jokull
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Which Operating System do you use?
Well, I am recently moved to Mac platform and I am collecting some scientific software so I want to know what kind of OS is the sciencemadness
community using.
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-jeffB
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Longtime (since 1985!) Mac user here, but I haven't done much chem work on the computer -- I do mostly programming and biomedical image processing for
my day job. A fair amount of my work goes on in the UNIX world, which of course is now Mac OS's foundation.
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argyrium
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Mac since '89. Use about the same as -jeffB but mostly for photo processing/editing. Have had to use the "lesser genome" many times and just marvel
at how/why so many people seem to enjoy the pain.
Cheers!
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vulture
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Windows XP, both 32 and x64 as only the last one is capable of using 4GB of RAM. It's a disgrace x64 support is so absolutely lacking out there.
Vista gave me more grief than any Microsoft OS I've ever seen. And I've been there since DOS 7.0 (or could've been 8).
I often loathe XP's quirks, but I've become pretty good at devising workarounds. I also like messing around with hardware, if someone needs a PC
resuscitated, they'll usually call me. 
[Edited on 7-7-2008 by vulture]
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12AX7
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DOS 7.0? That was Windows 95's base!
To paraphrase Patrick Henry, "Give me a PC or give me death!"
I'm using Windows XP SP2 right now.
I think this thread should be moved to Misc or Whimsy, as I for one don't usually read this forum.
Tim
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chemrox
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I like PC's but am so disgusted with the invassiveness of windoze I'm converting my office to Linux. I'm confortable with command-line processing and
the GUI geeks can use the GUI versions for a few $ more. I've always been a firm PC man because I like to tweek my own systems and I like having a
competitive market for parts and add-ons. I loathe and despise MS products but the excell documentation is better than the alternative. OpenOffice
is an excellent product and its free! The last decent windows version was 3.1. After that they launched the registry and became more mac like to the
detriment of their system. MAC cannot be outmaced and it has a lot of good points. If you spring for their other roducts and acessories they launch
without any hassles whatsoever. Most software is available in both PC and MAC. If you're graphics oriented you should take a good look at MAC.
"When you let the dumbasses vote you end up with populism followed by autocracy and getting back is a bitch." Plato (sort of)
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Sauron
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I am using XP Pro SP2 also and have previously used every version of Windows since and including 3.0 and DOS 3.x I never used NT, ME, 2000. XP is
much better than any of the ones I have used before. If I understand correctly it is a modified NT and NT was purchased from DEC in the same deal
where DEC got Fortran PowerStation.
I have used Mac (for video editing with Avid Film Studio) and do not care for it.
My intention is to continue using XP as long as possible, as all accounts have Vista a total abomination. When XP is no longer sustainable I will then
have some hard choices to make.
[Edited on 8-7-2008 by Sauron]
Sic gorgeamus a los subjectatus nunc.
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not_important
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OpenBSD, often with FireFox pretending to be running on Windows and sometimes being IE `cause too many Web sites have braindead browser detection and
break on non-MS combinations.
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pantone159
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I use XP SP2 for the most part, but I am using Ubuntu Linux for work, and am starting to fiddle with it for my personal use.
I have generally been happy with the various versions of Windows, I have used NT, 95, 2000 and XP, but not Vista, and I hope to keep it that way. I
still have an unused key for XP, but I really think that when there is no Microsoft option but Vista, then I will be Linux for good.
I think it is incredibly stupid of MS to quit selling the OS that millions of people are happy with, but this lesson doesn't seem to have sunk in the
least bit.
Edit: XP and 2000 are decendants of NT. Windows 95 was kind of a combination of Windows 3.11 (i.e. DOS with a pretty face) and NT.
[Edited on 7-7-2008 by pantone159]
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crazyboy
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All Microsoft two XP's and a 32 bit Vista. I like the vista a lot except the office programs. Their word Excel etc. are immpossible to use I HATE
THEM. so for video games and surfing the web and stuff i use the vista for typing reports and essays or making power points its XP.
Never liked Mac too confusing all artsy and creative all picture based no text based commands 
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indigofuzzy
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Mac person here. I have A PowerMac dual G5 (2.7 GHZ) dual screen system, an indigo iBook, and my roommate has an indigo iMac. I still need to get my
grape iMac and PowerMac G3 tower back from a friend of mine.
I'm still curious about linux and will take the time to dabble with that when i get my dell back.
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-jeffB
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| Quote: | Originally posted by crazyboy
Never liked Mac too confusing all artsy and creative all picture based no text based commands |
You should check out OS X. As texty as you wanna be. Besides, how many text-based commands do you use for video games, surfing the web, and making
presentations?
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12AX7
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| Quote: | Originally posted by -jeffB
| Quote: | Originally posted by crazyboy
Never liked Mac too confusing all artsy and creative all picture based no text based commands |
You should check out OS X. As texty as you wanna be. Besides, how many text-based commands do you use for video games |
Are you kidding? I run:
C:\doom2\prboom -file mm2.wad -warp 1
or etc. all the time! 
And if you're making your own video games, well, a command line is indispensible...
Tim
[Edited on 7-8-2008 by 12AX7]
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DerAlte
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Have you noticed that as soon as any MS product actually seems to work reasonably well, as XP Pro SP2, they stop supporting it and start selling some
new kluge? Got to keep the shekels rolling in.
By the time I had Widows 95 licked, with the noble aid of Norton, along came 98, an improvement that still needed Norton to sort out and remove the
excessive amount of trash all Windows progams put on your machine. I wonder if anyone knows what 5% of the junk that comes with the latest versions
actually does, even MS experts at MS.
I go back to the days of machine language programming - I never did any but a friend of mine - mathematician - used to program the TUBE machine we had
in the company I worked for. My intro to computing was via Algol and Fortran on an early IBM mainframe (340 or 360?). Like Sauron, I later used all
the DOS programs, from 3 to 7. DOS 6 was really very good, 5 was fraught with errors and withdrawn.
When Windows first came along I rarely used it. DOS 6 plus Basic, Fortran, Pascal etc ran about ten times faster on early PC than Windows and
actually left useful memory for programs. Windows was for those silly kiddie video games.
I'd use Linux but am too old to bother. My eldest son scrapped all MS products from his office several years ago for Linux and supported programs.
Never tried Mac.
Der Alte
[Edited on 19-7-2008 by DerAlte]
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BromicAcid
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| Quote: | Originally posted by jokull
Well, I am recently moved to Mac platform and I am collecting some scientific software so I want to know what kind of OS is the sciencemadness
community using. |
Polverone would be able to answer this, most hosting providers give the statistics of what operating systems the people visiting the site use.
Although they can be tricked not many people do it. I get some funky hits on my site every month where I wonder if someone is just spoofing their
operating system.
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indigofuzzy
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Spoofing your OS is useful sometimes. I've run into websites in the past that would not let Macs connect, but worked fine if I told my browser to
pretend it was IE 5 on windows. You'd be surprised how common that was in the late 1990s and early 2000's
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Ritter
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I ran 2000 Pro until upgrading my computer last year when only XP was available other than Vista.
XP is horrible, as is Office 2007. I run my machine 24/7 & now have to reboot every 3-4 days when apps stop responding. Never had to do that with
2000.
You would think with all their money & their zillions of microsurfs writing code that they'd come up with something decent by this time. But they lead
the big computer makers around by the nose, so I guess you have to live with winbloze.
My sister-in-law is Mac-savvy. We visit them over the Thanksgiving holidays. I plan to run through a number of my usual routines on her system then
because I have a feeling that my next box will be a Mac.
Ritter
=============================
\"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.\"
Karl Marx
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hinz
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No buy another harddisk and install Linux, you'll see it runs very nice and stable if you're using the internet.
I'm switching more and more to Linux, I've two HD's in most of my computers now, one Linux and the other Win 98/XP, I can choose with GRUB when
booting. In my opinion Linux runs very stable and the speed is also OK, not like the fucking Vista which forces the people to throw away their old
computers because M$ has blown up the OS with useless code.
I recently installes Win95 on my father's old Laptop and loked at it aggain, it boots faster than the XP on a 2.5Ghz computer and the Laptop has
120Mhz and 24Mb RAM. Word97 also starts faster than the actual one.
I think the computer industry should beginn to make their software more efficient and not try to stuff more and more useless features in it. They also
should use better compilers like C and assembly instead of trashy slow Java interpreter, which is getting popular now.
What I don't like with Linux is the different installation methods if you want to install a new programm. I'm using Mandriva 2007 at the moment and I
always had problems with the compiler librarys when I want to compile a programm from source. The rpm package works quite good, but it's
hard/impossible to find for some programms. It would be nice if all Linux disributions would use the same installer, which is independent from source.
Then you could eighter download the programm or the source if you're interested in devvelopement/changing. The drawback is then, that the compiled
programms are probably much bigger, but with the current internet bandwith, this doesn't matter.
So I'm using Linux for Internet, C programming (the GCC is perfect), Openoffice/Gnumeric and to watch films and the other HD with XP for special
programms which aren't available / I don't know how to use them on Linux.
At my paren's home I only have one HD and so I'm forced to use Windows.
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pantone159
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| Quote: | | Originally posted by RitterXP is horrible, as is Office 2007. I run my machine 24/7 & now have to reboot every 3-4 days when apps stop
responding. Never had to do that with 2000. |
I don't really have any troubles with XP, I almost never have to reboot it due to a hung system. You can make the interface pretty much like 2000 (I
do this) although you have to wade through a bunch of menus to do this.
Vista, OTOH, I have not the slightest interest in using. The resource requirements are completely unreasonable.
I am starting to try and use Linux (Ubuntu) more and more.
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sparkgap
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(necro!)
I used to use XP exclusively, until the computer I had (a server-class PC) conked out and I bought a netbook (UMPC) which was the only kind of
computer within my budget. The OS they put into this OEM notebook is a rather extensively modified Fedora Core 8 that knew the drivers for the other
bells and whistles of my box. It's great for Internet and word processing (but I did manage to sneak in Octave for not too complicated computations),
but I am now dependent on using school or work computers if I need to use programs like ChemOffice or Mathematica.
On the other hand, ever since I switched to a netbook, my electricity bill dropped considerably.
sparky (~_~)
"What's UTFSE? I keep hearing about it, but I can't be arsed to search for the answer..."
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Sauron
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Windows XP Pro SP2 on 2 machines
Due to compatibility issues with the application, a third machine dedicates to Waters Millenium Chromatography Manager runs under Windows 98SE. The
IEEE-bus card is ISA, and this machine is standalone and not on the Internet. This machine controls several HPLC systems over the IEEE-488 bus and
does just fine.
I have not the slightest intention of migrating to Vista.
Sic gorgeamus a los subjectatus nunc.
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gsd
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@sauron
Voting twice in the same poll for same candidate is cheating 
gsd
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solo
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Lived most of my life in the SF bay area and was started with Apple IIC and have been using Apple OS since, currently I have a Macbook, the system
works well for me .......in all of my interests, as other OS work well for others.......solo
It's better to die on your feet, than live on your knees....Emiliano Zapata.
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chief
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On a debian linux installation currently there are > 18000 (!) available packages, lots of them in the scientific domain. All free with sourcecode,
and easy to install (more easy than most distributions).
Also loads of programming languages, just everything that one needs. And I know what I talk about : I have been in the simulations and programming
world and did many things, everything with linux and free software. Never any Windows again !
I had different linuxes: RedHat, Suse, Mandrake; but debian is good quality, I don't plan on switching too soon.
Maybe in future some BSD-variant may compete; now these are safer, or other ways batter suited for maybe networking and things; but for science and
creativity linux is best.
Besides: Debian can be installed the easy way (my recommendation): Network-install, only burn 1 startup-cdrom, rest runs from net.
The firts thing with linux, that a former windows-user might notice: It's more ergonomic, and it gives much more power to the user.
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![[*]](images/xpblue/default_icon.gif){kind=icon}
