• Visitors can check out the Forum FAQ by clicking this link. You have to register before you can post: click the REGISTER link above to proceed. To start viewing messages, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below. View our Forum Privacy Policy.
  • Want to receive the latest contracting news and advice straight to your inbox? Sign up to the ContractorUK newsletter here. Every sign up will also be entered into a draw to WIN £100 Amazon vouchers!

OS Wars are over, we all lost?

Collapse
X
  •  
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

    OS Wars are over, we all lost?

    Choice of computer and OS. Do I have this right?

    PC, Windows. Bloatware, insecure. The standard by which all earnest wishes for any other OS are measured. Don't try to contact them for help, "shrink-wrapped" means that you didn't make a purchase, you made a gift of money and they lent you a CDRom that might or might not do anything.

    Mac OS X. Business plan: much like Tommy Hilfiger. Create a fan club that will whoop with delight at every new product, and buy it at any price. You may be sure that the price is high.

    Linux. An admirable achievement. Almost ready for use. Works fine until it, for example, tells you that it is "unable to mount" your PCMCIA card. Do you want to transfer your photos, or go spend a few possibly fruitless hours configuring a 30-year-old file system?

    Is that all there is?

    #2
    It seems like it.

    Although windows server 2008 is a lot better than vista in the bloat department.

    I use server 2008 for all the serious machinery now. And oyu can make it not look like 1994 if you add a few nice things.

    But I agree - the innovation of great OS's seems to have stopped. There is probably no money in it anymore.
    "Condoms should come with a free pack of earplugs."

    Comment


      #3
      Dont forget - it is only an OS - it should do what is says on the tin - after all.

      Comment


        #4
        OS X has a RRP around £85. A version of Vista that supports the same general level of functionality (though lacking the applications like iPhoto, GarageBand, etc. that are bundled with OS X) has a RRP somewhere around the £220 mark.

        I'm not sure that "You may be sure that the price is high" is being applied to the correct product in your appraisal...

        Comment


          #5
          Originally posted by expat View Post
          ...spend a few possibly fruitless hours configuring a 30-year-old file system?
          Linux uses ext3 as its filesystem, which is around seven years old.

          Comment


            #6
            Originally posted by NickFitz View Post
            OS X has a RRP around £85. A version of Vista that supports the same general level of functionality (though lacking the applications like iPhoto, GarageBand, etc. that are bundled with OS X) has a RRP somewhere around the £220 mark.

            I'm not sure that "You may be sure that the price is high" is being applied to the correct product in your appraisal...
            This might help explaining the price difference between OS X and Windows

            Apple are a manufacturer of computer systems. Apple develop an operating system specifically optimised to run on their comparatively small, but precisely specified, range of hardware.

            Microsoft develop an operating system as their core product, and invest time and money in making it run on commodity hardware of widely varying specifications.
            Coffee's for closers

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Spacecadet View Post
              This might help explaining the price difference between OS X and Windows

              Apple are a manufacturer of computer systems. Apple develop an operating system specifically optimised to run on their comparatively small, but precisely specified, range of hardware.

              Microsoft develop an operating system as their core product, and invest time and money in making it run on commodity hardware of widely varying specifications.
              Exactly

              The belief in an "OS War" is wrong, as it is based on the fallacy that Microsoft and Apple are directly competing with each other. They are in different businesses. The question is, do you want to buy commodity hardware and then configure Windows and/or Linux on it, or do you want to buy customised hardware built specifically to run OS X (and which can also run Windows and Linux).

              Comment


                #8
                There has been no fresh thinking in the mainstream OS world for a decade or more.

                We have Windows NT derivatives (XP, Vista) which are in-part based on VMS with some awful legacy Win16 baggage tacked on.

                We have OS X which is essentially BSD with a pretty face.

                We have Linux and its bazillion different distros, which are just another clone of a clone of a clone of UNIX but with a different megaton of shyte apps I don't want to install.

                It seems most OS designers today can't think outside the OS 'box' marked out in the sand by the toes of their fathers and grandfathers.

                The inability to think outside the 'UNIX box' is particularly evident.

                Perhaps this is to do with the (in)famous quote by Henry Spencer (pompous arsehole: the Ten Commandments indeed!) who opined thus:-

                "Those who do not understand UNIX are condemned to reinvent it; badly"

                I think what he really meant was: "if you don't think it's perfect and you want to change it, you don't understand it". UNIX is a bit like Catholicism and Papal infallibility in that respect.

                I have a feeling that many of those who are in a position to design OSs are now cowed by Spencer's vainglorious gibberish and dare not stray from the 'one true path'.

                This UNIX and UNIX-a-like fixation has held us back for years.
                Last edited by bogeyman; 22 October 2008, 16:19. Reason: sp. and added venom

                You've come right out the other side of the forest of irony and ended up in the desert of wrong.

                Comment


                  #9
                  My only fixation of Unix/Xenix/Linux is avoiding the damn thing, which is suprisingly easy.

                  Of course I often encounter geeks who think Linux is better than sex, maybe they need to try both before they decide that.

                  There's so much software out there now that any OS is irrelevant apart from deciding which base you want to build your castle on. Take Vista for example. Nothing really innovative on top of XP, just a pretified re-hash with some apps thrown in that are nothing to do with the OS side of things. I dare say most if not all of the stuff they built into Vista could be obtained from third parties for XP.

                  If the clowns in the Linux world really want to make it mainstream, they'll need to ditch all the variants, decide on one universal standard, and add all the other distinctions that currently exist as modules to be added on top if desired. Until then it's all too confusing and a pain in the ass for even techies never mind jo public.
                  Feist - 1234. One camera, one take, no editing. Superb. How they did it
                  Feist - I Feel It All
                  Feist - The Bad In Each Other (Later With Jools Holland)

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Originally posted by PAH View Post
                    My only fixation of Unix/Xenix/Linux is avoiding the damn thing, which is suprisingly easy.

                    Of course I often encounter geeks who think Linux is better than sex, maybe they need to try both before they decide that.

                    There's so much software out there now that any OS is irrelevant apart from deciding which base you want to build your castle on. Take Vista for example. Nothing really innovative on top of XP, just a pretified re-hash with some apps thrown in that are nothing to do with the OS side of things. I dare say most if not all of the stuff they built into Vista could be obtained from third parties for XP.

                    If the clowns in the Linux world really want to make it mainstream, they'll need to ditch all the variants, decide on one universal standard, and add all the other distinctions that currently exist as modules to be added on top if desired. Until then it's all too confusing and a pain in the ass for even techies never mind jo public.
                    OTOH, Linux is a big win for those who want to run big servers without shelling out shedloads of dosh.

                    I like Linux on severs, but that's not the point.

                    UNIX/Linux VMS and Windows were all designed before Internet connectivity was the norm, and way before HTTP and the web were even a gleam in Tim Berners-Lee's eye.

                    Surely, an OS for today should be a tiny-kernal, modular, multiprocessor-aware, vastly-scaleable, web-aware, cooperative entity with extreme hardware abstraction (hardware sublimination?)
                    Last edited by bogeyman; 22 October 2008, 21:09.

                    You've come right out the other side of the forest of irony and ended up in the desert of wrong.

                    Comment

                    Working...
                    X