.

As a developer, BeOS is just succinct. It does mostly exactly what I want, and it almost always doesn't do what I don't want it to do. Windows on the other hand does far more ofcourse and has far more apps (that I don't really care for), but it insists on being in control, doing things that scare the pants off me.

Boy am I a convert to Gentoo.

I've gotten more stuff to work with Gentoo than any other Linux distro, but it's not so much that it's been trouble-free. It's because of forums.gentoo.org.

And I haven't asked many questions there either. Just doing searches have shown me the answers to a lot of questions. So really it's been slightly more trouble than RedHat 9 was (or Win2K was), in terms of the sheer number of problems I've run into, but it beats both Win2K and RedHat 9 on the problems' "solvability", and the final product, even without taking into consideration the greater speed, just "works better". Everything is there, and it runs. On Win2K I had all sorts of trouble with USB audio, and with having to find and install various packages to do CD burning and DVD playing. Upgrading software was difficult and had to be done "one package at a time" with no automated way of knowing when something was upgraded. Also OS stuff had to be upgraded separately. In the end I found myself using of lot of open source stuff, partially because it's what I use at work (we use Win2K with StarOffice, GIMP, and do gui toolkits with Qt, for example -- although I use OpenOffice at home), but mostly because it is what is easiest to get ahold of on short notice. RedHat 9 solved the problem of upgradability (with Synaptic) but trying to build stuff from source often just fails. I am a professional programmer, so I suppose I could, if I wanted to, explore why each little package failed and fix it, but it's too much trouble when all I want to do is "check something out".

Originally I put Gentoo on as a hobby and now it's my main OS. Mind you I'm still having some trouble with it (oh for a trouble-free OS! And world peace), for example the nVidia drivers I was using just crapped out for no apparent reason -- emerged the later (masked) version, and everything "just worked" although I wish I understood why this is so, considering that the previous version I had been using worked fine until the day it just died.

But I like the fact they use a patched, low latency kernel as standard, that all the stuff I like to play with comes in the portage tree right away (such as the aforementioned DVD players and CD burners, as well as mame, uae, and a hundred other things). And most stuff pulled off the net "just builds", but by no means all. More than Redhat 9. Since I know very few software packages are worth the trouble of trying to figure out why they aren't building, "buildability" on the first try with either "emerge" or "./configure && make && sudo make install" needs to work more often than not, and it does.

Gentoo also sort of "got my hands dirty" with tweaking my computer performance, now it boots in 46 seconds, I fixed some BIOS settings that I didn't know weren't ideal (basically because I caught the "tweaking bug" not because of anything with Gentoo in particular, although Gentoo acted as an "enabler" and "encounrager" for my addiction), and so on. With all these things factored in, it feels like a I got a major computer upgrade, for free.

And the system-upgrade thing is (generally) taken care of with "emerge -u world", which usually works, and if it doesn't, a trip to "forums.gentoo.org" and the portage section solves the problems.

Anyway, happy, still waiting for "OS nirvana", but closer I think, than I've been before.

Erik

ok my little story.

I always used windows... i used linux in 1996, ( some ancient version i think) simply because i needed to run some terminal applications from a pc and it was at the time my only choice. My primary system was windows OSs until i bought an ibook and i am extremely satisfied with Osx. i "sometimes" and only for curiosity boot into knoppix in my xp machine, and that;s it.. windows xp and osx.

Use it almost all the time, when I must, Debian on i386.

Is it really fair to have OS X in the Mac OS category? It is closer at the plumbing level to BSD.

since I use them all in my home network and all have a use.

Theres nothing I enjoy more that surf on the internet with aintialiased fonts with Galeon.

I still use WindowsXP, jst for gaming, for everything else I use Linux.

linux here and at work

BeOS is perfect for me! Can't wait to get my hands on Zeta (and I'll have to tweak the heck out of it too from what it sounds like)

Shouldn't the poll read: "Which OS do you spend most of your *own* time using? (By *choice*, not what you're forced to use at work.)"

I figure most folks are forced into using MS OS's at work, but choose very differently when it comes to the scarce free time they manage to scare up at home.

No, it shouldn't read that. The Poll just asks which OS you are using mostly. If your work is forcing you an OS, this just shows the market reality, so it is important you vote truthfully to the question.

Windows 2000 personally. All the good things about windows without the unnecassary bloat of XP. Really one of my favorite OS's.

Of course I also use linux (IpCOP) for my router and I have Mandrake on my laptop but I do use/like Windows 2000 the most.

I use Mac OS X 95% of the time. I have Mandrake on a another partition to play around with.

considering the audience for this web site, it would not surprise me if the data was skewed to the odd flavor of OS and not reflect google's #'s

I have two computers both dual boots one is Win2k server and redhat 9 and the other is win2k pro and redhat 9

I use win2k pro the most. The machine came with xp home but when I tried to partition the disk for dual boot the recovery disc ate up the entire hard disk.

the only think that I miss about xp is is hearts came standard

My main workstation is Slackware. Laptop is dual boot slackware and win2k (but only until I can get the wireless card to work under slack). Work machine is slackware too.

Now - of course I am biased since I work @ QSS, but I spend my days inside of QNX. As a development environment it is first rate. And as a platform for building embedded systems it has no equal. Once or twice a week I will boot my laptop into Windows to view a powerpoint document or muck about on a website that requires IE.

I had to choose "commercial/certified unix" cause we use solaris at work. At home i run FreeBSD. I am a little surpriced that linux has so many votes compared to the BSD's...

Previously I had been using Windows 2000 nearly full time, with my laptop stuck on XP with a broken CD drive. Then, I got my laptop repaired and decided to play with it and install Gentoo. It has been several months since then, and the same install of Gentoo is on my laptop (though significantly updated by now) and I've loved it so much that I now run Gentoo on my main comp as well. I still have a Windows partition, but I try not to go to it, other than to copy large files to my shared 60+gb ntfs data partition. I'm still debating changing that to ReiserFS...

I have a dual G4 at home along with an AthlonXP1600+ that will be upgraded soon. My Athlon system is running XP. I found Linux to be slow and not as useable but at the same time I really didn't give Linux much of a shot so it is a bit unfair to make that comment.

At work its MacOSX and MacOS9 as well and the occasional use of my Windows 2000 box which is very reliable but boring.

Next on the list is a 970 PowerBook whenever they come out but thats after I get rid of my iMac, BeigeG3, G4/400, 2- S900 SuperMacs and two Power Computing systems.

I like using Linux, i like to hack some perl scripts and try new tools. But at home I always come back to W2K

1) File manager. I do not like either nautilus(slow) or konqueror(bloated). I believe Linux needs a good/fast/useful filemanager like Windows Explorer
2) W2k is stable enough for me
3) Games

At work I run Libranet 2.8 as a utilities machine and run Solaris on others.
MA

I spend more time on Linux since the last month after my office got adsl broadband connection which enable me to download and install OpenOffice (I was not using my home broadband download for that since this is for may office). Tish enable me to produce various reports without having to reboot into Win98 anymore. Furthermore, my staff are having uninterrupted webbase data management application which hosted by my PC which also became the server for them.

At home, I occasionally use WinXP since nearly a year ago. Is is only du to sometime I've to share the time with my wife while using the computer.

I use slackware for almost everything except browing the web since I have no net access at home. If I did I would use it all the time. I used to dual boot for games but now I don't use windows any more

I don't understand why people automatically flame Linux here. Its like some sort of religous war. Who cares if you don't like it. We only want to hear what you do like.

Most of my time at home is spent on my macs, which normally run OSX (somtimes it's NetBSD, though). At work, I split time between a GNU/Linux box and *gasp* *cough* WinME.

Of the people who answered BSD/Darwin/Hurd/etc....I wonder how many of those are Hurd? :-) I have GNU on a couple of machines, but it's not something I spend a lot time using. It *does* work, though, for most things.

If everyone was to vote ONCE and HONESTLY, this is going to obviously be a landslide for Windows OS'es. But of course people will vote for what they like the best or what they wished they were using full time.

My guess is that this poll will come no where close to matching Market Data Numbers that say 90% of the Worlds Computers run Windows. And another 5% Are Macs. We can see already that Linux is neck and neck with Windows. BS...

eE

Man, to belive market data that comes from a major os manufacturer is just plain stupid. I work for a major systems distributor here in detroit and I have atleast half of the new systems purchased go to a customer who will use linux.

Plus, the trend isnt slowing down. More and more clients are asking about how they should go about learning linux....

On another note... everyone assumes that the "Other" Choice was limited to QNX and BeOS, but some of us use VMS and OpenVMS as well.....

"BeOS is totally usable as a main OS, I don't understand your problem. BeOS is not a hobby project, it was a commercial OS, therefore it did receive care. "

Look, I know what BeOS is, as I was an hardcore user for years since PR2, and even release few softwares for it, and still am one of the biggest defencer of it's wonderful API. Plus I slightly provided code for OpenBeOS.

My point is : in 2003, I don't understand how someone can use BeOS as his PRIMARY OS. That's it, I don't judge them I'm just curious how they can resist not rebooting in a better OS (Linux, Windows, whatever), just for the sake of running recent apps, or recent games.

That's it. Because as much as I love BeOS, today I would never considere it as a viable PRIMARY OS.

Voted for Windows. Normally use winxp and dual boot to Gentoo. I treat my linux as a learn and have fun project not as a main desktop(though possible abit less usable). Performance wise I find <flamesuit> my windows xp more responsive</flamesuit>. But thats probably a gnome problem. Stability wise windows xp is very acceptable. So long story short i have no reason to move unless i intend to learn/play.

I dual boot XP Pro and MDK 9.1. AT work I mostly use MDK 9.1 since I can just plug my laptop into the network but at home I use mostly XP since my dial up winmodem does not work in MDK.

All my four boxes have FreeBSD (1 4.8-STABLE and four 5.1-CURRENT) and I am pretty very happy with FreeBSD as always. Later, when the Zeta releases, I want to try do the dual boot between Zeta and FreeBSD to see how good it is. I never have try/use BeOS stuff before.

Hey, I run MorphOS almost constantly, what's so wrong with that?

No real surprise really. As someone has already mentioned, this is really representitive of "main stream" computer users, and so Linux (and probably Mac as well) will be over represented not to mention the 2 percent, of which I am one. Most of whom, like myself, are probably BeOS users as OS News is essentially BeNews, the Extended Version. :o)

As for me, I am quite productive in BeOS, and only use Windows 98 for games, scanning (which may occur two or three sessions a year), and online banking as the web browsing in Be is its weakest link by far. It's acceptable for the most part, and I love the lack of java script in Net + on all save a few occasions. One interesting thing I've noticed. When I use Windows, I tend to think of upgrading my hardware (400 MHz K6 256MB) more than I do with Be. As for XP (not on my machine), though a great improvement over what came before, especially ME (then again, an inebriated hamster on a wheel with an abacus and a quill pen is more reliable and usefull than ME), my own experience still shows less stability than Be (though I understand others have experienced the exact opposite), and the UI still sucks. One would have thought that MS would have long ago stole, er immitated, the tabbed window concept. Its far more efficent than that bar across the whole length of the window, and I find I am relegated to one task at a time on Windows. And I *hate* the effing scroll bar. Always gets in my way. Much prefer teensy weensy Deskbar sitting up there in its corner out of sight and out of mind. BTW, just what is a dock anyway?

Ok, I'm beginning to ramble, and that's never good. The tall and the short of it is this. For my purposes, BeOS has been the best investment I've made in the realm of computers to date. From an operational POV, I've been tear free for nearly four years (I'd be lucky to go more than four months the same on Windows). Best 100 bucks I've spent.

Somebody needs to fix the slow key response in Bezilla/Stripzilla though. Its driving me batty. Next time, E. Can we have a Net + friendly poll. Please? With a cherry on top?

Michael

I run OS3.0 on an Amiga 1200 (68040) and WinMe and Mandrake 9.1 on my AMD Box (2100+).

Hopefully, AmigaOS4 in the near future.

>Next time, E. Can we have a Net + friendly poll. Please? With a cherry on top?

We can't. We have to outsource our polls, and all these polls only offer JS.

Mandrake 9.1 only at home, win2k/me at work. Even at work
every single win box dual boots Mandrake which has proven useful in various occasions.

Eugenia, why do you outsource the polls?

The result will obviously be skewed in favour of Linux usage compared to the distribution of OS usgage in general. Linux users will tend to have an interest in operating systems. The average Windows user does not. Therefore the will be a much higher proportion of Linux users among OSnews readers.

I use Linux exclusively at home (I still have a win 98 partiton but I haven't booted into it for about a year, it still has some uses - all the Java apps sit in the vfat partiton where they can be shared)

At work we have windows computers in the lab but I have setup a Linux VNCserver so I can run Linux from any system.

I run Redhat 8 on my main computer and Debian 3.0 on my older computer.

A good poll of the readers. Here's why (shortened version) I won't be responding, because I can't...

I'm living at home with the 'rents right now, that means connecting to the 'net with a modem. Since I have to run on the main phone line, I went with an Actiontec so we wouldn't miss calls. This is with one of their newer WinModems, so, you guessed it, Windows XP Pro is my most used desktop OS right now, and it's also on my laptop.

But wait. I also will be picking up my Ti PowerBook soon, and my existing (very non-altOS friendly) laptop will be staying at home from now on, and not be getting much use. Plus, I'm planning on using BeOS Dano (and Zeta when it comes out) for my "main" OS and leaving XP for gaming and any task that requires Windows only. I plan on running another XP Pro box for Windows apps like Word and such that simply doesn't have an equal (in my book) on BeOS. So I've got OSX for travel, XP for gaming and a few key apps, and BeOS for web, chat, and general stuff. Why have use one OS for everthing, it's not like a carpenter can only own one hammer.

Does everything I need and runs on all my hardware.

I use linux because I guess I am very picky. Why wasn't Solaris or SunOS an option? Those are both very good systems.

best ashtray I ever brought, though having said that it's the last of my money Microsoft will get...

But on my computer I use debian(SID) 99.9% of the time.. the other .1% is spent in BeOS(Phos) and QNX(6.2) (BTW anyone happen to know how to get the mouse to work in QNX on vmware 4 workstation4linux ??)

Windows 2000

"My point is : in 2003, I don't understand how someone can use BeOS as his PRIMARY OS. That's it, I don't judge them
I'm just curious how they can resist not rebooting in a better OS (Linux, Windows, whatever), just for the sake of
running recent apps, or recent games."

Think that others might have different usage requirements than yourself? As I mentioned in my previous post, even the "superior" XP has the same old inferior, IMHO, UI. That is reason alone not to use Windows. Why do I need Office XP, when Gobe is perfectly sound? Hell, even when I was Windows only I ditched Office (slow (on my systems)and overengineered with too many gadgets IMHO) for Works. Just because something is newer, doesn't mean it is neccessarily better. I don't think I have a game that was developed in the 21st Century. They are a very small priority item, and few modern games intrigue me (everything seems to be those boring 3-D shooters), and I like playing my older Talonsoft games, and I rather resent the embedded notion of planned obsolescence that has so infected the computer industry. The only thing that XP would offer me is increased stability over Win98 (but not Be in my experience), and with the associated costs of having to upgrade my, perfectly good, hardware first, the monitary expense alone outweighs any benefits.

Be works for 90 percent of the things I do with the computer, and in most cases, it does it far better and more efficiently than Windows with less hassle. Why switch? I'm not a geek (though I have been called other things, on more than one occasion too) so tend to take a more practical approach to computer use. I have no need to "push the envelope" and play with the latest greatest gadgetry. All I want is to quietly do what I need to do with as much ease and least trouble as possible. My computer requirements have not substantially altered in the 45 or 46 months that I've used BeOS as my primary OS. I can understand that is not so for many, but conversely they should understand that not all is the same for others.

Eugenia,

Pity about the outsourcing.

--
Regards,

Michael

I use this almost full time. I use windows/qnx/be/redhat until I get fed up, then I run back to my powerbook.

SunOS/Solaris ars there... They're "Commercial/Certified UNIX".

Windows 80% of the time, split like this..

Win2000 Pro 50%

Win98se 30%

Mandrake Linux / Peanut Linux 20%
( but thats growing every week! )

Solaris x86 and Be.

I use BeOS as my main OS although I go to Windows when I want to play a game or two.

I tried using Gentoo Linux as my main OS, but it's not ready for the desktop area even with KDE or GNOME IMHO. It's not wery good at drag'n'drop and doing things in easy ways. I assume B.E.O.S or BeFree will change that.

There was plenty of things to like in Gentoo otherwise...

Even though my servers, desktops, (new[er]) laptop run HURD, BSD, and GNU/Linux, my craptop (slow, old Contura 420c laptop/field comp) runs FreeDOS, Vector Linux, Win 3.1. Since I mostly use FreeDOS w/ the OpenGEM desktop and I use the craptop the most, FreeDOS is my prime OS. Though I'm thinking of switching to QNX, but I'd still keep FreeDOS and Vector Linux, then kick Win 3.1 out of the hdd surface area.

That Linux has been my primary OS for nearly 4 years. Well I still have a Windoze partition around becuse of the lack of really good RTS's in Linux

After I realized that SPSS is way too expensive for me, I learned to use R and GnuPlot for my data analysis. I run Mandrake 9.1 on my Compaq Armada w Pentium 3 650Mhz & 256MB RAM.

Few days ago I discovered Quantian, a Knoppix-based distro specialized in scientific computing that I would like to try.

I also have a Windows 98SE installation on a small partition, which I rarely touch (mainly for testing/previewing webpages in Internet Explorer).

Rough usage estimates of the three operating systems installed on my AMD box:

WinXP Pro: 65%
Debian 3.0: 25%
SuSE 8.2: 10%


I plan on getting my old PII 266MHz box running again soon, which I'll install a lightweight Linux distro.

Someone from the 2% can explain to me what is their primary occupation on a PC?

I don't use a PC, I use an Amiga. I use it for what most people use their computers for. I read mail and news, surf the WWW, listen to music, scan and edit graphics, burn CDs, play with networking, collect information and back up my other, lesser computers.

Really, to me, the thought of using Linux as one's primary operating system is so alien, that I would have just stuffed it into the "others" category if I had created this poll.

It may be useful to developers to get a snapshot of computer systems currently in use.

How about an OSNEWS poll about processor type and RAM to give an oversight of whats in use these days?

I use XP when I need to play games.. otherwise it's FreeBSD. :-)

My server runs a heavily modified version of knoppix, and is mostly used as a mp3 player, file server, for watching movies, burning CDs and filesharing, and for testing LAMP applications. My Notebook mostly runs Win XP Home, since I need visual studio .NET for my work. The server runs all of the time, but I spend more time in front of the notebook.

But often I use the notebook as an X terminal with the Cygwin X server to read my mail and news from the server (using KDE3.1). So basically I use both at the same time.

I need both of them.

Perhaps the person asking the following questions is really unaware of the wide variety of software that was once easily available on some non-mainstream platforms?

> But there's still 2% of the voters that use something else > as THEIR PRIMARY OS !
>
> I mean, 2% of the people use all the time QNX or BeOS.
> That's so bizarre.

In my case, the OS I use over 90% of the time is OS/2. The reason I'm able to do so is simple: Unlike QNX or BeOS, OS/2 is not limited to running its own native software. It will also run DOS and Windows 3.x software extremely well, and I use that sort of thing quite heavily here (including such things as Quicken 98, PC File, SmartDraw, QuickView, MS WordView, and A&L Draw for starters).

Also, while much of the software I use is no longer on the market, keep in mind that some of us were running multiple operating systems over a decade ago (I had a triple-boot 486 system running OS/2, DOS+Windows, and Linux in early 1993 via the IBM Boot Manager), so we're not limited to CURRENT software offerings. A lot of OS/2 native stuff has been developed over the past decade such ColorWorks, Embellish, StarOffice, Hummingbird Exceed, and the MD+F Web Animation Kit.

Even with the above, OS/2 still has relatively current ports of such software as pine, slrn, lynx, links/elinks, Mozilla/Phoenix, cdrecord, lame, leech, and other similar programs as well as current MP3 and Ogg players, etc.

> I'm the first to like playing with alternative OS. But to
> use them as primary OS is a huge leap.

No it isn't, assuming you know where to find the software available for that platform. FWIW, I think I'd find BeOS or QNX very difficult to use myself given what I do, but OS/2 isn't a stretch at all in the hands of a capable hobbyist.

Windows 2K was the only decent blows from Microsoft.
XP add nothing to 2K appart from bloat, bloat and some more API Eye-Candy bloat.

2K3 is XP, just practially everything is running in Ring 0 in the kernal.

ooh wait. That's call Optimisation!

/me waits for Office 2K3 and IE to become part of kernel32.dll

since you did not ask, which OS I use most in my sparetime, but most at all?

I've to use 8hrs a day W2k @ WORK so I got to vote for it...
I like W2k pretty much, more than XP, since its rocking stable (and un-bloated) for my purposes...except SMP, which isn't good at Application Level...

-A

Someone else in the world with an AMIGA! I loved that OS to death! I used it throug college with hacks and shareware! It was a great influence to computing. The first Multimedia computer!

There's only one reason why I currently use XP (but not most of the time):

KazaA Lite

I can't get it running fast and stable _enough_ to use it under Linux...

But I modded my XP SP1 REALLY much (Iceman's modded system files, ...) to look like Mac OS X so that it doesn't suck so much as it does normally... ))

Besides: I've i had some proggies from Linux on BeOS I would use ONLY BeOS 4 all my needs. E.g. Opera 7, KaZaA, MPlayer (with streaming, QT, mplayerplug-in, ...), and maybe some other tools.

But again: I've Linux had a native KaZaA or BeOS a native KaZaA, Opera, MPlayer I would use only these. I'm waiting 4 the day that FastTrack releases a Linux-Build again!

Hey, why not starting a campaign to get FastTrack building a new Linux-Build (QT-Interface or so)? Who's gonna start it?

HigH D

Some mistakes happened:

The 2 "I've" behind "Besides:" and "But again:" should be "If"...

HigH D

IF this was a general site, sure it would be a landslide for Win, but this is a tech news/gossip site so obviously its gonna be a lot closer.

It has become Mandrake Linux definitely, 95% of time. I just reboot to play some old games I cannot use with wine.

I'm still using OpenStep on my P2-400 as my main operating system. Scanning pictures via my SCSI-Scanner and Scan-O-Matic, do my officework with OpenWrite and ParaSheet, surfing the web with OmniWeb and burning CDs with CDDesigner.

Fast (for my tasks) computer, lovely OS. Why change?

As one of those who voted Linux, just thought I would say what I do on it.

Version Heavily modified RH9 (Cvs gnome,gnumeric, abiword, mozilla)

Usage

Browsing (epiphany)
Mail (evolution - nothing beats it)
Letters
Html editing
the odd spreadsheet
bits of perl scripting
Listen to music (rhythmbox)

and yes - compiling, mainly for fun, keeping up with latest gnome.

general playing

As you probably guessed from the site i have written in here, i use BeOS as my main OS, and have since early 2000. I have XP on another partition (which i need to reinstall actually... *groan*) for gaming (Vice City rocks!) and using the scanner (rarely). Oh, and my new Fuji digi cam

DaaT

Im running Debian/unstable on my desktop and Slackware/w98 on my 'ol laptop. Also, from time to time I like to switch to AmigaOS just from nostalgic reasons ;-)

I have a Athlon XP machine that I now Dual boot between Red Hat Linux 9 now and Darwin, My 566 Celeron machine runs Solaris x86 and BeOS, My Atlon XP also runs Windows 2000 Pro in VMWare, and my Laptop runs Red Hat Linux 9

surely you can figure this out from the website logs?

Linux is my primary OS. My desktop got two computers...a laptop running Gentoo and a workstation running Lindows (both the newest versions available). Also got an Internet gateway running smoothwall and a testing server (I am a web developer) running Debian 3.0r1. Also got one computer running Windows XP for the rest of the family

In my institute I mainly use Suse 8.2 and rearly CompaqTrue64(unix). At home I have Redhat8.0 and WinMe.At home I use Winme because under linux I couldn't properly setup my TV card.Though windows hangs a lot, it's what I use most of my time.

At home I use mainly OS-X. Only if I have to do some stuff for work I use my XP-computer. At work I have to administer a network with W2k and NT 4 clients (the company is just migrating to W2k).

I only have gentoo installed on my main box now..got slackware for all the server stuff...I used to use slack for the desktop too, but it's really nice being able to upgrade to newer apps and the like w/ portage...hopefully gentoo won't require a reinstall like slack did every couple of months(because packages become so outdated). Too bad gentoo's init scripts aren't like slacks though

As to the person who said they can't get kazaalite running very stable and fast, I don't know what kind of hardware you have, but for me it runs fairly quickly, a lot less processor hungry than on windows, it seems(no idea why). I do have some fairly decent hardware though. As for stability I have 4 errors on startup which I'm sure could be resolved(I think they come up, because it can't find the html page to load...I hear there is a way to fix it, but i'm just lazy)...it's not the most responsive thing in the world...but for just grabbing a couple files with it and not paying attention to it for a couple days: it runs fairly solid for me.

i've been using gentoo for a few months now and i'm really impressed. i think most power-users will instantly fall in love with it. gnome is so fast in gentoo i use it all the time now. it has a lot of good stuff in portage and portage make software management painless. for people wanting kazaa just "emerge gift-cvs giftoxic" giFT has a FastTrack plugin in CVS :-) it pretty much beats KaZaA since you can search 3 networks at once! the latest mldonkey can also search FastTrack. the more i use linux the more brain dead windows seems to me. i started laughing when i went to setup the network... you don't need a dialog for setting up a network! just notepad and a flat text file with the settings :-)
ok, have fun
GO GENTOO!

I think I actually use Windows 2000 the most at the moment, since that's what's installed on my computer at work... None of my own computers has it though. I have Gentoo Linux on both my laptop and desktop. On another old computer I have OpenBSD, but I rarely use that... I'm going to replace it with something else in the future probably...
Btw, how on earth do you use that poll? I couldn't find anywhere where I could cast my vote...

good to see

"Someone from the 2% can explain to me what is their primary occupation on a PC ?"

Although I have a Win2k machine, and intermittently Linux, the Amiga network is the heavy duty engine here.

The Amigas are used for web surfing (like now), email, DTP, audio work such as making CDs from tape recordings, graphics generally, MIDI sequencing, web design, preparing teaching materials, etc etc.

The only program I have used at all regularly on the Windows platform over the past year or so is Wave Repair. The IE/RealAudio combo is used for getting music from the BBC web site, but it frequently resets the machine.

Gentoo Linux of cource
i would like to try macos qnx and beos sometime
WinBlows S...s

At work: win 2K
At home: Gentoo Linux since 1 year and occasionaly win 2K for audio apps like fruityloops or atomimp3

currently i am running mac os x but i am switching to yellow dog linux 3.0. i do not have too much money to spend right now in software for my mac. they are nice but too expensive. ydl 3.0 comes with everything i need for only $60. i am tired of paying so much to upgrade my os.

also, someday i would like to try Morph OS or Zeta.

- 2501

ps: my wife doesn't want to switch. she hates windows and wants to stay with mac. what can I do????????

At work, windows. Since I don't have a say in the matter, I don't vote for it.

At home, BeOS 90%. I use windows to d/l photos from my camera and occasionally to run Paintshop Pro. I keep a Mandrake partion for a single app that I haven't managed to find a beOS equivalent for (it's a database), but I haven't booted that up in months. Everything else I do in BeOS.

I use OpenBSD on almost all of my computers. I've just got 2 sparcstations that (still) have Solaris on them. One of them has 2 cpu's, so can't run OpenBSD, well, maybe I'll give NetBSD a try on it
But apparently, not many people use BSD on the desktop, apart from OS X maybe.

LOL...wow...talk about an insult to BSD...LOL

j/k

but seriously, since almost nobody is using the HURD on a daily basis, and probably never will be, you can basically attribute 99.99% of those votes to BSD

Alas, my poor laptop doth not run BSD as well as Linux, so I had to vote for Linux instead of my beloved BSD, maybe my next laptop will be a better one for it

There's only one reason why I currently use XP (but not most of the time):

KazaA Lite

I can't get it running fast and stable _enough_ to use it under Linux...

MLdonkey [ http://www.mldonkey.net/ ] handles Kazaa very well, and it also handles eDonkey, Overnet, Bittorrent, Gnutella, Gnutella2 (Shareaza), Soulseek, Direct-Connect, and Opennap. It's the best P2P client I've ever seen.

IRIX is one of the coolest systems, easy to use, fast and reliable and it has Indigo Magic desktop, OpenGL extensions for games and freeware is up2date.

at work we're forced to use XP and 2000... at home, the migration to running 100% linux is slowed down by some banks supporting windows-only authentication methods and also by the fact that most of my mp3 and movie collection is on NTFS and i don't want to use Fat32, and i don't know how to convert it to ext3 or another journalling linux file format... yet ;-)

I am like Eugenia. I have several computers with different OSes on them. The fascination of how they work is endless to me.

I use Mac OS X the most, followed closely by XP Pro and Linux. I'm a lifetime Mac user, so it is perhaps natural that I continue in that vein. But, when I got the public beta of XP, I knew this wasn't Windows Me! XP is great and solid as a rock!

I have many Linux distros and, although I understand when people say there are too many distros, I must say how much I've learned about computing by way of all these distros. I mostly use Red Hat 9 and Lycoris. So, from one end of the spectrum to the other. And I use SuSE and many others. I've learned so much from Linux.

And I use BeOS still. I can't help it :-)

I would like to learn to use Darwin, FreeBSD and QNX. I am all excited because I got a Sun Ultra 5 and monitor on eBay for a pretty small amount of money. All documentation is coming with it too - Solaris, here I come!!

Linux on the laptop, QNX on the desktop.

I spend most of my time at work (~40hr/week) in front of a HP PA-RISC workstation (running HP-UX 11.00).

At home (~15hr/week) it's approx. 50/50 between W2k and some flavor of Linux (I also have a machine running OpenBSD as fw/router - but I'm usually not directly logged in so that doesn't count as "using" it, right?).

It would be good to have a new poll which asked people which OS they were using *right now*, and then checked this with the voter's browser type and OS they were running on when they accessed the poll. You could get this from the request headers.

Then you could have a graph showing what people claimed, and how many lied.

5 years ago i started migrating to linux for work: now the only os used hat home abd at work (between many windows) is linux. my family too. my mother too! she has all what she needs.

tetractis

I have been Windows free for my personal usage for over a year now--what do I use, you ask? BeOS 5 Pro on a Dual Pentium III system, and on an AMD K6-2 system as well. I do the things I want to do and need to do, without making Billy G. one cent richer, at least with my own money. I can e-mail, surf, rip and listen to MP3s, watch DivXs, chat (on MSN, Yahoo!, ICQ, Jabber, and IRC), make webpages, play enough games to keep me happy, and serve personal webpages, and various other things, all with this sometimes overlooked/underrated OS. What other OSes do I use with the other <10% of my time that I'm not using BeOS? Normally, OS/2 on an IBM PS/2 Model 77 or DR-DOS on one of the other PS/2s that I have laying around. Of course, I do realize that I"m not exactly Joe Public.

I have 4 of my own machines running Linux (Mandrake9.1, RedHat7.3 for a server, MNF for a firewall, Slack9.0), and my wife is running Mandrake 9.1 on her machine. Going to be moving the fileserver to OpenBSD3.3 in a few days though. We are not anti-Windows zealots (well, I am :-)), my wife and I just found that there was nothing Windows could do that Linux couldn't, and we get to ignore pretty much all viruses, and aren't forced to upgrade anything. For the price of XP up here (CAN$299) we can buy a single distro, put it on all our machines, and get that shiny new hdd for the server!

If I run windows XP, but always have unix apps exported onto my desktop running an X11 server, and using terminals to do mail/etc on all on other BSD servers most of my actual user<->computer IO is via BSD. However, Windows is still installed on my machine.

I'm trying my best to blur the line between my different computers and their OSes, so this question seems kind of backwards-thinking to me

At work I use Win2k as a workstation since we use a remedy ticket system and I have soooooooooo many network tools.

I use OS9 on a G4 at home because, well I don't really like OSX yet. I will give it time to mature, get faster, get less like Unix.

Because it breaks down a bit like this:
At work I have a Mac running OS X and a PC running Redhat 9.
However, I use them to adminster servers running OS X, Redhat 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0, FreeBSD 4.7, 5.x and Solaris 7, 8 and 9 (on E10ks, no less .
At home I have a Windows XP/98 machine, but I mainly only use it for games. I also have a FreeBSD firewall a Redhat 9.0 server and a laptop running XP.
I had a PB 667, but was disgusted by how slow it was. I'd like another Mac, but I've yet to use one that's even close to being what I'd call "responsive", so I'm holding out to see if the next generation of Macs are fast enough.

You should compare the submission with the actual OS they use when submitting. You can acquire OS type from HTTP header the browser sent.

I have been on a dvd/divx encoding binge over the past few weeks. I have yet to find a system that is easier to do this on and more stable in the proccess than XP. Windows 2k crashed constantly, freebsd port of dvd|rip is broken, and Linux just crashed crashed crashed. I am not bashing the unices here! The tools available and the stability of the system make it very hard for me to turn my back on Bill in this instance.

If anyone can make suggestions as to how this can be done as efficiently with a U let me know. I would love to hear suggestions!

I removed my Windows installation and installed Linux (RH9) except for on one computer for the wife. However I did create an account for her on the Linux box and she currently goes back and forth between both computers (about 50/50).

How will these results compare to the web server's logs? Can this poll page be isolated from the logs, and the user agents added up to see how the results compare to the real data?

Unfortunately, windows is required at work, but at home....Linux....but I spend more time on a computer at work than at home :-(

.....want to switch...but just one more game of Half-life.........

Face it: Wine X doesn't work for everything. Other than that, and Abelton's Live, I can't think of many windows programs that don't have a linux counterpart.

Over the past week I've gone from Windows XP Pro to Mandrake 9.1 to Windows 2000 as my main OS. Windows XP is wonderful most of the time, but I've been having problems with my internet connection in XP. When it's disconnected I have to restart Windows before I can reconnect. It was annoying enough to make me give Linux a try as my main OS.

Mandrake 9.1 installed easily enough and overall seems like the best Linux desktop so far. I even managed to upgrade to the latest version of KDE without any problems. But I couldn't get my dual-headed display working or get a resolution higher than 1024x768. Then SWSUSP crashed the OS, causing damage that's stopped a lot of things working. It was an interesting experience, but there's no way I'm willing put up with this much hassle in my main OS.

So now I'm back using Windows 2000 as my main OS and I'm having trouble remembering why I ever bothered upgrading to XP. 2K is easily the best version of Windows I've used, everything is working perfectly and to me it feels faster than XP.

Well, linux is the system of my choice. Using the free operating system for both, server and desktop purpose. However, FreeBSD got it's beauty as well..it would be a real alternative to Linux. Jails are just great

".....want to switch...but just one more game of Half-life.........

Face it: Wine X doesn't work for everything."

Wine and WineX may not work for everything, but if there is one thing they do work for, it's Half-Life. I've been playing HL, CS and DOD on Linux for a year now, with no significant drop in framerate or instability problem. There was a problem with the Valve Anti-Cheat for a few weeks last year, but it was promptly solved. I used to use WineX, but now I use mostly Wine since it can work with Cheating-Death (WineX doesn't).

I also like the fact that I can play in a windowed desktop, which lets me check my mail, etc. while playing.

Primary OS, eh? My primary OS is Gentoo Linux of course. Why would you want to use anything else?

http://www.gentoo.org/

Hi, my name is Adan and I use Windows XP most of the time.

Because most of my time is spent on my work computer. Really, it's not that bad for work, at home however it's Mandrake Linux all the way. But I use my work computer far more often. Like evilEntity said, if everyone voted ONCE and HONESTLY with all the work computers we use, how many companies or universities, in my case want to use something other than Windows. Heck we have a contract with them where I can get cheap Windows software and OS's for my own use. Most places have contracts with MS it seems so yeah, if everyone voted honestly, Windows would be way ahead like eE said...

Why there isn't any link to view results without voting (i've voted before on another machine and would like to see what the results are now)?

Gentoo is the messiah of Linux distros, period. A lot has been said about it already, so I needn't say more.

Win2k on 2 shuttle boxes. Mostly for P2P and gaming purposes. Laptop runs FreeBSD 5.1, may add a dual boot of 2k to that as well. I'm hoping to get a new Epia based system which will run either FreeBSD or some Linux flavor depending on what will run and how aggravating it is to get IR up and running on it.

Mandrake 9.1 and on the older computer Debian 3.0r1 (stable)
also got a powerbook with OsX.

I also use gentoo .... it's fantastic!

I want to get MS and that poseur Gates out of my life. It is only when you try to do that that you see how completely Gates has undermined or eliminated choice in the software industry with his monopoly.

I have tried Knoppix and Vector and Suse and Mandrake. Installing Mandrake 9.1 was doomed from the start. All that worked, and remains on my system to my dismay, is its boot manager. The installation was full of bugs.

Vector was nice and has possibilities but I need further experience w it. It seemed a bit primitive.

Suse by far was the best of what LINUX OSs I've tried, but some programs didn't work. When I opened it's YAST 2 window and saw scores of listed conflicts in program packages, written in the usual recondite Linuxese--all of which Suse loaded--I realized that this entire Linux package system, in any distro, is --arguably--the fatal flaw in Linux, and the chief obstacle in allowing me to replace Windows with it.

The orchestra is playing MS's song and even if I hate that song, I find myself humming it all day long.

Except it won't actually prove anything to check the Browser headers vs what the people say. Konquerer has the option to edit the headers you send. Some sites require IE and can be fooled by changing headers. Some browsers won't send the OS info unless you tell them too. And so on....

I suppose you could put down "Doesn't Match" next to those entries, but that still won't really tell you much. How many are lying, and how many just don't send the right headers?

Work: 3 office cube machines ( RH 7.3,7.2, Mandrake )
Home: 1 floppyfw dialing firewall ( 2.4.20 kern )
2 36" Destination TV's ( Win98/Win98se with dual RH8)
1 P4 laptop ( RH 7.3 / XP Pro - rarely under XP )
2 P2/P3 for kids ( Win98SE - hey they have Open Office )
1 TIVO - hey its linux somewhere down there

90% of my online time is in a Red Hat KDE desktop although the TV's are technically running 98 when we watch junk like "The amazing race" <grin>. But I think my linux answer is truthful given the TV's aren't showing a desktop and the TIVO and floppyfw are up too.

Dave

I for one am honest, and I *do* use linux 90% of them time. I only boot into windows on the weekends to play some games.

The rest of the time its linux-only

(If you must know, Gentoo, KDE 3.1.2. Slackware 9, flux, and Slackware 8.1 and WindowMaker. Obviously the gentoo one is my desktop)

OS X.

My very first experience with a computer was a Mac that I played games on in the eighties while my mom was working on her PhD, and I used DOS in high school. The first time I ever did any actual work was on a Unix system -- my first college class after high school was a programming class taught in c; we used gcc as the compiler.

As an undergrad, I didn't have my own computer and mostly used the school's Sun workstations, which I fell in love with. I started using Linux when I got my first programming job for the Physics Dept. They were using Redhat 5.2 when I started. The idea of being able to run a Unix-like operating system on cheap hardware was so suductive that after taking a year off and making some money, my first computer was bought from the guy up the street and I installed Redhat 7.3 Now I'm taking summer break from getting my master's in financial math and using my Redhat 8 box to develop a client-server Java app that is going to be deployed on Windows machines. Java does indeed rock.

The only problem I have is getting kazaa to work under wine. I haven't really had the time to work on that; anybody have any suggestions?

ok.. I got proof. lol
http://bsd-unix.org/images/desktop.jpg (FreeBSD 5.1-RELEASE)

...at home... (MDK Linux 9.1)
And windows 2k at work. But that's different. *I* didn't choose that OS.

linux at home... dual screen Suse8 as my little server for just about anything and mandrake 9 on my laptop.
Win2k at work and yes ... at home 2... I'm actually typing this on an w2k laptop. If only damn linksys ( or broadcom for that matter ) brought out drivers for their wireless 54g cards 8/

My desktop at home and laptop for work both run RH Linux v9. I also have an old Dell running win98 (just keeping it for some stupid compatibility issues with M$ proprietaries). My 4 year old comfortably works on Linux (and my wife too). I mention my 4 year old because of the usability of Linux to end users. The most commonly used apps by my 4 year old are

Mozilla
Games
Openoffice

As my win98 also run Mozilla and Openoffice she doesn't feel much of the difference. That is what exactly we want in the world of computing don't we. Say good bye to M$. Latest news is that M$ bought a Anti-Virus company to kill the product line that runs on Linux.

Jumped from Windows 95 to Mac OS X. Still use Windows 95 sometimes for MIDI editing of hardware. Can't wait for Panther.

For: working (office), playing (multimedia), programming (C/C++), learning, surfing, networking... use linux.

For: gaming (few, not playable from linux) use windows.

I don't play games alot ;-)

I don't play games alot ;-) : aherm: buy an xbox you can run linux on it too ... I know I do...

What else?

Gentoo linux is great. The best flavor of Linux I've ever tried. Sure, every OS has problems, but there's nothing like a freshly compiled app with the work done for you =). Gentoo's package management system ("Portage") will wget your package, md5, unpack, compile, and install it with one command.
These are some of the pros and cons that I have observed while using it almost a year now:

PROS
-Everything is compiled and optimized for your own system
-Gentoo is fast.
-Dependencies are auto-compiled for you. (Awesome!)
-You decide exactly what is on your system and what isn't. Everything from boot loader to kernel to WM.
-Everything is well documented. There are a lot of posts in their forums, and a quick look can solve many problems. The install documentation is thorough and clear.
-If you didn't know much before you tried to install it, you will.
-RC-UPDATE! you don't have to bother with /etc/inittab; a gentoo script called rc-update will manage it for you.

CONS
-Compile time can sometimes get annoying.
-You have to be competient in a linux environment (a.k.a. no pretty gui configurators and installers are bundled with the OS). Probably not for someone converting directly from Windows.
-The initial install time can be 2,3 days to just get X and maybe a desktop environment.


I am very comfortable with my Gentoo system. =)
</rant>

2K3 is XP, just practially everything is running in Ring 0 in the kernal.

You realise that's just bollocks right?

I am a fan of OS/2 Warp 3.0 & eComStation(located at os/2world.com & ecomstation.com.)These operationing systems are vastly supperior(my own opinion)to their Windows' counterpart at the time they came out,Warp 3.0 in '95 & eComStation in 2002!
Unfortunately,IBM got it's you-know-what handed to it in the 'PC-preloading war' by Bill Gates and his fellow billionares(too numerous to mention at Microsoft!)
If you got a problem with me flamming the 'Wintel' monopley; COME ON DOWN to East Los Angeles!

I don't have a primary OS because I run more than one on a regular basis. I run WinXP Pro, Gentoo Linux, FreeBSD, Win2K Server, Mac OS X, and Mac OS 9.2.1--all on different systems.

I can choose the machine best suited to the task at hand.

Shock! Horror! A non-geek in your midst.
A lowly home user & part-time writer. GoBe's great.
This is my first computer bought end-2000, Pentium III with Win98 pre-installed, And I knew nothing about PC's or O/S's, and learned what I could from mags. & the Web. Within 6 weeks was frustrated with the hassles. Then I found BeOS, a novice's dream, so fast, user-friendly & stable.
Now with a more capable browser [Mozilla], I rarely boot into Windows at all, I don't have to, nor have to keep up with the Joneses with hardware upgrades. There's only a few things I use Windows for that aren't available to me in BeOS & these are of no interest to you folk cos I'm not a geek. And it goes without saying that I'm hoping Zeta comes through.
The future that seems to be mapped out by Microsoft worries me, but Linux is beyond me without a helping hand. And what makes it worse, it's Debian I aspire to [from my research] So with an eye towards an uncertain future, I'm about to experiment with 2 pseudo-Linux desktop distros tailored to
the terminally clueless. You never know, this :insurance plan" might work for me if Zeta doesn't come through.
Anyway, I'm pretty much a full-time user of a very minority O/S. I use BeOS for mail, watch video, play music, RipEnc encodes ogg & mp3's, I do my writing & on-line everything in BeOS, Pineapple's a great newsreader, I'm a happy camper as well as a, what is it now, two per center.
[back to lurking]

Well Gentoo for me
I also use SunOS and AIX and CrapOS(aka XP) at work but Gentoo the most, it's the best Linux dirsto I have found. also works well on my laptop.

I've slowly been moving from windows to linux at home over the last 5 years or so. When I started, my useage was something like 90% windows, 10% linux. Now, it's 10% windows (if that) 90% linux.

I have two boxes, one winxp for games and paintshop pro which is turned off most of the time, and a gentoo box with three monitors. Ironically enough, it was lack of support in win2k/xp for my three cards (1 agp, 2xpci) that marked the switch to linux as my main desktop os. I've tried lots of different RPM distros over the years (redhat, corel, suse, redhat again, mandrake etc) and the relief of switching to gentoo, and being able to install or uninstall software as soon as it comes out, without breaking half the os when I upgrade... I did look at debian and slackware, but when you compare the debian or mandrake forums to the gentoo forums, there is simply no contest at all.

Oh, and before I'm accused of ignoring my work computer, my main desktop at work is gentoo, my laptop is gentoo/win2k, and 3 out of the 6 servers I maintain are suse or gentoo.

I do spend at least half my working day repairing windows 2k boxes, but that's not exactly using, is it... Even including that though, linux edges it overall in total.

And yes, I did post this from gentoo/mozilla firebird

I did. use w2k 'cause that's what I have at work. At home it's probabbly 70% win XP, 25% RH Linux and 5% mac OS X.
However I dodn't think this a "normal" site due to it's nature. I suspect there is a much higher percentage of uses of other OS then windows.. but this is all meaningless.. it they just posted the stats from thier server.. we could see what OS are being used.

75% of the time it's BeOS. BeOS for web surfing,word proccessing,mail,music,Tv,video,newsgroups,coding python(novice). WinXPpro for proprietary apps, camera, mp3 player. Win98 for legacy apps (old). RedHat Linux for keeping up problem solving skills!. All on a Pentium lll 500

eCS V1.1 is my main system, With Suse Linux 8.1 and unfortunatly WindowsXP Crap for 2 programs

"Why always listen to the women? You deserve better, have it your way:) Unless you really don't know how to use another system and use this as a lame excuse:)"

...you don't know my wife...:)

Seriously, I use XP on my "house" machine & on both laptops, but I have OSX on an old PowerMac7600 (thanks to Xpostfacto) and RH 9 and BeOS on my dual PIII box. Problem is that both of these boxes are in my workshop 100 yards from the house. It's great fun playing with and learning from different OS's, but it was either the computers or the big screen tv

..

OK - I voted from Windows cos that's where I was when I noticed this poll & I wasn't quite sure when the poll would close.
But when I booted into BeOS, which is my main O/S, that's when I posted my comment. And I voted only once.

[oh ye of little faith]

I use AmigaOS 3.1 most of the time, but it´s running in WinUAE,a emulator which is running on WinXP.
XP is not that bad and the emulator is faster than a real 68k amiga provided that the programs doesn´t use the custom chips.

Win2k all the way baby.

Count me in...

I have been using BeOS on and off (mostly off) for the past 7+ years. Yet, in the past 2 years i have used it as my primary for about 18 months of that time. I do internet sales, research, programming, porting software, and much much more. There are limits, but I have it installed on 8 of my 10 machines, running quad, dual and single hardware, from PP 200s on the quad, to AMD 1.4 Ghz on the singles. The level of drivers has become tolerable in the past 18 months, and such I still see myself using BeOS as my fulltime OS until either I begin programming professionally again (after a time of retirement) or I simply give up on Zeta ever being delivered and go with OSX. Either way, I have to say, there is NOTHING as enjoyable as BeOS from a speed, consistancy and usability, as long as it is not out of the realm of normal operation for me. Doing Photoshop crap is not my normal mode of operation. Online email, cropping photos, adjusting color correction and so forth is most definitely. ArtPaint, MailerReplacment, drivers for devices (many many are now good to go), and more. ffmpeg for video compression into divx/avi and more. I can honestly say that within 30 days of working to learn the OS as it is today, someone can and will do as much or more with it than other OSes. I have used and programmed on many, OSX, NeXTStep, Windows, QNX, BeOS and Linux. I choose BeOS for various reasons, mostly I don't like Linux bloatware, M$ cost ware, OSX slowware, and QNX lack of ware. BeOS is the right mix for me, others should check it out. Oh, as screwed up as BeShare is, Tycom server in particular, it is a great resource for learning and getting answers to common questions. Without that resource it takes a lot longer to learn what programs will let you accomplish your goals. www.bebits.com also. I hope this helps, my perspective, biased and unbiased.

mac X

no disrespec to yo b*tch, but i heard "she takes it up the arse"

baaaaaamb!

how lots of you alternative (Be, UNIX, whatever) guys like to brag about the fact that you are actually posting from that OS, as if its some major feat. Damn you guys are cool

Woooot! wOOOOt

I know a better poll: Who uses their computer to get punani, and how?

BAAAAM\==

Using eComStation 1.1 here exclusively.

No fears of windoze viruses or microsoft spying on me. I can sleep safe at night. :-)

windoze too soft, Linux too hard, eCS just right.

I have 4 main systems running at home serving several purposes. One thing they all share is OS/2, every system from a P133 to an Athlon has either Warp 4 or eCS 1.1 on it. My main Athlon system is a quad boot with eCS 1.1, BeOS Max 2, RH Linux 9.0 and Win2K Pro. I'm in eCS 95% of the time. I use eCS to work, Linux to learn, BeOS to play, and Win2K for digital camera pic DLs only.

I've used OS/2 since 1992 and V 2.1 (banner on my wall for 2.1!) and have found no reason to change. It does everything I need and want. I will use it until it will no longer run on the available hardware (and will have a floppy drive until then too). I find Linux an interesting possible alternative but I'm so spoiled with the object orientation of OS/2...want to change a font in a window? Drag font there, font is changed. Try that in anything else, and it did that in 1992 when M$ had Program Manager (which runs in a little window on my desktop in OS/2). Contrary to reports, OS/2 is not dead, it's getting better all the time! http://www.ecomstation.com/

Using eComstation 1.1 for my desktop, No windows, no Linux, my web server and mail server is eCcomStation,

All my accounting, DTP, Wordprocessing is accomplished with out the need of windows.

Vaughn Bender