14 replies to this topic

[phpforfun]

In this thread, I will not post my personal opinion, but what I believe are the ups and downs of each O.S.

Lets start with Windows.. Windows is a great attempt at an everyday desktop operating system, its very user friendly, which is a big deal on the market today. Windows has many errors, all these new versions of Windows comes out, with more and more advanced details and options, but the errors seem to stick, when I think of a typical windows error, I think of the color blue with white text on it. Unlike mac or linux, when windows encounters an error, it doesnt try to recover, it simply... crashes. The new OS Vista seems to be a mistake, the largest mistake I have found is that they tried to make it boot up faster by not preloading the files you need to run random programs, it does boot up a little faster, depending on the machine, but then when you start a program, you need to wait for the files to load, because they were not preloaded. It also takes a ton of memory, even the waiting icon takes more memory than it should.. which wouldnt be a problem except you cant use any more than 3 gigs of ram on a windows OS..

Mac.. Where to start, it seems like all of the graphics that it gets credit for were in Linux first. Mac has gotten alot further in todays market than I would have thought, it hardly crashes, which is a great thing, My brother has had mac for a while, and its crashed once, thats amazing. The thing about mac is.... its selfish, you cant install anything unless its made just for mac, and you cant install macOS on any other machine other than a mac pc, and you cant install any other os on a mac pc other than macOS.

Linux... very secure operating system, few flaws and bugs, open source, free, what more can you ask for? Maybe a 1800 help line? On mac or windows, you can call support, and they have call centers all over the place with 24/7 support, with linux... join a forum and good luck. I have had a few errors with linux, linux is picky on hardware, they have some of it blacklisted, which is not a good thing at all. Linux has many many flavors to pick from, you can use ubuntu as a desktop, which is very user friendly, and secure, or you can use a version of Red Hat as a server. Crashing is very rare on linux, but it does happen, my linux box crashes more than my brothers mac book, but both last longer than windows.

To conclude this post, all 3 are great operating systems, just different, if you want security, go linux, if you want graphics, go mac, if you want an idiot proof OS that works with everything, go windows.

[rumen]

Very well put, thanks for this great artice you wrote here :)

[Crop]

Excellent read! What about BSD and UNIX operating systems? I'd also like to add a few points.

Windows
1) Vista can support more than 3gb of memory. I think XP had that limitation.
2) Default settings for XP and Vista remove even the BSOD (blue screen of death) and just reboot so you have no idea wtf just happened! LOL

Mac
I like the way you stated it was all stolen from Linux. Actually, it was stolen by BSD (FreeBSD I think) and then stolen by Mac. So they stole from the thief. I hate the fact that you have to have their PC to legally run it. Hacked editions don't work so well. Why is graphics so great on a Mac? Photoshop in MAC is horrible. I've seen better graphics development come from Windows than Mac.

Linux
I don't see it crash like Windows or Mac. More like services stop running. The X Windows system will sometimes hang but this is not an OS error. The lack of bug free commercial applications is the kill for this OS, IMO.

[phpforfun]

As far as the BSOD, thats what I meant about seeing blue and white around every corner :P but you can know what happens if you set it to output a DMP file, then get a dump reader, most of the errors are BS though..

Linux does have its issues, but I love it. For example, when I restart X, it doesnt always restart all the way, and I have to restart the entire pc, its a pain in the butt, but thats ok.

[Tor]

lol, great read. I think Mac is ok but they "Stood on the Shoulders of Giants" if you get that meaning (Newton).

[phpforfun]

another small issue with linux.. you cant play most games, yes wine does solve some of those issues, but not that well... If you play wow, which I dont, it will ban your account because it thinks your a bot due to an unknown OS.. if you play any game with punk buster, it will kick you, for the same reason.

[Tor]

I thought that many users were already playing WoW with Linux? I do agree that most games do not run on it which is sad.

[phpforfun]

Tor said:

I thought that many users were already playing WoW with Linux? I do agree that most games do not run on it which is sad.

they try, but read into it, alot of them get reported as an unknown OS, which makes the WOW admins think its a bot, the account gets banned, you lose everything.

[imported_envoy14]

nice article ... :D

[rumen]

jhyland87 said:

another small issue with linux.. you cant play most games, yes wine does solve some of those issues, but not that well... If you play wow, which I dont, it will ban your account because it thinks your a bot due to an unknown OS.. if you play any game with punk buster, it will kick you, for the same reason.

Yeah, the PunkBuster issue under Linux is driving me mad. That's why I use Windows while playing online games:)

[v0id]

"jhyland87" said:

another small issue with linux.. you cant play most games, yes wine does solve some of those issues, but not that well... If you play wow, which I dont, it will ban your account because it thinks your a bot due to an unknown OS.. if you play any game with punk buster, it will kick you, for the same reason.

The problem is not Linux, but the game manufacturers. Linux is better than Windows in many ways, but game manufacturers do only have to think about money, and naturally they make games for Windows, because Windows has the biggest amount of users - at least they had once.
The amount of different operating systems have increased a lot the last years, and I believe that users are not using Windows as much as before anymore, but have moved to other operating systems, including Linux. The game manufacturers should reconsider the choice of platforms they're developing their games for. Recently, a lot of games have started getting support for Mac, but we still need Linux. It's always more expensive to develop various versions of some software, but I believe it will pay off in the end. We're a lot of Linux-users who wants to play games, without having to mess with Wine, Cedega, or some other software.

[Tor]

I agree with your v0id but IMO Linux has always had more users that Mac (until maybe recently) but game companies always made games for Mac but not for Linux. I do agree that they should rethink their development strat. and start making games for Linux.