Discussion on 'What is the best operating system and why?'

(7) On July 04, 2008 at 12:28 am ChuisCeQueJeCroi [28] said:

So in summation:

Windows

Pros: It's everywhere.

Cons: Everything else.

Mac

Pros: Everything, except below.

Cons: It's not as common, but gaining market share.

Linux(and other UNIX)

Pros: Everything, except below.

Cons: Not very common. For advanced users.

Conclusion: This is why I own a Mac and always will.

(6) On June 08, 2008 at 11:05 pm Macosxp [15] said:

Excuse me, why do supervisors keep featuring and un-featuring this question? Personally, I think it should be featured. But why can't there just be a discussion and consensus? That's the way things are done on Wikipedia, and it works well. If there is another place on this site such discussions are held, please correct me.

(5) On June 08, 2008 at 8:37 pm JohnWelsh [43] said:

I am of the age (and nationality) to remember Acorn Computers of the UK that devised the Windows system back in the 1980s when Microsoft was still using an abacus. Acorn used the RISC operating system - a reduced instruction code that meant that they were the fastest computers around because the software was incredibly simple but effective, and, as the code was compressed software worked incredibly quickly. All the operating system was stored on a chip and so boot-up time was around 3-5 seconds, faster tan the Cathode Ray Tube monitor could warm up, and the operating system never booted-up with any errors or crashed - thanks to the code being stored on a chip.

So, the Acorn RISC PC was fast, never (never ever) crashed, booted up quickly, and to switch off you turned off the power. No 'shut down' procedure. Saving work to disc was automatic (as is Word today as it saves periodically) so you never lost work. To upgrade the operating system, you took the back off the machine, unplugged the old chip and inserted the new operating system chip - and it worked first time every time with a new operating system. I still have an old machine knocking about and, for things like word processing, desktop publishing and drawing it is still faster than my brand new Vista laptop. I once partitioned the drive in my Acorn to take a Windows 98 operating system, and I eventually had the Acorn multitasking several applications, plus run a complete 98 computer in another window - with no loss of performance.

So for me, the best operating system of all time was the Acorn RISC system. What a pity it never took off because of lack of backing from the UK so than Bill Gates managed to cornet the UK market. Acorn computers went bust eventally, but I still believe that its system was (or still is) used in some mobile cell phones.

(4) On June 08, 2008 at 8:00 pm Wiki.user [50] said:

Someone should add how the different OS's can be used for different uses, such as Mac say for development etc. Windows for gaming etc etc.

(3) On June 02, 2008 at 08:30 am Korean guru [13] said:

You know, everyone says that Vista is crap and that XP is better. I agree. My home computer uses Vista and it is too annoying (those security warnings come up nearly every time you want to change something) and uses too much RAM (come on, 600 MB just for the OS?!). Also, Vista needs at least a dual core or a very good single core to run smoothly enough.

XP is capable of running on less than 200 MB RAM (I haven't tested lower) and can run on a single core that has a speed of 900MHz or even less.

(2) On November 04, 2007 at 03:32 am Aerach [45] said:

BOFH is an acronym for Bastard operator from hell, a fictional character created by Simon Travaglia.

(1) On July 23, 2006 at 01:43 am 69.199.245.58 said:

for non-gamers, linux and unix based systems are one helluva lot better than windows. Howeever, windows is more compatible with games, so what many of us geeks do is dual boot a linux distro on secondary and a XP on primary. i use gentoo linux b/c rpm based distros come with too much built in software crap (like redhat)

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