Here is a short list of the things I totally loved this year. Use the comment section to tell us about your favorites too!Innovation/Great Idea of the year: Apple’s Expose (note: Longhorn and Gnome’s Storage have innovative concepts and ideas too, but they are not out yet).
Best Hobby OS: SkyOS. Robert, a single developer, has really put lots of work into it this year, outpacing in development OpenBeOS, MenuetOS and Syllable put together!
Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3 Panther (I just hope that Apple stops breaking application and driver compatibility with OSX versions that came out just last year).
Best Server OS: Windows Server 2003. Best. Windows. Ever. (Message to the ‘disturbed’ people in the comment’s section: deal with it).
OS with most overall potential: Linux. With the release of 2.6, Linux is sailing for doubling to ~2% of marketshare for 2004. Let’s hope that YellowTAB could develop and market its Zeta OS in a way that I could see more potential there too.
OS dissapointment of the year: FreeBSD. Don’t get me wrong, FreeBSD is one of my all-time favorites, but really, it just doesn’t evolve as fast as it should have
to compete with Linux. Another dissapointment was also eComStation 1.1, lots of installation problems and almost no notable advancements.
Best desktop environment: Luna or Aqua for me. Gnome did some great steps though and became my Unix DE of choice.
Most profound application of the year: I am torn between Photoshop CS and OpenOffice.org (while not as full featured as MS Office or even Star Office, it is free and so that compensates.)
System/Dev software that had huge evolutionary steps this year: Mono. It is getting there and it looks good.
Best Freeware game: Frozen-Bubble. It is so addictive, that it ain’t funny anymore.
Best consumer Camcorder: Canon Optura Xi.
Best Prosumer camera: Canon EOS 10D.
Best computer accessory: Apple iSight web camera.
Best upgrade: Memorex or Sony DVD/+-RW (dual format).
Life saver accessory (especially on Apple Cube computers): iMic USB sound card.
Best all-around photo printer: Epson Stylus C84
Best “cheap” film and generic scanner: Epson Perfection 3200 Photo.
Best… Action Figure: 12″ Rotocast NightCrawler. Isn’t this cute?
Probably I am forgetting a few things, I am sure… Please use the comment section to tell us about your favorites this past year!
My favourite thing in 2003 was the cute little USB harddisk that I bought. Its smaller than a pack of playing cards, has a capacity of 4.6 GB and does NOT need an external power supply. It runs on the USB power itself. I wonder how I ever lived without it. Great way to carry data around. And it just costs 70 dollars!!
I can see arguments for Mac OS X being the best desktop OS, but Best Server OS: Windows 2003 ???? I’m quite sure that there were much better Server OS out there. Maybe Windows 2003 was most improved Server OS or best really cheap Server OS, but best Server OS…. it would mean that when you have thirty million dollars… you’d still use Windows 2003 on a little tiny Intel machine to run your entire shop…. hmmm.
beos is dead ? sco owns linux ? X11 is old ?
Even though it’s “merely” an iMac with a bigger screen, for sheer LCD-beauty and screen real estate desire, my vote goes for the 20″ iMac *sigh*
Link to the hard drive manufacturer?
– Innovation/Great Idea of the year: Nothing new ever happens
– Best Hobby OS: I agree with SkyOS, though I would have to go with OpenBeOS for friendliest hobby OS community
– Best Desktop OS: I agree with OS X 10.3
– Best Server OS: On the mid-range, Linux. At the high-end, Solaris.
– OS with most overall potential: I agree with Linux.
OS dissapointment of the year: Zeta
I want BeOS back!
– Best desktop environment: A tie between MacOS Classic and KDE. MacOS Classic has a better UI, but KDE is more powerful.
– Most profound application of the year: Safari. The first sign of a turning tide in the browser market.
– System/Dev software: Tie between Gwydion Dylan and Python 2.3.
– Best Freeware game: Frozen Bubble is the only freeware game I’ve ever played for more than an hour!
– Coolest computer: PowerMac Dual 2.0 G5!
– Coolest new processor: K8 (I refuse to use the ridiculous sounding -on names).
– Coolest tech company: IBM
– Best gadget: iPod!!!
– Suxorziest troll: The award goes to those trolls that imitate other peoples’ user IDs!
…is for sure my new 17″ Powerbook which arrived in late december. It is a nice designed and powerful machine an a real desktop replacement.
…I got a lot of fun with it.
A happy 2004 to the OSNews team and all the folks out there :-)))
Best OS, now and forever: BeOS
… please, just let me have this. :~(
Best Change In The Tides – International movements to dump proprietary OS & software configurations and embrace open source.
Best Greeks Bearing Gifts – SCO, for finally bringing several latent open source issues out into the public forum and inadvertantly jumpstarting the next step of evolution. They will not kill us, they’ll make us stronger.
Best New Arcade Experience – Galaxian3 in Theatre setting
Most Unfortunately Disappointing Releases – Matrix sequel (film), Homeworld sequel (game)
Most Surprisingly Good Releases – The Eye (film), Fatal Frame (game)
Best Server OS – TIE: Solaris and Linux (sorry, mate)
Best New American Technology Law – National Do Not Call List
and many more…
zOS – forever
The best hardware: zOS
Guys – it’s not funny. This is real server OS.
The runner-up: OpenVMS
The next after: Solaris / HP-UX
The emerging server/desktop: Linux
The desktop os: Windows XP
The second place (or the same 1st – depends) – MacOS X – Panther
Sorry correction:
Best hardware: zOS mainframe z900 in Parallel Sysplex.
Each node 640 cpus.
That’s real high end.
Definitely my usb key and Linux
GET BACK TO WORK!!
Just gotta say how much I have enjoyed OSNews this year. Not only a wide range of useful articles but the many intelligent user comments.
I have about 5 sites I check many times a day and Eugenia somehow seems to always have new postings – weekends, holidays, any time. Does she ever sleep? And she says she is a part time employee now!
A big thank you to all at OSNews. You deserve an award for your work in 2003.
Best i386 OS Server: FreeBSD
Best Desktop Environment: XFCE4
Best New Idea: turn off the pc during week end
Enjoy the next year, guys
Slimdevice’s Squeezebox. The evolution of the original Slimp3 includes wireless 802.11a/b/g support for streaming from your computer to any audio device in the house. It rocks!
http://www.slimdevices.com
-fp
Best OS Site of 2003: OSNews.com
Thanks for all your hard work Eugenia!
Discovering free software!
Best Hobby OS: Syllable
Best Desktop OS: Be or Linux
Best Server OS: Linux
OS with most overall potential: Linux, 2nd is OpenBeOS
Best desktop environment: I can’t comment, I love most of them!
Most profound application of the year: Firebird, the one browser that may eventually beat IE on ALL platforms
Best Game: Homeworld2 to bad it doesn’t run on linux
Linux!
OH MY GAWD, BEST SERVER OS is Win 2003, I WOULD NOT RUN WINDOWS in a server enviroment to save my life. I am repulsed….ick….(windows server 2003 !?!?!?!)…..Oh my god,… I am going to have a nightmare over that
Keefer! Congratulations!
Windows Server 2003 I have heard good things about, but until it is running on something powerful enough to beat Kasparov in chess it is not the best Server OS.
Best desktop, OS X or Linux w/Gnome I would say.
Best hobby OS, for sure Linux. SkyOS may be neat, but it doesn’t quite to the range of things Linux does for free
.
Best software package: vi (no not really I just wanted to start a vi/emacs war)
Frozen Bubble is so addictive, infact its my favorite unix game 🙂 Although I wish it was faster on Mac OS X
Any thoughts on the best inexpensive Postscript laser printer (for Linux)?
Oh yes I forgot, Firebird is incredible. It’s only problem is startup speed, it needs to start faster.
Your tax dollars at work. >;)
Besides, even us gov’t drones get a lunch hour. (Now expanded to 12 minutes by Big Brother. Doubleplusgood, that.)
Everybody believes Eugenia is a person. In fact, it’s a bot, invented by JBQ. Eugenia means Electronic Unit Genetically Engineered for News and Information Aquisition.
I agree: best site of the year: OSNews
Geek girl of the year: Eugenia
Happy new year to everybody at OSNews, and a special one to Eugenia;-D
G. W. Bush
Good List Eugenia, I agreed with everything you listed except for GNOME, I still think KDE is better, Luna is an awesome improvement to Windows and Server 2003 is alot better. I actually like Windows Server 2003 more than Linux Enterprise Server systems.
Innovation/Great Idea Of The Year:
Definitely the GUI-contest enacted by SkyOS’s Robert. What a great idea!
Favourite Overall OS:
Windows Server 2003 w/ Talisman 2.7. The best Windows release ever. And when properly tweaked, just as desktop friendly as any other OS. And stable
Favourite “2nd” OS:
Still Mandrake (as of now, the kernel 2.6-test11 based snapshot). In my opinion Mandrake is close to getting the best of both worlds; perfect as a desktop OS, but very customizable.
(2nd meaning other than Windows, Windows is still my main OS, but only because of MSN6…
)
OS With The Most Potential:
SkyOS for me. Need I say anything more?
Best Hobby-OS:
Same as above.
OS Surprise Of The Year:
QNX 6.2.1. Just try it. It’s stability, it’s speed (especially on lower-end computers), it’s ease-of-use (best package management system ever, Apt-get eat your haert out!) and it’s clean beauty will rock you!
Greatest OS-dissapointment:
The Sun Java Desktop System. I had the privilige (and with me many others) to test the beta, and it just was a huge dissapointment… They promised us a clean and easy-to-use system, but it turned out to be ‘just’ SuSE with a different
Best Desktop Environment:
A tie between Talisman 2.7 and KDE 3.x. Although of course it’s kind of hard to see Talisman as a DE (by the way, they might be overthrown by Panther, though, next year: this house is going to be Mac-enabled!
)
Best Input Device:
My very cool Optical Trackball. That thing just rocks, I just don’t understand why people still use mice :S …
gots to be FreeBSD hands down – far more stable and able to handle loads much more efficiently. Let’s not even get started on worms shall we..
How can you say FreeBSD is a disappointment!
How can you say Windows 2003 is the best server!
You are just looking for a fight…
How about: OS dissapointment of the year: Windows XP
After all the security warnings on XP, I feel Microsoft totally dropped the ball.
Free Game of the year: Enemy Territoy
Windows 2003 is a very good server OS. I work with it in a production environment for a small web hosting company. In a shared hosting environment it is remarkably stable.
Have all of you that are dissing it even used it?
And I’m a FreeBSD guy as well! It all depends on what kind of application you are trying to server.
Not to play the credit game, but I ran the GUI contest. I did it because I knew that SkyOS needed some big graphics help, and I wanted to take the load off of Robert.
I never imagined we would have so many submissions. I thought maybe we would have 4-5 GUI submissions, and it ended up being something like 40. So many great submissions, I like going back and looking at them all every so often.
> Enjoy the next year, guys
From: dave (IP: —.41-151.net24.it)
I was gonna say that too.
Your opinions are warped as usual!
My opinions are better and far more superior. I am SCO, and I own OSNews!
By the way, best OS for any purpose: Linux without a doubt.
Best OS news site: OSNews.com
Best Opinion: Mine
“Windows 2003 is a very good server OS. I work with it in a production environment for a small web hosting company. In a shared hosting environment it is remarkably stable. ”
I have used it and it is extremely good for a low end server…. But “Best” does mean best, and Windows 2003 is lacking quite a bit to be considered the best server OS.
Yes, I’ve used Windows 2003, but it doesn’t scale like Solaris, nor remain as stable over time. It’s certainly nowhere as mature in its drivers and modular architecture either. And it lacks a lot of the secondary support structures that are easily bolted onto Linux.
As an out-of-the-box solution for a homogenous network it is okay, but not as powerful as the other two when it comes to more “real world” heterogenous setups.
Most innovative Linux distribution:
GoboLinux ( http://www.gobolinux.org )
Best desktop environment:
ROX desktop, it’s not as bloated as KDE/Gnome. ( rox.sf.net )
Greatest idea since sliced bread:
Zero Install ( zero-install.sf.net )
When it come sto free games, you have to take a look at Scorched3D. Frozen-bubble is nice, but you’re really not blowing stuff up with artillery.
If you’re just sticking with XP for MSN Messenger, fire up Gaim or KMess and get back to your linux box! =)
I just bought the LaserJet 1012 for $180 on sale. Works perfectly with Linux, and prints beautiful text.
it ended the way it had to.
what exactly was the disappointment?
For me, the Best in 2003:
1) With Breadbox PC/GEOS -THE coolest- DOS-GUI EVER comes back to Earth !!!
http://www.breadbox.com
2) Freaky Peoples work hard to bring AmigaOS back
3) My new Car, Renault Kangoo is amazing…
iPod – Yum. Got mine this holiday season and, man, talk about perfection in a portable music player. And now with calendar, address book and notes, the thing has almost all my favorite features of a PDA.
Chopper (OS X freeware) – My new game addiction.
Adobe’s Creative Studio products – Integration among apps (nearly) done right.
OSNews – Always thought-provoking and informative, even amongst the trolls ; )
Happy New Year!
Outch, please learn about the difference of Freeware and Free Software ASAP!
If you want to argue semantics, at least know what you’re talking about.
Quoth m-w.com:
freeware: software that is available for use at no cost or for a nominal usually voluntary fee
Is Frozen-bubble software that is available for use at no cost? …. Yes.
Windows 2003 the best server OS? Why does osnews not run it? Why does Microsoft’s own hotmail not run it? Maybe you should have made seperate categories like:
1) best server OS
2) easiest to use server OS
Innovation/Great Idea of the year: hmmm… WebGrazer?
Best Hobby OS: hmmm… L4-HURD?
Best Desktop OS: hmmm… GNU/Linux?
Best Server OS: er… GNU/Linux?
OS dissapointment of the year: Mac OS X
Best desktop environment: KDE.
Most profound application of the year: GIMP 1.3
System/Dev software that had huge evolutionary steps this year: GNUstep
Best Freeware game: GDB (Finding and killing bugs)
“1) With Breadbox PC/GEOS -THE coolest- DOS-GUI EVER comes back to Earth !!! http://www.breadbox.com”
Man! I miss this one so bad! Is there a way to download the original one?
Best open source apps: MozillaFirebird, WinSCP, gaim
Best MS Killer: OpenOffice.org 1.1
Best New Design: the “Plastik” theme
OS with Most Potential: Linux 2.6
Most Overhyped OS: Longhorn
Most Overhyped OS runner-up: Zeta
Most Likely to Make a Comeback: Solaris 10
Most Progress This Year: SkyOS
Most Overlooked OS: Cisco IOS
Best Drama: SCO vs. IBM vs. Linus
Best Distro: Xandros 2.0
Best Idea: Gnome Storage
Best Upgrade: Mandrake 9.0 to 9.1
Best CD Based Distro: Knoppix
Expect Big Things from: DragonflyBSD
Best Corporate ReOrg: Red Hat
Worst PR: Red Hat
Best Received New Distro: MEPIS
Worst Received New Distro: Yoper
Best Bet for 2004: Novell Linux and Ximian
Eugenia, how on earth can you like the Nightcrawler figurine?
*duh* 🙂
Batman would soooo win in a fight.
http://shop.store.yahoo.com/cmdstore/baziacfidc20.html
This one’s new to 2003.
Typically, when something is listed as the Best of the year, it’s because it debuted or made some kind of major milesone during that year. Though Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris are all great server OSes, none of them had the kind of major release (as far as an increase in quality or capability) as Windows 2003 Server did. Linux probably has deserved the “best server OS” prize a few times over the past few years for its accomplishments.
Whenever Time’s person of the year ends up being a bad guy (Hitler was man of the year one year) it always causes the same controversy. Sometimes the product or person with the biggest impact isn’t the one you want to succeed, but the impact is there nonetheless.
Oh yeah windows server 2003 was such an accomplishment. I think the greatest new feature of winodws server 2003 has got to be the new thing they call “Security”. Its such a new concept to the computing world. I mean just look at windows 2000 server. There was none of that. Congratulations to Windows 2003 for being best of the year for its new “Security” feature.
“Whenever Time’s person of the year ends up being a bad guy (Hitler was man of the year one year) it always causes the same controversy. Sometimes the product or person with the biggest impact isn’t the one you want to succeed, but the impact is there nonetheless.”
Yeah, but notice for Time, it is call Man Of the Year, not Best Man of the Year. A title of Man of the Year, clearly is a designation for the most influential person of the year, good or bad. However, in Eugina’s list, it was clearly labelled “Best Server OS”.
Besides that, the impact Windows 2003 had was almost nill. Not many people bother to upgrade to it or purchase it. It was just a slightly better version of Windows 2000.
If the category was truly for the most influential/biggest story Server OS of the year, the honor clearly would have gone to Linux. It was everywhere in the news: from lawsuits, to companies adopting it, to pricing changes, to increased enterprise backing, to technical improvements, it was clearly the most talked about server OS of 2003.
David Adams said:
“(Hitler was man of the year one year)”
I did NOT say Eugenia was like Hitler! She ONLY TRIES TO BE!
Dude, tell ya what, lay off. You dont agree with Eugenia? fine, there is no reason for name calling or making yourself look like an a$$. I have found Eugenia to be a very good journalist and for the most part I pretty much agree with her, except for DE’s. She does her job well, she has her preferences and she makes them known just like any good journalist would. As for Windows Server 2003, I have found it to be stable, secure and just as reliable as most Linux servers I have seen. Before bashing Server 2003 just because it is from MS, try it, to bash something and not knowing what you are talking about really makes the person look stupid.
<< Yeah, but notice for Time, it is call Man Of the Year, not Best Man of the Year. A title of Man of the Year, clearly is a designation for the most influential person of the year, good or bad. However, in Eugina’s list, it was clearly labelled “Best Server OS”.
Besides that, the impact Windows 2003 had was almost nill. Not many people bother to upgrade to it or purchase it. It was just a slightly better version of Windows 2000.
If the category was truly for the most influential/biggest story Server OS of the year, the honor clearly would have gone to Linux. It was everywhere in the news: from lawsuits, to companies adopting it, to pricing changes, to increased enterprise backing, to technical improvements, it was clearly the most talked about server OS of 2003. >>
Nothing much has happened with Linux, kernel 2.6 while released has not been deployed much. I agree with OSNews. Windows Server 2003 was a major upgrade and really blew Linux away, I have been a Linux/UNIX user since the days of NeXTStep and am currently a GNU Darwin developer and I am very impressed with Windows Server 2003 in terms of reliability, security, and capability even the pricing for Enterprise is not bad.
> it is call Man Of the Year
That would be Havoc Pennington. He was much influencial in the OSS world this year. More than usual.
– Best Change In The Tides: Amsterdam Wireless East project, Free internet workplaces popping up in Europe, (local, regional, country) governments experimenting with FLOSS (Germany, Israel, Netherlands, …)
– Most Overhyped OS: Longhorn.
– Best Server OS: Debian GNU/Linux Woody.
– OS dissapointment of the year: Debian GNU/Linux Sarge…
– Best desktop environment: XFce4.
– Most profound application of the year: Mozilla Firebird, OOo.
– Best Freeware game: NationStates, Nethack.
– Best gadget: Sharp OpenZaurus SL5500 with WLAN.
– Life saver accessory: Nokia 9210i Communicator.
– Best LiveCD: Knoppix though i never tried Gnoppix or Morphix.
Let’s just all agree that Windows Server 2003 was the best server OS for the desktop.
My list would include Fedora Project for most interesting distribution development, GNOME Project for biggest Free Software usability improvements, Epiphany and Inkscape for most valuable forks, freedesktop.org xserver for most exciting technology preview, Enemy Territory for best Linux multiplayer game, Novel buying monkeys and chameleons in a box for most interesting acquisition and of course Mono for just kicking everything’s arse. Oh yes and there was something funny involving SCO, but I already forgot what it was all about. :p
Let’s see… For me personally, these things are worth noting:
Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3
Best Server OS: Windows Server 2003
Best Computer News Site: osnews.com
Best new app: Outlook 2003
Biggest event in computer hardware: The Apple G5.
Biggest event in computer software: Netscape dead.. Mozilla ready for a new broswer war!
Most annoying event in computing: SCO
Most useful app for 2003: Virtual PC.
(all items on this list are my personal favorites for 2003)
I’d amend the Best Server OS category to read “Best Server OS for someone who doesn’t know how to run a server”, and then you can definetly name Win 2K3 the winner.
And no, I’m not going to say it’s Linux either. But clearly, Solaris or AIX would walk all over Win2K3 in most aspects. Try running a high load oracle cluster on Win2K3 and see how it compares to AIX or Solaris.
Thanks!
That doesn’t say anything JC. The cost of running AIX and Solaris far exceed the costs running Win2k3. There are several parametres when you choose something. For example, according to your logic, I should have picked ClearCase or a nuclear bomb simulator for the “Most profound application of the year”, however it was my choice to pick something more down to earth and more accessible by most people.
You don’t have to be so rude just because you don’t agree with someone else’s personal choice. Get a clue.
You know, I’m really surprised no one’s brought up Keynote. I’ve never used it myself–and as such, I can’t actually nominate it as a best _anything_–but I’ve heard such raves that I thought someone would surely bring it up. What does everyone think?
Here is what a Ximian employee thinks about it: http://joeshaw.org/#20031231
BEST OS != MOST IMPROVED OS
W2k3 is not the best OS and in the same timeframe it took to release it, there were far more improvements in Linux.
Yeah, Keynote is nice, schweet in fact, but I’ll wait for 2.0 (or probably 2.1, I can’t stand buggy software.) Version 1 has a lot of limitations, like (trying to remember; haven’t used it in a while,) 1 QT movie/effect per slide, and a host of small niggles with PPT compatibility. Also, it feels a bit incomplete. Many of the features are rather rudimentary, like the chart feature et al. Sorry I can’t give a more verbose report, but I don’t have it installed right now. (I have MS Office, which got a macro virus within a week of installing it, so I just deleted the normal Word template, and everything seems back to normal. I wish I could disable macros entirely, and not just on a per document basis.) (I also HATE slideshow presentations. I think from a pedagogical standpoint, they are crap, and only muck up any attempts to convey information.)
Oh, and in case you are wondering what I mean by “pedagogical,” I have a professor (economics) who uses it for his classes. It’s simply the WORST way to teach anyone anything, or to convey ANY message. You get lost in the show, and your brain goes on autopilot because the students do not contribute to the learning experience (as much). You just copy the words and diagrams verbatim, and do the learning out of the classroom.
Most improved OS: AmigaOS. Almost completely rewritten from BCPL and 68k ASM to portable C, added native TCP/IP stack plus other goodies. after 10 years, its back from the dead.
Several people have mentioned specific brands of Live CD OSes but I think the category should be placed somewhere on the list. It seems several distros came out with Live CDs this year.
Live CDs provide a tool for system admins and network specialist. They are also are fun way to learn and experiment with something new without destroying the main working system.
In a few years there will be Live DVD OSes.
A couple of brands to try. Damn Small Linux, Knoppix, Gnoppix, Knoppix-STD, SuSE, and I think Mandrake has one.
Eug, I’m not talking about costs. If you’re talking the best, cost really shouldn’t be a consideration. And you may be somewhat shocked to learn that Solaris/AIX really isn’t that much more expensive than Win 2K3 in an enterprise setting.
If you’re just talking about running a lil or medium sized website, Win 2K3 is fine (altho Linux is probably a better choice for this). If you’re talking about the Best, it’s not Win 2K3.
And I’m not being rude, just realistic. How is Win 2K3 Server more accessable than Solaris? Isn’t Solaris x86 available really cheaply, if not free? Isn’t it cheaper than Win 2K3? How is this not accessable?
“Batman would soooo win in a fight.”
Because it’s New Years and all I just thought I would say HAHAHAHAHAHA!
Not on Batman’s best day ever! Not even with Robin and Batgirl and all his battoys and the butler too could he deal with Kurt.
Best hobby O/S: AtheOS
What about AtheOS and Syllable? It seems like a better choice than Sky OS.
And phooey, FreeBSD 5 rocks my socks.
It’s funny that the “best server OS” can be only run in the crappiest hardware on earth….
The Xserve (gush, gush).
Saw it in action.
HAD to have it.
Purrrrrrrrrrrrformance.
🙂
It’s funny that the “best server OS” can be only run in the crappiest hardware on earth
What other hardware are you talking about? Mac perhaps? Most of the hardware in the Macs are the same as in PCs. The only differences are (probably) the motherboard and CPU.
The best RSS reader is NNTP/RSS (http://www.methodize.org/nntprss/)
It runs a local NNTP server (used by newsgroups), so any program that can read NNTP (Outlook Express, Pan, Agent, XNews, SLRN, Opera etc.) can be used.
Since it’s made with Java, it’s platform independent.
Now I can just syncronize the “newsgroups”, and see when OSNews has published a new article 🙂
<< really? its funny i didn’t know windows 2003 ran on mac hardware! >>
Actually there is a rumor that Microsoft is doing a port to support IBM’s PowerPC servers, workstations and blades so you never know, it may be able to run on Macs one day.
I don’t see how freebsd could be the greatest dissapointment. 5.x branch has seen more improvements and features than freebsd has seen in a while.
“I don’t see how freebsd could be the greatest dissapointment. 5.x branch has seen more improvements and features than freebsd has seen in a while.”
I love BSD but I actually agree with Eugenia on this. 5.x branch is still beta, so you shouldn’t even consider it as released. So FreeBSD basically released 4.8 and 4.9, pretty dissapointing to me. Also considering we were supposed to have 5 stable around mid-summer of 2003… it really is dissapointing.
Hmm…
Best Desktop OS: Lindows 4.5
Second Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3
Best Open-Source Applications: Mozilla Firebird / Thunderbird
Best Office Suite: OpenOffice 1.1
Best Gadget: Palm Tungsten T|3
Biggest Disappointment: Windows Server 20003
Well, I can understand the reason why OSX is selected best Desktop OS. But I think selecting Windows Server 2003 as the best server OS is unintelligible.
Let’s see:
Number of platforms that you can run WS2003: 1 (i386)
Number of platforms you can run Linux: 20
Number of platforms you can run NetBSD (approx.): Anything that has a cpu
Well, I think the comparison is over. There is no need to look at other areas like cluster-computing, number of cpu’s per machine, scalablity (can run in watches, pdas, desktops, low-end servers, and server-farms. guess what it is)…
But of course if you want to just click and run a web server, WS2003 might be ideal…
Happy New Year everybody.
Thank you Eugenia and all the team of osnews.com for bringing us a great website, the best OS website.
Expectations for 2004: java sdk 1.5, hope that Linux DE will be faster.
>>”Number of platforms that you can run WS2003: 1 (i386) ”
Number platforms that matter: 1 (i386)
Now, before people go nuts about Sun, etc., ask yourself this:
If someone demonstrated to your boss that she could replace every piece of (fill-in-the-blank.. but think Sun) hardware with x86 machines that ran W2K3, maintain the same levels of performance and reliability, drop the Sun maintenance contract, and replace her expensive Solaris admins with cheap Windows admins, what do you think she might do?
I once worked at a place that had several dozen commodity Dell servers running NT, and several big pieces of Sun hardware. The NT servers were more reliable than the Sun machines, and they could support them in-house with salaried employees. Whenever the chance arose to replace a Sun machine with an x86 box, they took it without hesitation or regret.
The award goes to those trolls that imitate other peoples’ user IDs!
Amen, brother.
Oh, and a Happy new year to all!!!
Best Rediscovered OS: Irix. I got an Indy on ebay and run the latest Irix 6.5.22 on it. Its fast and rock stable.
“If someone demonstrated to your boss that she could replace every piece of (fill-in-the-blank.. but think Sun) hardware with x86 machines that ran W2K3, maintain the same levels of performance and reliability, drop the Sun maintenance contract, and replace her expensive Solaris admins with cheap Windows admins, what do you think she might do?”
Yes, and I am the pope…and she is not blond.
“The NT servers were more reliable than the Sun machines…”
Yeah right, that’s why so many “mission critical” systems run NT…are you still sleeping or what ?
And running IIS ? Forget about it….
Eric
Best PDA Device – Treo 600
Best Home OS – Lindows 4.5
Worst Microsoft Move – Backing SCO
Worst Software Company – Intuit
Best cancelled TV series – Futurama
Dumbest TV Network – Spike TV
Strangest Thing I Purchased This Year – Roomba
Win2K03 is _the_ Server OS of the year.
Once again MS released a better product and didn’t break the backward compatibility. That is no small feat (and all too often dismissed by *NIX fans). As a BSD freak I still continue to impressed by the newest versions from MS. Now if they’d only make MKS Toolkit a auto-addin for the darn thing! Given the power there is no reason why mapped *NIX commands shouldn’t work “out of the box”.
’03 will be remembered as the year things changed for Linux. The big proprietary versions are up and coming – this will be the next wave and the results will be good and bad. Look for continuing “lock-in” by the big players (IBM and HP) as you will only be supported on certain controlled versions. As has been predicted over and over, the ROI argument is a red herring. You _will_ pay for Linux if you want to be supported, and the “disturbed” (as Eugenia terms them) had better get used to it. RH on IBM, or NOVELL/SUSE on HP, or JD on Sun I386 will be _different_ from Win32; it will NOT be cheaper. IBM will take the “MS strategy” of “extend” to new heights with Linux (and NOVELL and RH will probably benefit). Accordingly, look for “choices” for companies to be radically reduced as Linux becomes truly a “data-center OS”. And SUN has been counted out much too early, as the vendor “lock in” for Linux versions will increase their chances with Solaris as the “real” cost of using supported Linux will be judged against it.
Alas, Eugenia is also correct about BSD. My favorite OS is disappointing in the speed of its evolution. Whether this is simply due to its overall maturity is a matter of debate.
Finally, my hope is that OSNews will continue to prosper in ’04, though a little civility would be nice :-). And if we can all stay on topic a little more! Let’s talk about BSD in BSD threads, and Linux in Linux threads. And what’s with the slamming of Amiga people? Damn I’m impressed by their heart after all these years! And freakin’ SKYOS – Robert, man, you rock. Keep up the good work.
Best Desktop OS: Linux Mandrake 9.2 and SUSE 9.0
Best Server OS: Linux Redhat AE 3.0 / SUSE AE
Eugenia Mono sucks like .Not. You must be crazy to pick mono I would pick Ruby. It seems like you development experience is as shallow as crappy/buggy windoze 2003 server .not server.
Didnt anyone notice the rise of the Nostalgic Hobby OS? You’ve got new Amiga’s, new Commadors and new RiscOS machines. As well as MorphOS. Im sure theres more but that’s my little corner mentioned!
Have to agreee on the Canon 10D, _very_ good piece of kit.
Spose I should finish my review sometime…
Bonne Année*, and keep up the good work!
*Thats “Happy New Year” to the rest of you 😀
I worked there, you didn’t, so please leave your biases elsewhere.
If you have ever actually shared responsibility for an IT department of that scale, feel free to share your own experience. Until then, please don’t try to cover up an obvious avoidance of clear and rational thought with cultish slogans (“mission critical”) and fanboy enthusiasms.
Managers care about reliability, but they care more about money. There’s no reason to spend money to achieve a level of reliability and performance that are not needed. If a business could operate successfully using a squadron of Sinclair QL machines, that’s exactly what they ought to do.
None of the servers in question — NT or those running Solaris — ran IIS. (There are other kinds of servers, you know, besides web servers.) We ran only a few web servers — Apache on the Sun’s and then Lotus servers when we ditched the Sun boxes for Wintel.
We found Sun support to be costly and inadequate. We found Sun hardware to be no more reliable than our Wintel boxes, and considerably more expensive to maintain. (Commodity hardware and peripherals were, by and large, unavailable for the Suns. If something broke, you paid Sun prices for Sun hardware. When your boss knows that a Sun hard drive costs 10 times as much as an equivalent Wintel drive, you won’t bew able to convince her that the Sun drive is worth cost.
Others may have had different experiences. In my case, the cost of Sun and Solaris weren’t commensurate with performance and reliability.
Most Promising: Definitely DragonflyBSD, it looks like its going to take BSD and Linux by storm (well, maybe I’m overstating it, but its a new year
)
Desktop: Linux 2.6, even though I love FreeBSD 4.9, and don’t really have any problems with it, it looks like 2.6 is a big step forward for Linux
Server: Solaris (I don’t think anything beats this) or VMS (this is one of those OSes that I was happy to discover recently)
Embedded Systems: Tron/ITron, looks like the way to go for embedded tech, if not Tron then maybe NetBSD
Hobbiest: MorphOS, it looks like a modern day Amiga. If only I had a PPC, I would *love* to try it out
Disappointment: FreeBSD 5.x because I want to see more releases now…. It seems pretty innovative, but it needs more polishing. I think *BSD will make a comeback though, next year.
Trollmanship: Any BSD Thread. Literally crawling with “BSD is dying trolls,” and I must admit, “BSD is superior to everything trolls” (though they were far more anti-bsd trolls)
Just so Eugena knows, there needs to be a better moderation system to quell a certain two or three trolls that appear in every one of the *BSD threads. I find it saddening that some people hate BSD with such a passion find an excuse to troll on these threads. Instead of being with insightful commentary, they have been filled with flamage.
Also, the anti-Amiga trolls disgusted me.
Best Hobby OS: definitely eComStation 1.1. If you take into account that the group of developers and the test base is a lot smaller than the Linux groups than they have done a good job.
Best Desktop OS: Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. I completely agree with this one.
Best Server OS: Novell
OS with most overall potential: NetBSD
Best desktop environment: OS/2 WPS
> Best Rediscovered OS: Irix. I got an Indy on ebay and run the latest Irix 6.5.22 on it. Its fast and rock stable.
Same here! I got an Indigo for free from my old job. THEY WERE GONNA THROW HIM OUT!! Er, it… they were gonna throw it out. Ivy league university my arse.
I named him Indy, he plays nice with my iBook.
while i vehemently disagree with most of your choices there, have a good new year anyway Euginia