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What OS do you use?


Guest ThunderRiver

  

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My main OS has slowly became XP. It was hard to pry 2000 from that title, but over the last 3 months it has finally happened. My 5 PC's are set up like this.PC 1. XPPC 2. 2000PC 3. 98se/Lycoris dual bootPC 4. Suse/Mandrake dual boot.PC 5. XP/98se/Lycoris triple boot- My daughters PC.

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Guest ThunderRiver

I have three PCsPC1: Windows Xp SP1PC2: Windowns 2003 Enterprise Server RC2 3718PC3: OpenBSD 3.2Windows 2003 is really a nice server OS, but if you want, yoy could also use it for workstation at the same time. It's quite stable, more stable than Xp.Xp uptime on this box last for only 5 days or less before BSOD2k3 Server has always been up, and the only time I reboot is when I apply patches on it.

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I run Win XP Home on my primary machine. I have an e-machines with Win Me on it that I use for experiments. What a piece of junk! My "expert" cousin talked my mom into buying it, saying it was all she needed. After many tearful phone calls following system crashes and data loss, I had a real machine built for her (with Win XP) and she couldn't be happier with it. I also still have a 386 box running DOS 5.0 that I still use from time to time. I even have a couple 286 boxes around that I haven't trashed, simply because they still work.

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Guest ThunderRiver

Oh my god jeff, your cousin convinced your mom to buy an eMachine? I guess eMachine is not bad, but I would really consider it as "low end" machine. By the way, I believe Windows 2003 Server RC2 is still free, so sign up and get it while you can. It doesn't hurt to play around with it :)

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Oh my god jeff, your cousin convinced your mom to buy an eMachine? I guess eMachine is not bad, but I would really consider it as "low end" machine. By the way, I believe Windows 2003 Server RC2 is still free, so sign up and get it while you can. It doesn't hurt to play around with it :)
Heh-heh, yeah, due to ill health I was unable to help my mom with her purchase. When I heard what she got, I cringed, bit the bullet, and crossed my fingers to keep peace in the family. :) Erm... if you'll pardon my ignorance, what is Win 2003 Server RC2 and what can I do with it? I've tinkered with computers for quite a while but the internet stuff is still pretty new to me.Thanks.
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I also run a few puters... :) Primary - WinXP Pro SP1 (P4 2 ghz)The rest...Win2k SP2 (PIII 450)Win98se (e-machine that I bought for my fiance and luckily (knock on wood) no headaches and no problems) :) Win98se (Laptop)

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Guest ThunderRiver

Mike, I would like to know the configuration of the system that you had xp/adv server/RH7.3 tri-boots. You do have more than one hard drive on that system right? I have doubts in my mind that you could dual boot between adv server with xp, and definitely a big no no between windows 2003 server and xp pro because the win2k3 setup would refuse to install when it sees xp partition anywhere on the system. I am not sure if the adv server you used is Windows 2000 or 2003, but in the case of Windows 2000 adv server, it should also refuse to isntall on computers that have workstation edition pre-installed.

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Guest ThunderRiver

Yeah perhaps you should post something in the suggestion forum? It would be nice if I was able to make it "multiple choice" poll hehCheck out the thread "Is it hard to learn Linux?" I post one screenshot of Knoppix. It looks quite promising. A little 700 Mb comprises 1.7 gig worth of stuff, from OpenOffice to basic SSH hehThunder

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Grasshopper

Datacenter?!?!?!?!?!That would be some........well, serious computing."Yeah, what OS do you run at home?""Win2k Datacenter."--silence :) :) :)

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Guest ThunderRiver

tbird9796, believe me, some serious computer builder with 4 Xeon CPUs and above would find their way to get a copy of datacenter. Datacenter works differently from the rest of the server family; thus, it is more efficient to run datacenter when you have 2 or 3 CPUs along with wooping 1 Gb PC2100+ RAM

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Mike, I would like to know the configuration of the system that you had xp/adv server/RH7.3 tri-boots. You do have more than one hard drive on that system right? I have doubts in my mind that you could dual boot between adv server with xp, and definitely a big no no between windows 2003 server and xp pro because the win2k3 setup would refuse to install when it sees xp partition anywhere on the system. I am not sure if the adv server you used is Windows 2000 or 2003, but in the case of Windows 2000 adv server, it should also refuse to isntall on computers that have workstation edition pre-installed.
Lets see... I've read that you were supposed to install MS's OS from oldest to newest...I have 1 hard drive (40G) I partitioned it as follows: 20G Drive C 8G Drive D and left 12G unused.I installed 2000 Advanced Server first on the D drive, then I installed XP Pro onto the C Drive (both NTFS)The XP install created a boot menu to choose between the 2 MS os's... Then I installed RH into the unused area of the HD... and that installed Grub to lead before the MS boot menu... It looks a bit like this...Grub:1 Linux2 MicrosoftMS Boot:2000 Adv ServerWindows XP ProIt was actually pretty simple... I have not had any problems booting into any of the OS's or any problems between 2000 ADV Server and XP Pro... (as a matter of fact my main machine is down right now and I'm writinig this on that machine in XP..)
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"Yeah, what OS do you run at home?""Win2k Datacenter."
Don't you know... I'm about to embark on that OS as well... :) I wish I had the money for the system to run that... BTW...
--I had to hack at your registry for a bit because a virus had caused a conflict between your mouse port and the UART in your CONFIG.SYS. It was real touch and go for a while there, but I managed to get it by converting your kernel from binary to hexadecimal and backending one of your IRQs into your BIOS.
I love it... sounds like stuff I would tell my friends to make them think I worked hard on getting their system back up and running... :)
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Vote for Win98 if you have several OS's ! We need tools like Scot's newsletter to help us survive XP, MS plug-pullers, and gouging by the Longhorn on the horizon. Dinosaurs gotta eat, too, yaknow.

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Guest ThunderRiver

The problem is that Windows 95/98SE are gradually loosing support, and that's a fact. Now, even the newest version of Office 11 might/won't run on Windows 95/98SE..so it is evident that users are either staying with the existing system or move on with a new one.

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Guest ThunderRiver

Mike, perhaps you can install Adv Server along with Xp only if Adv Server gets to be installed on a separate hard drive. Nice to know that it works for you Mike :D

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Guest LilBambi

My main computer is currently Win98se and my other computer is RedHat 7.2 .. I use a KVM switch to go between them.We have 11 computers currently on our local network; mainly some variety of Linux/UNIX: mainly freeBSD 4.8, RedHat 6.2, 7.2 and 7.3, Mandrake 8.2. They range from Pentium III 450 down to a 386 notebook. Two of them are Windows boxes: one is Celeron 366 running Win98se and another is a Pentium II 233 that runs Win95. (one commandline only 386 computer is a summertime only computer that lives on our screen porch to surf via Links, a commandline browser to read articles while enjoying the sunset).They all have various jobs on the network.I work on computers all week long that range from Win95, Win98, Win98se, WinME, Win2K, WinXP home and Pro.I plan to eventually get a WinXP Pro system put together as well. I do not want to upgrade my main computer to XP because I really like Win98se. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to like in XP, but I really don't like where M$ is going with all of this.Just for the fun of it, we resurrect old computers and install some variety of Linux/UNIX on them, and put them on the network....just because we can :) Recently we resurrected an old DOS 6.0/Win3.x notebook with a 386 processor and 4MB RAM and a 40MB hard drive. We found a tiny UNIX called Minux that will work with the 4MB RAM (which can not be upgraded on this computer) and put it on the computer. It doesn't have a network card or the capability of adding one, so we use the serial port to connect directly to one of the computers on the network utilizing telnet and then we can use Links to browse or some IRC client to keep in contact with family and friends around the country.These exercises are just for fun ... and puts old computers back in useful service.Computers are so much fun....and Linux/UNIX makes old hardware serviceable again. :D

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My main computer is currently Win98se and my other computer is RedHat 7.2 .. I use a KVM switch to go between them.We have 11 computers currently on our local network; mainly some variety of Linux/UNIX: mainly freeBSD 4.8, RedHat 6.2, 7.2 and 7.3, Mandrake 8.2.  They range from Pentium III 450 down to a 386 notebook. Two of them are Windows boxes: one is Celeron 366 running Win98se and another is a Pentium II 233 that runs Win95. (one commandline only 386 computer is a summertime only computer that lives on our screen porch to surf via Links, a commandline browser to read articles while enjoying the sunset).They all have various jobs on the network.I work on computers all week long that range from Win95, Win98, Win98se, WinME, Win2K, WinXP home and Pro.I plan to eventually get a WinXP Pro system put together as well. I do not want to upgrade my main computer to XP because I really like Win98se.  Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to like in XP, but I really don't like where M$ is going with all of this.Just for the fun of it, we resurrect old computers and install some variety of Linux/UNIX on them, and put them on the network....just because we can  :) Recently we resurrected an old DOS 6.0/Win3.x notebook with a 386 processor and 4MB RAM and a 40MB hard drive. We found a tiny UNIX called Minux that will work with the 4MB RAM (which can not be upgraded on this computer) and put it on the computer. It doesn't have a network card or the capability of adding one, so we use the serial port to connect directly to one of the computers on the network utilizing telnet and then we can use Links to browse or some IRC client to keep in contact with family and friends around the country.These exercises are just for fun ... and puts old computers back in useful service.Computers are so much fun....and Linux/UNIX makes old hardware serviceable again. :D
Too cool LB. :)
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Guest ThunderRiver

Minix is Linux and some run off floppy.There are a lot of plus about Windows Xp only if they take off WPA. I haven't found much problem with WPA except on personal experience with the dull Microsoft service representative on the other end while I was trying to flip over a running laptop and reading off the serial number sticker at the time.Most of the OS I own are legal, and I actually bought them with my money (yep Winodws XP), and most of them come with the machine I bought, so technically I bought these Windows as well. Over the past few years, I have seen quite some improvement from Linux community. The Xfree86 has been quite impressive as well. Two or three years ago, I still had a hard time to set up a video card for X, now it is easier than ever. The only thing that I still complain about from time to time is the sound device, which does take awhile to figure it out which modules works for the sound card I have.Thunder

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Guest LilBambi

You are right, Thunder :) . Minux is definitely Linux, but it isn't the same as the Linux many newcomers to Linux would be familiar with. It is commandline only, but networkable.Unlike most Linux distros (distributions) today, it can run off floppy, but we put it on the 40GB hard drive on the 386 notebook so it would load faster.Because of Windows, some folks think of XFree86...the GUI (ie, KDE, Gnome) as what Linux is. Course I am sure you understand the difference. Linux is actually the underpinning Kernel operating system and the GUI rides on top of it much as the old DOS/Windows days, except that the GUI actually does much better than Windows did on top of DOS at its age in Time.Also, Linux is a UNIX type OS. It has its roots there. The original Kernel was written from the ground up by Linus Torvalds. Linus still maintains control of the Kernel to make sure it doesn't branch in ways that that would not be good for the Linux community, but many, many dedicated opensource developers have built it to what it is today.freeBSD is a true UNIX and you can really feel the difference. It is faster, leaner....when doing anything from what I have seen. Anyone who is used to Linux, will immediately see the difference when using freeBSD for the first time. Even the names for the hard drives, network cards and PPP devices are different than you see in Linux. The overall naming convention is different, and the directory heirarchy is different as well. But the logic is still very similar to Linux because they both are UNIX-based, once you learn where everything is and what everything is called. freeBSD can run Bash (but there are differences in some of its abilities) and SSH shells just like you can in Linux. Some things will be notably missing however. You will not find a unified configuration utility like Linuxconf in freeBSD (but then Linuxconf didn't come stock in RedHat 7.3 either...they have graphical configuration utilities now in RedHat). In freeBSD, it's roll your own, and they mean it...from the commandline :)The GUIs (KDE, Gnome, ICE, etc.) and most programs (including office packages) that can be run in Linux have been ported to freeBSD as well. And from what I have seen, they actually run more efficiently, even on older hardware, than any 'flavor' of Linux.You are absolutely right, the XFree86 community has come a long way and I have a great deal of respect for these dedicated programmers, as I do for any of the Linux opensource community of programmers. However, personally, I think they need some serious font developers though :P . Their fonts are much more jagged than anything you will see in Windows, which makes the GUI less 'pretty' than we have grown accustomed to with Windows.But you have to love the fact that you can have 7 terminals in use at the same time, all independent of one another and that's not even counting seudo terminal windows within the GUI (like a DOS box in Windows). This makes it possible to do many things at once in a way M$ has never been able to provide. Even in XP to log in as another user, it pretty much suspends the current user until you switch back to that login, although you can run programs as another user...that was a big step for Windows. But in Linux there is no such limitation.You can be logged in as a normal user in KDE, surfing the web in Mozilla or any other browser, (with multiple browser windows and/or tabs open), building webpages in another program on another Desktop, all while writing letters in OpenOffice on another of the 4 stock GUI Desktops (another alien concept to Windows), while listening to MP3s in XMMS (just like you can in any GUI situation). However, it doesn't stop there. I can also be logged into IRC in commandline on another terminal, or in the GUI on another Desktop; log in as root (administrator) and take care of configuration tweaking in another terminal; crunching mp3s (from wavs off of our CDs, cassettes, albums), or a home video in another terminal; log in remotely to another computer network in another terminal to do maintenance on their computers, and everything continues doing what it was doing when I switch away to another terminal or another GUI terminal (or Desktop as they are called in Linux). It is a true multi-user, multi-tasking environment.Don't get me wrong, here. I have done many many things in Windows at the same time (and often cringed knowing it many crash and take the system down). I have had so many programs and browser open in Windows (Win98se) that you have to hover over the tiny slice across the bottom to see what they are. And I really do love using Windows.But try being simultaneously logged in as different users with different rights doing different things (live, not suspended) at the same time in any version of Windows.This may not seem like much, but once you experience it, it is like having several computers going and being on a KVM switch between them. The only thing that could hold you back at all is your physical memory and processor speed if you were to try to do too many huge tasks that are extremely intensive at one time. I have pushed it to the limit, but Linux doesn't generally ever crash. The GUI might crash if you push the GUI memory envelope or load a badly behaved program or java causes a 100% utilization situation to happen (which also happens at times even in WinXP), but generally you can either kill the offending process (like you generally can in WinXP), but even if the GUI itself locks in Linux you can generally go to a terminal to kill the process, or get out of the GUI and then start it again. All without ever having to restart the computer.My Linux box's current uptime is:29 days, 15:29 hours, with 6 users simultaneously logged in.BTW: It didn't crash when I took it down nearly 30 days ago...we took all the computers down due to a weather event in our area.Gotta love it! B)

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Guest ThunderRiver

LilBambi, wow nice long post you have there ;)BSD and Linux are certainly different in structures, and the ports system in BSD is just amazing. I can see your arguement between Windows and *NIX regarding the ability to login multiple users. Well, personally, I don't think the arguement is valid since BSD was originally built as a game OS, and later on turned into a server..and then evolved into workstation that general users can use. Windows on the other hand, is personal computing all the way. Thus, if you compary BSD/Linux with Winodws 2003 Enterprise Server, you will see that you can actually login to Windows with multiple users without suspending one or another. It is Xp workstation that gives you a false impression that only BSD gives you the ability to login with multiple users.There are many GUI shell managers available to UNIX based system, such as KDE, Gnome, ICE and so on, and I understand that Linux is just the kernel :P I know the history. You are right that you can run bash on BSD, but the default is shI haven't found much differences between the two as long as they get the desired job done.The uptime of OpenBSD is currently much longer than Windows 2003 Enterprise Server running here mainly because Windows doesn't support hot patch yet. Besides, there is only one or two bugs for the past 7 years on OpenBSD, so you don't need to patch BSD much B) FreeBSD on the other hand *cough cough*...Well, still better than Windows patching system I guess. Thunder

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SonicDragon

I use windows XP, but would really like to get into *nix soon. I was thinking like FreeBSD or maybe SuSE or Red Hat. Well, i guess that's a project for another weekend :D

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Guest ThunderRiver

Well, it is more than just another weekend if you are exploring all by yourself.See if you could grab a copy of SuSe or Yopper. It should help you a bit. Red Hat and Mandrake experience may make you dissappointed afterward. If you desire Red Hat, you might as well choose the latest Mandrake, which does sound a bit promising to most people.Thunder

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Personally I prefer RedHat for the simple reason that they are the most well known name in Linux... and most businesses will use them because of the name/status...I'll be playing with Mandrake 9.1 as soon enough...

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