The OS wars are over

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

I'm not quite such an old hand, myself. My first distro came with X. It's just that my video card wasn't supported.

Lindows has become Linspire, and is still around. Lindows (along with Xandros) is just one super-commercial end of the trend. On the other end you have Ubuntu, which is still largely geared towards windows users (along with Fedora and SuSe, both of which are fighting to gain back their position as distro of choice for people who were using windows last thursday). To a certain extent, 'linux for the desktop' has been a large chunk of distros for quite some time -- Red Hat and Mandrake were both edging for that position when I first started, and KDE was apparently explicitly designed to look like windows 3.x in the pre-1.0 phases. That said, it's been long enough that I don't need a windows-y gui to get things done. As long as the people who can't use windows don't start replacing windows with linux, I can reasonably dodge when friends and family ask me for help with trivial problems. If they figure out that using linux is no more difficult and far cheaper, then I'm stuck solving the same problems as I'm asked about by windows users about windows.

[the other anonymous]

I don't need a windows-y gui to get things done.

This. You are biased by your own familiarity.

-toa,
scripts bash from gnu-win32

[rygD]

I use windows for the programs, Linux for administration and Mac on a laptop.....

I love Linux and wish it had the gaming flexibility as windows, I love windows and wish i had the stability and security as linux,

i love macs but wish i didn't have to cough up tons of $$ when in order to keep the piece of shit up to date.

You are playing the wrong games...

meh, i like a wide selection....my point is that each os has benefits

Really...Windows has benefits?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I use windows for the programs, Linux for administration and Mac on a laptop.....

I love Linux and wish it had the gaming flexibility as windows, I love windows and wish i had the stability and security as linux,

i love macs but wish i didn't have to cough up tons of $$ when in order to keep the piece of shit up to date.

You are playing the wrong games...

meh, i like a wide selection....my point is that each os has benefits

Really...Windows has benefits?

Yeah.  You can run stuff on it, and it doesn't take half your life to learn and configure.

Also, you don't geek the fuck out at parties, and/or fly into a rage when people criticize it.

[rygD]

I use windows for the programs, Linux for administration and Mac on a laptop.....

I love Linux and wish it had the gaming flexibility as windows, I love windows and wish i had the stability and security as linux,

i love macs but wish i didn't have to cough up tons of $$ when in order to keep the piece of shit up to date.

You are playing the wrong games...

Your point is correct, but there are other games.  Like...Nexuiz or some shit.
Yeah, well, Tetris gets a little old after a while.

[rygD]

Yeah.  You can run stuff on it...

This is news to me.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yeah.  You can run stuff on it...

This is news to me.

Nope, its true... you and ANYONE ELSE ON THE NET can run stuff on it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Yeah.  You can run stuff on it...

This is news to me.

Sure.  Damn near everything runs on Windows, if you don't mind the Horrible Blue Screen of death right when you're about to win a narrative game, or have it randomly close all your apps without saving, so it can load more bloatware whether or not you turned automatic updates off.

It's great!  I enjoy it so much that sometimes I kick holes in the filing cabinet next to my box, and get those little sparkly things in my eyes.

But there must be a downside, somewhere.  Oh, yeah, I don't get to bore people to tears at parties talking about Linux, and I have yet to issue a death threat because someone complained about my bestest alternate OS EVAR.

[rygD]

Well, hell, if I don't bore them with that I will bore them with some other bullshit.  I have it all...science fiction, obscure historical information, weird science shit.  If I bring up entertainment then they usually just walk away.  "No, really, Nurse With Wound is fucking great, how can you not love this" or something similar for films.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Well, hell, if I don't bore them with that I will bore them with some other bullshit.  I have it all...science fiction, obscure historical information, weird science shit.  If I bring up entertainment then they usually just walk away.  "No, really, Nurse With Wound is fucking great, how can you not love this" or something similar for films.

Have you threatened someone for criticizing your OS?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The Linuxspags are WORSE, because you can just tell a Mac-whore that you can't afford a new computer/phone/whatever, but you can install Linux on ANYTHING.

Macs are kind of like having sex. Windows is more like masturbating with sandpaper. Whenever you see someone chafing their genitals off with sandpaper, it's really hard not to say "Have you tried sex? Because, I swear to god, it's a lot better than what you're inflicting on yourself right now. Oh god, please stop, I can't watch this."

Wet blanket.

TGRR,
Has the belt sander set to "puree".

[rygD]

No, I use many, and most of them are shit in one way or another.  I really enjoy BSD, but I suck at it.  Some Linux distros too.  I have heard good things about the new Windows, and I read about a project Microsoft was working on, and it caught my interest, but I suspect they are trying to get people todo the work for them for free.  Haiku/BeOS is fun to play with, but I haven't been able to really use it.  I should try Open Solaris as I loved working with Solaris.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

No,

Poseur.

[rygD]

 

[Rococo Modem Basilisk]

Believe it or not, there are windows geeks who geek the fuck out at parties about windows. Several of them work at Microsoft and wrote the Unix Hater's Handbook.

rygD, have you tried Plan 9? A while back I went and tried a bunch of different OSes; Plan 9 was pretty neat. I have OpenSolaris 9, but it tends not to work properly on non-sun hardware -- it worked great when I used it on a SPARC (not mine), but it hashed my disk and refused to install on a reasonably standard intel machine.