It's new OS season - Snow Leopard, Win 7, Linux, etc

[Cthulhu]

I just picked up OS X Snow Leopard and am enjoying it (and a bit saddened, but surprised, by the fact that Firefox still runs kind of meh on it). I was toying with the idea of getting Win 7 later this year and installing it via boot camp. There's also a new Ubuntu due out before the end of the year, and there will probably be umpteen upgrades to all the other Linux distros out there.

Anyone else upgrade their OS recently? Anyone thinking about it? Just kinda curious.

[KBZ]

Still an opensuse user, but I have to wait until November for the next one..gah! So I'll be giving ubuntu another try until then.

I also seem to be the only one who is happy with Fedora 11

[cools]

I run Debian testing so every day is upgrade day

[EPS21]

Tried win7 and RC client. Not too impressed features, like lolpinning programs or its libraries, a nice way to make your folders more convoluted. It is faster than vista and even XP to an extent, but still not enough to justify switching over yet.

[kengou]

I used to upgrade with each new version of Kubuntu as it came out, but probably not anymore. ATI decided it was a great idea to drop support for "older" graphics cards, which includes my 4-year old X1600 - a card which still plays brand new games on medium settings. At the same time, the Xorg team dropped support for all previous versions of the fglrx driver. If I want to use the current version of ubuntu or any future version (most likely), I'd have to downgrade xorg and do a ton of crap with backports which isn't really worth the hassle. I'll probably just stick with 8.10-Intrepid booted alongside XP until I eventually get a new computer with an nvidia card.

[brentsg]

I'm a Technet subscriber so I already switched my boxes over to Win7 where appropriate. I like it quite a lot. It's nice to see the performance improvement.

Just received my Snow Leopard family pack and installed it on my Macbook Pro a couple days ago. So far it's a nice subtle improvement on the surface. I think as developers begin to use the new "under the hood" improvements things will really be good.

I haven't had any problems with either upgrade.

I'm thinking about trying something different on my netbook soon. I have XP on there now. Has anyone tried the Ubuntu Netbook Remix?

[Vexorg]

Admittedly I'm a bit biased on the subject because of where I work (I contract at MS, but work primarily on mobile device stuff,) but on the various virtual machines I use to run test automation, the difference between the performance of Vista and Win7 is almost ridiculous (of course, most of that can probably be accounted for by the fact that Vista was pretty horrendous in our test environment.) I'll br switching my home machine to Win7 as soon as I can get hold of an RTM version.

[CStarFlare]

Am I the only one who upgrades when I buy a new computer with the new OS preinstalled?

[Ed Oscuro]

I used to do that.

Ha, I have a ridiculous number of Vista licenses and media around - one on this laptop (which I really should turn into Win7, this being Home Premium), a Business disc that I bought as an upgrade for Win XP (which I was forced to get at the time I was buying Vista...turns out that I stuck with XP because of compatibility worries), and Vista Extreme Ultimate 64-bit With Extra Games (which still isn't installed).

Hopefully upgrades will be cheap and stuff. Maybe it's time for Microsoft TechNet.

[Momijitsuki]

I got a great deal on Windows 7 a couple of months ago in a special preorder on Amazon, so I'll have it as soon as it releases.

[Warp_Rattler]

Was that the $50 Home Premium upgrade? I got that too. I'm working from the Win7 RC right now (been doing the first week of STGT on it, actually) and I really like how responsive the OS is. I'm running Vista Business as my primary desktop OS, and haven't jumped on the Vista villification bandwagon (how many people remember the hostile reception XP had for its first few years before drivers and backwards compatibility were brought up to speed and everyone swore they'd stick with '98?) because it actually runs pretty well for me, but the speed improvements even in the RC are really noticeable. Very much looking forward to this one.

Once a year I get a wild hair and decide to try installing some flavor of Linux on either the laptop or a desktop drive just to see if I could potentially move my non-gaming computer usage over to Linux. Most times, I end up reformatting the drive (or reinstalling XP, on the laptop) because while the newest version of whatever distro I try has some amazing features, they almost always have some new annoying bugs as well. Just tried both Xubuntu Jaunty and Fedora Core 11 on the laptop (full installs, not live CD) and got rid of them both quickly because I wasn't able to connect to my WPA-secured wireless network. I could see it but not select it, and attempts to manually configure it were limited to WEP and a few other less-secure options. The reasoning behind this and any workarounds were never properly explained in the distros respective forums, and so I reinstalled XP and switched to the emerge desktop for a bit of a speed boost. I have to spend enough time whipping Linux into shape just as far as my own preferences go that I really don't need to be fighting with hardware issues, especially on a five-year old laptop. If they don't have their shit together, I don't have the time for them.

The biggest thing holding me back from Linux, however, is the lack of a good word processing program. AbiWord is excellent, if a little buggy at times, but people who claim OpenOffice is a viable option have either never worked in-depth with MS Office, or attempted to run it on a machine severely lacking in memory, as I've never had any word processing experience worse than OpenOffice's sluggish and unresponsive interface. I'll be much more willing to consider a full-on Linux leap when WINE and other such programs make Office (and specifically, Word) 2000 feel like a native app from within Linux. It's close, but not quite there.

I'm actually quite fond of Linux in principle (and quite impressed at how far the major distros have come from my horrible experiences with RedHat 7 and Mandrake 8 (I think) in my first year of college), but I still can't help but see some of the glaring flaws that hinder a more widespread adoption.

[cools]

Has anyone tried the Ubuntu Netbook Remix?

Yup. It got installed on my ex's Aspire One to replace the achingly awful preinstall. Other than the SD slots being "weird" it was spot on with the hardware, and worked well enough for any normal user. I'd probably not use it myself - the window switching is a little strange, but it does make excellent use of the hardware.

[Momijitsuki]

Was that the $50 Home Premium upgrade? I got that too.

Yeah, but I am kind of disappointed that they're making me wait this long when it seems that a lot of people already have it.

[Cthulhu]

Was that the $50 Home Premium upgrade? I got that too.

Yeah, but I am kind of disappointed that they're making me wait this long when it seems that a lot of people already have it.

I'm pretty sure the people who "have" it are still using the release candidate version, and I'm pretty sure that's the one with some of the features disabled. I wouldn't be surprised if the full version got leaked, but I haven't heard about that happening yet.

[brentsg]

The people running the release version of W7 are subscribers of Technet, and the like...

[Ex-Cyber]

I'm pretty sure the people who "have" it are still using the release candidate version

A lot of people are probably still running the RC, but the RTM is definitely out there. There are at least three different ways to download it legit (MSDN, MSDNAA, TechNet Plus) in addition to the obvious LOL, LIMEWIRE avenue.

[Ed Oscuro]

(how many people remember the hostile reception XP had for its first few years before drivers and backwards compatibility were brought up to speed and everyone swore they'd stick with '98?)

Haha, you have to admit though that the five-year-old (plus) "New Technology" had been needing to arrive on consumer desktops for a while, and the last releases of Windows before XP was...ME D: (though lots of people liked 2000, and still do).

[Warp_Rattler]

Let's pretend ME never happened.

[KBZ]

Has anyone tried the Ubuntu Netbook Remix?

Yup. It got installed on my ex's Aspire One to replace the achingly awful preinstall. Other than the SD slots being "weird" it was spot on with the hardware, and worked well enough for any normal user. I'd probably not use it myself - the window switching is a little strange, but it does make excellent use of the hardware.

that's good to hear. I found that ext4 works really well with SSD so fedora 11 was a must for my Aspire One

[Ed Oscuro]

Let's pretend ME never happened.

Wanna buy the post-ME machine that I couldn't convert over to XP because of defective memory? That would help me pretend it never happened.

[Warp_Rattler]

But was that a fault of ME, or just a problem with defective memory from the get-go that finally reared its ugly head? Don't get me wrong, ME was terrible crap second only to Microsoft Bob, but this is the first I've heard of it affecting physical components. Usually it just screwed people over from within the operating system.

I mean, I could blame my wife's old dead laptop (some sort of unfixable corruption in the graphics memory) on the copy of XP Home that came installed on it, but I think the hardware being Gateway was a much more likely culprit.

[Ed Oscuro]

But was that a fault of ME, or just a problem with defective memory from the get-go that finally reared its ugly head? Don't get me wrong, ME was terrible crap second only to Microsoft Bob, but this is the first I've heard of it affecting physical components.

No, I didn't say that ME screwed with the memory. If anything, XP was using more resources and uncovered the bad memory which apparently we weren't touching on the ME install (until the end of the machine's time in service, I suppose).

[crithit5000]

Here's some good lols: http://www.electronista.com/articles/09 ... ent.linux/

[Cthulhu]

For the time being I don't think Linux is a threat to desktop OS sales. It's gotten waaaaay better than it used to be, but it's still not suitable for the non-technically inclined as their primary/sole computer in most cases. Get unlucky with hardware and nothing works. Get unlucky with package managers and nothing works. Need common-yet-proprietary software and you're SOL.

Oh, and good luck explaining how to use a package management system to someone used to Windows.