What OS do you use? And computers in general.

[Kerame Pxel Nume]

I'm looking for some UNIX systems besides BSD. Any ideas?

I know a few others but they aren't free: OS X (underlying OS is free though), Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, SCO OpenServer

But keep in mind that - like Linux - they don't differ that much in core. Mostly it's what's on top (like GUI for example). If you can handle BSD (personally, I don't like BSD the way I like Linux) you won't see a huge difference...

Actually it's the core that differentiates them. On top of the core you'll mostly find the same toolset. Either a GNU userland, or tools conforming to the SUS (Single Unix Specification). The GUI system is practically the same for every *nix out there: XFree86/X.Org. Sun did their own X11 for Solaris for some time, but let cease it. AIX you'll find mostly on IBM mainframes, so no GUI there. HP-UX also is mostly found on servers, though at the times of HP-UX workstations they used to use the Hummingbird X11-Server (SCO, dito).

The only noteable exception, of a Unix vendor also implementing it's X11 was Silicon Graphics (SGI), on their Unix implementation called Irix.

On top of that you almost everywhere found either TWM, MWM or CDE. On Sun Solaris you could find OpenLook GUI system. But literally all of those got superseded by FVWM and even later by the Desktop Environments, first KDE, later Gnome.

[Kekerusey]

Both is Windows NT scince NT is the base of Win2k and every OS after that.

No, they are both based (historically) on NT as in developed from but they are most definitely NOT NT ... if that was true it wouldn't take them years between each release. That's like saying that a Ford Mondeo is the same as the Ford Model A because they are built on the same basic technology (wheels).

So anyway I voted Win 7 and XP but I actually have Vista (spit!) on my work laptop and Kubuntu (ugh!) on a home laptop.

Truth is I don't really like any of them all that much, they all have flaws, but if I want to get something done I'll use W7 or XP.

Keke

[bommel]

Actually it's the core that differentiates them. On top of the core you'll mostly find the same toolset. Either a GNU userland, or tools conforming to the SUS (Single Unix Specification). The GUI system is practically the same for every *nix out there: XFree86/X.Org. Sun did their own X11 for Solaris for some time, but let cease it. AIX you'll find mostly on IBM mainframes, so no GUI there. HP-UX also is mostly found on servers, though at the times of HP-UX workstations they used to use the Hummingbird X11-Server (SCO, dito).

The only noteable exception, of a Unix vendor also implementing it's X11 was Silicon Graphics (SGI), on their Unix implementation called Irix.

On top of that you almost everywhere found either TWM, MWM or CDE. On Sun Solaris you could find OpenLook GUI system. But literally all of those got superseded by FVWM and even later by the Desktop Environments, first KDE, later Gnome.

Hmm, thanks for the info. I don't work much with Unix, I've tried once OpenServer because my dad used it at work and had FreeBSD on my first server (because there was a hardware issue that prevented me from running Linux). Now all I would say is: Linux ftw!

[Sіr. Ηaxalot]

Both is Windows NT scince NT is the base of Win2k and every OS after that.

No, they are both based (historically) on NT as in developed from but they are most definitely NOT NT ... if that was true it wouldn't take them years between each release. That's like saying that a Ford Mondeo is the same as the Ford Model A because they are built on the same basic technology (wheels).

So anyway I voted Win 7 and XP but I actually have Vista (spit!) on my work laptop and Kubuntu (ugh!) on a home laptop.

Truth is I don't really like any of them all that much, they all have flaws, but if I want to get something done I'll use W7 or XP.

Keke

Yes, that was what I meant

[kaltxi Angtsik]

At work - main desktop = ubuntu 10.04, test desktop = ubuntu 10.10, seldom used laptop = windoze xp

At home - Main desktop = ubuntu 10.10, test desktop = ubuntu 10.10, mail/web server = ubuntu 8.04, firewall/vpn = ubuntu 8.04
I think I may still have windoze xp installed in a virtualbox image somewhere but haven't really used it, haven't turned it on in ages.

[Human No More]

Main desktop: Windows 7
Laptop: Windows Vista, Ubuntu VM (forgot the version), Ubuntu (also forgot) - I don't use Linux that often.
Older desktop: Windows XP
Server: Linux CentOS

[Elektrolurch]

Currently running Ubuntu 10.10 x64 and OpenBSD on my server.

I wish my main PC worked again.. > Ubuntu Studio 10.10 x64

[bommel]

One of my beasts (warning: loud!)
Waking the beast...

Currently it runs Windows 2003 R2 Standard 64-bit (it's my only Windows server machine)

[Human No More]

Both is Windows NT scince NT is the base of Win2k and every OS after that.

No, they are both based (historically) on NT as in developed from but they are most definitely NOT NT ... if that was true it wouldn't take them years between each release. That's like saying that a Ford Mondeo is the same as the Ford Model A because they are built on the same basic technology (wheels).

So anyway I voted Win 7 and XP but I actually have Vista (spit!) on my work laptop and Kubuntu (ugh!) on a home laptop.

Truth is I don't really like any of them all that much, they all have flaws, but if I want to get something done I'll use W7 or XP.

Keke

Exactly on the analogy, plus it is immaterial because the last NT-based OS was XP, Vista and 7 were almost total rewrites.

[bommel]

Exactly on the analogy, plus it is immaterial because the last NT-based OS was XP, Vista and 7 were almost total rewrites.

Yes, and whoever complains about drivers not working should have a look at Linux. New xserver version and bang! graphics driver isn't supported anymore By the way the xserver model is something I really don't like...

[Elektrolurch]

There are always drivers not working... The solution is Mac..

[bommel]

There are always drivers not working... The solution is Mac..

Well, my scanner doesn't work with the included ones (though it is compatible)
As you already said, something is always broken...

[Kerame Pxel Nume]

xserver version and bang! graphics driver isn't supported anymore

Well, ABIs change. That's why Linux will (hopefully) get the Gallium architecture, where Userspace graphics drivers attach to a unified kernel interface. Gallium itself is a very generic low level graphics API. On top of that systems and libraries like X11 or OpenGL.

By the way the xserver model is something I really don't like...

And why exactly? A lot of people dislike X11 for very diffuse and often wrong reasons. X11 is neither bloated nor low performant. In fact X11 is among the fastest graphics systems I know of — about 6 times faster than MacOS X Quartz Extreme, 4 times faster than Win32 GDI and still 2 times faster than WPF.

If you ask why: Because X11 exposes the graphics system in a very abstract way, which allows the drivers to take full leverage of any acceleration method the hardware offers. Due to the way one uses X11 as a programmer you are encouraged by the API design to use the X11 primitives. Other graphics systems OTOH lead programmers into reinventing the wheel poorly, thus wasting precious CPU cycles and not using the hardware capabilities to their full extent.

Now Microsoft is introducing DirectX 2D, but if you look at it's design, the way you use it, it's very similar to where X11 has been almost 30 years ago. However X11 can do something, no other grahics system offers: Full network transparency. And no, doing things over the network is not a bad thing or slow. Even if things stay on the same system it causes almost no overhead — there's no data copied around if you send stuff through loopback devices or Unix domain sockets, modern OS are so intelligent to just pass around page mappings and pointers. Those people who despise X11 are most oftenly the same people in favour of PulseAudio, not realizing that PulseAudio is the sound system counterpart of X11.

[bommel]

Linux & graphics hw acceleration? Lol. Not on the systems I have been using so far ^^ It was quite slowly, and this was older hw. But due to changes in X11 I can't install the full gfx driver

[Kerame Pxel Nume]

Linux & graphics hw acceleration? Lol. Not on the systems I have been using so far ^^ It was quite slowly, and this was older hw. But due to changes in X11 I can't install the full gfx driver

Which would be? I'm running bleeding edge versions of X11 on all of my systems: Those are equipped with NVidia and ATI/AMD and Intel GPUs. On the NVidia and ATI/AMD equipped systems I use the closed source drivers with no problems.

And most of my program's graphics code runs a big deal faster under native X11 (i.e. no nested X11 server in Windows or MacOS X), than the other platforms. OpenGL performance is comparable (no surprise) since it goes completely different ways.

What a lot of people don't comprehend is, that OpenGL is not, and cannot be a full replacement for graphics system like X11. They stand side-by-side offering different services. For example rendering vector text and 2D stuff, also arcs and curves is very easy with X11, or any other 2D graphics API. But it's almost impossible to get done right in OpenGL, because OpenGL only knows affinely limited primitives (triangles, quads, convex polygons), so anything must first be tesselated. Rendering crisp text with OpenGL thus most oftenly boils down to render it on CPU using a high quality rendering library like FreeType or Anti-Grain-Graphics, then uploading it as a texture. This is of course by orders of magnitude slower than sending the glyph outlines as vector data to the designated 2D bezier drawing function of a driver (which will probably use some highly optimized geometry shader on the GPU to convert it into raster data).

So attempts like Wayland, which fully rely on OpenGL are flawed in this, because they force applications to do things on the CPU which would be better done on the GPU, but are hard to implement there. And every GPU will require individual optimization. An abstract interface like X11 really is the best way to go. It doesn't need to be X11, but something in the tracks of it won't be wrong.

[hemmond]

At home:
Kubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx 64bit.

At home on VMs:
Windows XP SP2
Windows 2000

At very old PCs:
Windows 95
Windows 98

And on Sharp MZ-800 (Very, very old piece of technology):
Its original system. Looks like DOS (but it's not from Microsoft)

[akiwiguy]

Desktop: Arch Linux 64-bit.
Laptop: Trisquel GNU/Linux 4 32-bit.
Server 1: Trixbox 2.8.0.4 (CentOS 5.5 Final)
Server 2: Windows Home Server
Media Center PC: Windows 7 Ultimate

[bommel]

Linux & graphics hw acceleration? Lol. Not on the systems I have been using so far ^^ It was quite slowly, and this was older hw. But due to changes in X11 I can't install the full gfx driver

Which would be? I'm running bleeding edge versions of X11 on all of my systems: Those are equipped with NVidia and ATI/AMD and Intel GPUs. On the NVidia and ATI/AMD equipped systems I use the closed source drivers with no problems.

My Radeon 9600SE and X850 won't work - and I know it's legacy hardware but under Windows I could still install the old driver and use it the way it was designed. Though this cards are old the open source Linux drivers don't offer real hw acceleration so gaming is not possible for example.

And afaik a lot of frameworks don't use X11 directly nowadays (have a look at [ur=http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Die-Woche-Das-Ende-von-X11-1134463.htmll]this[/url] article at heise.de)

[Kerame Pxel Nume]

My Radeon 9600SE and X850 won't work - and I know it's legacy hardware but under Windows I could still install the old driver and use it the way it was designed. Though this cards are old the open source Linux drivers don't offer real hw acceleration so gaming is not possible for example.

And afaik a lot of frameworks don't use X11 directly nowadays (have a look at [ur=http://www.heise.de/open/artikel/Die-Woche-Das-Ende-von-X11-1134463.htmll]this[/url] article at heise.de)

The article gets it wrong in two ways: Toolkits like Qt and Gtk take leverage of all functionality X11 offers, if an appropriate style engine is used — a good toolkit doesn't render everything itself as bitmap and blits. Doing it that way is the kind of graphics done before graphics accelerators got available. Doing it that way is plain stupid.

The other thing the article gets wrong is assuming that X11 is only the core protocol. X11 is the whole thing, together with all the extensions. True, X11 core is dusted and there should be a major cleanup and streamlining of the API, I'm thinking in the lines of X12 or so here. But things like network transparency are of uttermost importance. Reducing network transparency to the functionality of HTML forms is moronic. A lot of people blame X11 for lag and/or tearing when compositing. What those people don't understand, that either lag or tearing is inevitable in a purely compositing graphics system. The keywords are Nyquist theorem and dependency synchronization.

[bommel]

Thanks for putting this right. But I just don't understand why on earth they must split the graphics driver in two parts (kernel & x11 module), it just sucks if one of them changes That's something that Windows does better...