# What Operating System.



## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

This isn't a poll to find the best computer OS, it is a question to find out what real people use on the computers that they own or work with.









I'm just interested for no better reason than that. I would like to know if anyone uses Win95 still, without problems, what programmes you use on it and what you have done to secure your PC.

RISC OS, PPC OS types, BSD, Unix etc, tell me what you use and why?

I have WinXP, Win2K, Win98, Linux and I emulate Amiga OS3.9 under Windows. (I have Win95 but not on a machine at the moment).

Tell me about any OS you use to be productive on your desktop or laptop.

And why?


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## raketakat (Sep 24, 2003)

Operating system







?

My finger of course







.


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

XP for me Stan, only because its what came with the pc and I dont know any better


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## mach 0.0013137 (Jan 10, 2005)

jasonm said:


> XP for me Stan, only because its what came with the pc and I dont know any better
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Same here


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

I'm still on 98SE and yes I can't be arsed to change!

The best os I ever used was Acorn RISC (reduced information system chip) see I still remember what it stood for I was that impressed. Mind you at the time the rest of the pc world were stil slogging away on Dos3.1

I've still got my A4000 somewhere must dig it out and have a play sometime.


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## Griff (Feb 23, 2003)

XP at work

Windows 98 on laptop at home


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## chrisb (Feb 26, 2003)

Win 2000 at work & one of my Laptops, XP on the other,

Big Firewall at work St Bernard or something, ...not connected at home


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## Roger (May 17, 2003)

XP Pro on the desktop

W98SE on the luggable


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

pg tips said:



> The best os I ever used was Acorn RISC (reduced information system chip) see I still remember what it stood for I was that impressed.


I think you'll find that RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computer









So many people still using W98







If you're using that to connect to the Internet I hope you realise that it's probably not your computer anymore!

I'm using:

MS-DOS 6.22 / Windows 3.11 for Workgroups

Windows XP Pro

Windows 2003 Server

Mandrake Linux 10.1


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## in_denial (Aug 3, 2005)

Stan said:


> This isn't a poll to find the best computer OS, it is a question to find out what real people use on the computers that they own or work with.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm not sure I'm a real person, but I use MacOS X 10.4 on my laptop, main work machine and home machine. I also use XP and Solaris 8 when necessary at work.

I used to use OpenBSD, FreeBSD and NeXTStep at home, but MacOS X does all I need now - programming, WP, graphics, spreadsheet, photos, making DVDs, IM, video-chatting etc.

Tim.

We do have a Win98 box (not networked) somewhere for kids' games.


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

rhaythorne said:


> pg tips said:
> 
> 
> 
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Bloody good memory me


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

rhaythorne said:


> So many people still using W98
> 
> 
> 
> ...


err what do you mean rich?


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

pg tips said:


> rhaythorne said:
> 
> 
> > So many people still using W98
> ...


Just making a (slightly) alarmist comment to highlight how vulnerable W98 is when compared to almost anything else and to urge you to upgrade


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## Mrcrowley (Apr 23, 2003)

Win XP.

I got Pro version somewhere......................


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## Ironpants (Jul 1, 2005)

My work and home PCs are win2000, but my old PC, used by my mother to play Bridge Game Programmes, is still Win95 as it does not connect to the internet and I hate upgrading PCs, components or OSs.

Toby


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## r1ch (Feb 2, 2004)

XP Pro here plus Sygate Firewall and Symantec AV. Its corp. standard on my laptop.

I'm in the process of getting a home machine and may try Mandrake or Redhat on that as it comes with XP Home out of the box.

As RichH was quite rightly saying, Win98/98SE isn't a great idea for a machine on that thar internet. Its quite a vulnerable O/S and you'd be much better off from lots of points of view by doing an u/g to W2K at least. I certainly hope you Win98 guys are using a firewall of some sort!


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

One of my websites has a stats page that gives the following breakdown of what visitors are using:

*Operating Systems*

Windows XP - 76.6%

Windows 2000 - 8.4%

Windows 98 - 5.1%

Mac OS X - 4.0%

Unknown - 2.5%

Windows ME - 1.3%

Mac OS - 0.8%

Linux - 0.6%

Windows NT - 0.4%

OS/2 - 0.2%

Windows 2003 - 0.1%

*Web Browsers*

MS Internet Explorer	- 80.1%

Firefox - 11.2%

Safari - 3.7%

Mozilla - 1.9%

Unknown - 1.2%

Netscape - 1.0%

Opera - 0.9%

The "unknowns" are mostly web crawlers/spiders.


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

I'm going to be upgrading soon anyway I hope and I think most things have xp these days don't they.

What is the best non Bill Gates OS then, I can't bring myself to re read stans dumped microsoft thread.


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## jasonm (Nov 22, 2003)

> I can't bring myself to re read stans dumped microsoft thread.












I think its mostly about some character from 'Charlie Brown'


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

pg tips said:


> I'm going to be upgrading soon anyway I hope and I think most things have xp these days don't they.
> 
> What is the best non Bill Gates OS then, I can't bring myself to re read stans dumped microsoft thread.
> 
> ...


Neither can I.


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## Roger (May 17, 2003)

The only things that get connected to my W98SE luggable are my daughters MP3 player and my Amateur Radio Transceiver.....get acess to the world-wide AX25 packet network for free

Roger


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## Mothman (Oct 11, 2005)

XP on both desktop & laptop

Richard


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## rsykes2000 (Dec 3, 2003)

Home: XP Pro on PC and Vaio laptop, Mac OS X 10.4 on 12" Powerbook.

Work: XP Pro on 2 PCs in my (single person !) office, Mac OS X 10.3 on my Mac mini, and the 330 PCs I look after have majority Win 2000, rest XP Pro, then there's 3 servers with Server 2003 and a couple with Server 2000, then there's 2 Linux (Red Hat) fileservers that I look at occasionally and pray they stay working !

Forgot to say, I'm an IT person (in case you hadn't guessed)


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

PG,

If you buy another PC you will likely end up using Windows, though you could buy an Apple Mac instead.

If you build a PC then Xandros Linux is one of the easiest Linux versions out there and fully expandable too. Linux takes a bit more work on some hardware than others.

If you get a new PC and keep the old one then I'll send you a copy of Xandros 3 OCE to stick on the old machine to play with, if you like.


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

Windows XP

No problems


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## ESL (Jan 27, 2004)

Win 2KProf at work on an IBM T41 Thinkpad.

WinXP-SP2 on my Dell PC (operating as a wireless Internet, network file & print server and kids homework PC)

And WinXP-SP2 on my IBM T41 Thinkpad at home via wireless links (same as the work PC, I just swap hard drives.)

Everything works just swimmingly for me.

Forgot to add, Company industrial strength firewalls and webcontent filtering at work, with Trend Interscan virus checking.

I use AVG (purchased version) Microsoft Antispyware, and Spybot S&D at home.


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## marius (Mar 11, 2005)

XP pro. Still on service pack 1. Works ok. I used to run NT pro, up to service pack 4, I think, and also worked fine, except for USB connectivity of course..


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

I would advise all computer users to check for security updates and install them.







(if there are any for the OS you maintain, there should be some for third party security stuff that will be of benefit).

Linux, Windows, Apple Mac. They could all get hit by the black hats and dirty slobs out there.

Remember, daily updates.
















First defence is a good cable/ ADSL router with a basic firewall, don't trust PCI or USB Windows modems. And, get off dial up.









Then, get a software firewall. Set it up and use it.

That's the first step.







There are some bad bits of intelligent crap out there, self propagating and very destructive.
















Sony gives Windows user's one for free.


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## Bill Thornton (Nov 17, 2005)

pg tips said:


> I'm still on 98SE and yes I can't be arsed to change!
> 
> The best os I ever used was Acorn RISC (reduced information system chip) see I still remember what it stood for I was that impressed. Mind you at the time the rest of the pc world were stil slogging away on Dos3.1
> 
> ...


I think youll find that was REDUCED INSTRUCTION SET CHIP (no one likes a clever dick

what. he he ) I use win 98 se on this heap,and win 95 on my Mothers 266, (she only plays Mahjongg) Both systems I have found to be abso-bloody- lootely- useless the

minute you try and do anything Mr gates hadnt thought you might do. and sometimes

even the things he says you can do!! and one of those little smilie things at the bottom left.


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## ollyming (May 12, 2004)

pg tips said:


> The best os I ever used was Acorn RISC (reduced information system chip) see I still remember what it stood for I was that impressed.





rhaythorne said:


> I think you'll find that RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Computer





Bill Thornton said:


> I think youll find that was REDUCED INSTRUCTION SET CHIP (no one likes a clever dick
> 
> what. he he )


All wrong I'm afraid - it was Reduced Instruction Set Code









I have RISC OS on my RiscPC, NT on my work laptop, XP on my home laptop and 98SE on my home desktop.

Cheers, Olly


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## ESL (Jan 27, 2004)

I think I'll have to agree with Rich - its actually Reduced Instruction Set Computer.

You definition of CODE, is what runs on the COMPUTER.

The computer came first, RISC OS came second.

This is as opposed to a traditional CISC or a Complex Instruction Set Computer.


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## Boxbrownie (Aug 11, 2005)

Work XP Pro.......

Home XP......

Soooooooooooooooooooooo much better than previous Win incarnations....not a peep out of the blue screen since.

Best regards David


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## makky (Jul 14, 2004)

Depending on which pc is free at work - NT, 2000 or XP.

At home - XP until 2 months ago... Now Mac OS X 10.4.3

I read a comment somewhere that described PC owners as "tinkerers", and Mac owners as "users".

Having spent a couple of years playing about on my home PC I think it's a very apt description. I was altering, skinning and trying to improve the whole XP experience, but it never looked or felt right. More time was spent trying to get it working to my liking than actually using the thing. I hate the basic GUI of Windows and the overly complex folder structure. As for stability, driver problems, registry leftovers, virus protection, software not uninstalling itself properly... Just forget it!

My Mac hasn't crashed a single time. The GUI is pure joy. Programs don't need to be uninstalled, just drag 'em in the trash. There is no registry! Annnd... No viruses.

I was a tinkerer. Now I'm definitely a user.


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Stan said:



> There are some bad bits of intelligent crap out there, self propagating and very destructive.
> 
> Sony gives Windows user's one for free.


A wry comment was made on The Register today:



> Only the very paranoid would suggest that advice to _not_ insert an audio CD into a PC delivers exactly the level of "content protection" Sony and the other music giants have been gunning for all this time.


I feel a consiparacy theory developing


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

Just like UFOs.









Make the buggers think "aliens" did it to hide what you are really doing.
















Nope, these ****s are a lot more hard faced than the US government used to be.
















I think I'll nip over to India and dump $1.7 billion on them to prove I'm a nice guy.


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