What computer operating system do you use to access bikeforums.net?
 

I've been using MS Windows for many years.

Some months ago the government of my country accepted the law, which outlaws any computer, that does not have the readily available license for the operating system and all the software on it.

I forgot where I stored the licenses. To put the long story short, I have now the Linux RedHat 8.0 on my 1700 MHz machine.

The transition was not easy. But finally I was convinced by the incredble ease of ripping MP3s from the audio CDs, and by writing my CD-RWs. All this by the simple commands from the Linux shell. It is so smple.

The quality of the MP3s produced with the 'Lame' program is the best. The sound is crisp and even.

I also can by now to connect to my Olympus digital camera from my Linux box. I learned to update my photos with the GYMP program, which is robust enough.

Practically, there are progrmmes for all imaginable purposes in a Linux distribution, including servers. The difference from Windows is that they written by engineers for engineers, and sometimes have only the command line interface.

Another difference is that I can use Linux anywhere without worries that a lawyer with the black briefcase will knock and ask if I use it for "private" or "business".

It is possible during a transition period to use Linux and MS Windows together on 1 computer.

what country are you in?

yes what country are you in, I sure, would not like to live in that country

What do you mean? It is in almost any country that you can use only licensed software.

Do you mean you can have an office in Canada and install pirated versions of MS Windows and get away with it?

Of course, one can have a pirated version at home and play with it.

But if you need it for work - like in the office or for the Internet server, or for graphic editing, you need to buy the legal software. Besides, for home usage it costs peanuts, but for business purposes it is on the expensive side.

There are very few desktop users of Linux for now. But it will grow. As I see now there are some serious in-built limitations in Microsoft software, caused by the patent and marketing issues.

I access using Linux Madrake and Red Hat (which are effectivly the same....), Solaris 5.7 or 5.8 and Windows XP or 2000. Depends on where I am.

Why isn't Mac OS one of the choices?
I use XP at home, but Mac OS at school.

I guess it would go under "other."

Not legaly...

What irks me is how many people complain about how much Windows costs, you can pick up an OEM copy of XPH FPP for $85, There are GAMES that cost much more then that, for what you get, windows is one of the least expensive software packages out there.

BTW, I run Windows XP Pro at work, XP Home on one home computer, and a dual boot Red Hat 6.2 / Win 98se on the other.

Yep. But this should be a crippled home edition for 85 $.

Besides what if one needs a development environment, a server, a SQL database, etc.

All this serious stuff comes at the premium price from the Microsoft, what places any serious computing out of reach of anyone except the large companies.

From your poll, i thought you were talking about OS's only. The only difference between a discounted OEM copy and a full retail, is product support; OEM is not come with any type of assisted warranty support.

As for a development environment, you would qualify for MSDN licensing: http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscripti.../subscribe.asp & http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscripti...fo/pricing.asp , I cant think of a single other software maker that offers anything close to MSDN prices.

Max, I must have misread your original post. I got the impression that your country's government had outlawed MS Windows.

I don't see it as a problem. Darn near every computer shipped is shipped with some version of Windows, and it's properly licensed through the OEM agreement. Only real exception would be if you bought the components and built it yourself.

I'm an old Unix hand and would prefer Linux (and have used Redhat in the past) for playing around. I'm certainly not a Gates or MS fan. However, my job is developing CBT and related software for Windows. I used to dual boot at home but it became more hassle than it was really worth. If I checked e-mail on linux and had job related stuff I had to ship it over to the Windows side so I could file it away properly in our contact management folders and so on. Found myself spending too much time catering to Linux merely for the sake of saying I wasn't using Windows, frankly.

John

ms win xp (yes I purchased it) :)

and sometimes Linux Redhat 7.1....

I am very disapointed with no option for Unix. I use various platforms depending on what part of the network I am on. Here is a sample

win 2000
winxp
win98
win95 (my god I can't believe it sometimes)
Aix
Sco
Qnix (Old scholl text format just in case I feel like some bad flashacks)
FreeBSD (the gods version of *nix)

:)

Seems as if we forgot a platform in the poll. I am running Mac OS 10.2.3 - better known as Jaguar.

See more unix missing :D

Debian Linux and Slackware Linux.

Yay for free software... and free bikes. Haven't seen much of the latter though.

--Nicholas

At work I use Mac OS X (10.2.3) and Mac OS 9.2.2, depending on the machine I'm servicing. At home I use Windoze ME.

Been using OS/390 but upgrading to Zos 1.3

:lol:

Marty

OSX is the sexiest OS out there. Im dying to get rid of my old P3 and pic up a new Mac G4. Im also a graphic designer and Macs are better suited to my needs anyways.

If that's the reason you dumped Windows, you are to be commended for being such a law abiding citizen, unless you live in Singapore, or where ever it is that you get "caned" for chewing gum and not bringing enough for everybody. We used to get "caned" here in BF from time to time, but it involved a tongue lashing involving Fondriest frames. But I digress.

PS. Do you also read the EULAs before "agreeing" and running the software?
;)

PPS. Windows 2K, NT 4.0, & XP Home (I like it better when you turn off all the "special effects").

Don't recognize it, but it sounds dangerously like the mainframe computer I learned assembly language on in college.... 360/370 (was it "test"? You could load an instruction into a register and execute it. Gimme some rope...). :D

Mac OS 9.2 but just purchased OS X.

Actually, when I buy a Linux OS on 3 CDs, it comes not only as an OS, but there is the office inside, server, SQL database, graphic editing software, CD-RW recording, CD->WAV->MP3 capabilities, etc.

It is not the case with MS, which splits such software in different products for marketing purposes. Like: OS, Office, Server,Visual Studio, etc.

Microsoft will dominate the market for centuries to come, because it made computing understandable to masses.

However, if I try to buy all the software I need, it will drain my budget very quickly. For me something like 2000.- USD, for one software product, is the very significant money already.

I could easily crack most MS products, but while downloading those cracks, I downloaded couple of times the Trojans, which havocked my computer and scared me a lot. Besides, the cracked soft is only for home (illegal) use.

I have not heard that they check apartments yet, but some Internet cafes got busted here, computers were confiscated, etc.

What they (Tax Inspection) do – they enter the office premises, ask employees to leave for some time and check one PC after another.

Certainly, I could continue to use the unlicensed Windows at home and no one would know it. But it seems that it is the dead end for me. If later I open my own small business I will have to spend on the software more than on anything else. With Linux, however, I can use it wherever without such headaches.

I still think that Microsoft produces great software. It is just too expensive for me. Maybe it is a great choice for a successful company with a lot of funds.

The problem for me is that it comes somewhat compartmentalized and each such a portion is to be purchased separately.

Besides, I have discovered that there are really neat products inside Linux; like: Apache server, PHP scripting language, MySQL database, 'NotLame' MP3, Gphoto2, Cdrecord, GYMP, etc.

Though Linux RedHat is also influenced by this “patent” issue already. One company in Germany patented the whole MP3 format in Germany and USA. So RedHat 8.0 comes without MP3 support. I had to download 2 installation RPM files (NotLame & XMMS) separately to enable it again. This was not a big deal though and it was not illegal.

I picked other since I run a variety of operating systems. I typically access BikeForums from personal machines running one or more of the following OSes:

Solaris/SPARC-{7,8,9},
FreeBSD/Intel-{4,5}.x,
OpenBSD/SPARC-3.x,
NetBSD/Pmax-1.6,
AIX-4.1.4,
NeXTSTEP/68k-3.3,
Windows {2000,XP},
Redhat Linux/SPARC-6.2,
Embedix Linux/ARM-2.4.6 (my PDA... Bikeforums is quite readable on a 3.5" 240x320 display)

Hopefully, I'll be able to add HPUX, IRIX, Ultrix, OSF1/Digital Unix and OpenVMS to the list... assuming my wife doesn't kill for wanting to add more machines to my cluster. |8^)

I find it useful to run both concurrently even after a transition period since there are some things I need Windows for... such as Visio. Rather than dual-booting my x86 boxes, I run the Linux version of VMWare under FreeBSD using the Linux-ABI compatibility mode. And then run Windows 2000 (haven't tried XP yet) inside VMWare. So in actuality I'm running three OSes simultaneously since running things in the Linux-ABI is actually running a Linux kernel loaded as a module under the FreeBSD kernel. It all works pretty well. There's a little bit of a performance hit but not much since everything is still native x86 instructions.

A long time ago, I used to run MAE (MacOS emulation), DOSemu (DOS emulation) and Wabi (Windows emulation) under Solaris. They were painfully slow. I even played around a bit with running Windows in Bochs (x86 hardware emulation) under Solaris which was also rather slow.