The 2025 Operating System Thread

[spycrosoft899]

What OS are you running these days? I am down to 3 Windows workstations and one Windows Server on my LAN, everything that doesn't have a windows-specific need has been moved to Linux. Printing abilities with my large document centers are Linux's kryptonite; the reason for 2 of the Windows machines. The third machine still has Win7 on it, and isn't connected to the outside world. It has tons of software on it I use for diagnostics and updating various hardwares. My main rig is still Win10 Enterprise, so I had to vote Win10 in the poll...but I have overwhelmingly more linux machines than windows now.

This poll is for PC's. I don't care about your phone.

on my 13 systems i use arch except on my x250 (arch but manjaro) on my 2 dell from 2007 and 2009 i use win 10 since there is no gpu support for the fx 2800m and fx2700m basically tesla architecture in general :p (main machine is a w520) i have arch with cinnamon on it 23gb ram :p

[eccerr0r]

No there really is something to tube sound, mainly because of how tubes handles saturation. Yes mosfets *should* sound similar when running in active forward mode but it's not linear (though you can add circuitry to linearize it).

TBH I think mosfets should be run only in class C/D...

But we digress...

[stj]

about "tube sound"
i suspect it's mostly down to the other parts like shit caps and drifting resistors.
maybe some A'file could build a tube pre-amp using metal film resistors and polypropylene caps to compare to a mosfet design.

[eccerr0r]

TBH I don't even care about the so-called "tube sound" ... IMHO since semiconductors are more linear, they have less THD and thus better...

But making a floppy drive emulator really isn't the same thing, might well just emulate the whole machine...

[stj]

you would be surprised about how well they blend in with the other real valves and work

[eccerr0r]

well real vacuum tubes are real vacuum tubes, vacuum tube emulators (i.e. using transistors to fake a vacuum tube so you lose vacuum tube properties) "aren't hot"...

[stj]

some vac tubes have been replaced with good results.
shango did some video's showing them - but they arent cheap

[eccerr0r]

The number of floppy disks in the world is going down. I wonder if they'll ever become rare enough to have to make them like they do vacuum tubes... then again floppy emulators are a thing, though vacuum tube emulators are not hot....in more ways than one.

[Agent24]

Also wtf. People say you can clean mold off floppy disks? And be readable once more? Seems a bit unbelievable IMHO.

Yes, I've done it before, to recover files off old disks, but I wouldn't trust the disk afterwards, the material will be damaged to some extent by the mold, it's not reliable after that.

[TurcoLoco]

Currently, have only one desktop running Windows 10 Pro. Of all the 64-bit Windows flavors, 10 is hands down my favorite but among the 32-bit ones, Windows XP was my fav.
I am and have always been a Windows user, mainly due to being a gamer.
I have been goofing around with GNU-Linux almost as long as I have with Windows but for the better part of the last 25 years of using Linux, I used different versions on VMs.
I think I only installed on an actual computer, and for a very brief time, 5 different versions; eLinux, Suse, LinuxMint, Kali and Zorin during those 25 years and spent probably less than 10 hours total playing around with them all.

For work, I had to learn just enough to support Mac OS users over the years but I really dislike anything Apple! 😬

[eccerr0r]

Also wtf. People say you can clean mold off floppy disks? And be readable once more? Seems a bit unbelievable IMHO.

[eccerr0r]

quite possible. Don't know. Weird that it would damage the mag layer enough to make it unable to be recordable again...

[Agent24]

no evidence pointing whether it's the disks or it's the computer... the disks look a little funky...

Moldy? Happens a lot to floppies and tapes

[eccerr0r]

no evidence pointing whether it's the disks or it's the computer... the disks look a little funky...

[stj]

maybe recap the analog section of the drive

[eccerr0r]

Been trying to resurrect my Apple IIe. None of my floppy disks I had from back when still work Need to find some more bulk diskettes that still work...

[Agent24]

I have various computers with old versions of Windows (7 and earlier) around for a handful of legacy stuff but my daily usage is Linux now.

Sick of Microsoft and all the bloatware, spyware, ads and other general GUI stupidity.

And let's not forget the "Recall" inbuilt malware idea....
I will never trust a company that thought something like that was a good idea.

[Scenic]

Very late to the party, but I've been running Win10 LTSC on my main rig since late 2018. Used regular Win10 Pro 1709 at first, when that install got borked I switched to LTSC 2019 (1809) and now LTSC IoT 2021 (21H2).
It's essentially "windows as it used to be". Security updates (without ESU botch jobs) til 2032, no Win11 downgrade nagging (since it's an industrial version) and it doesn't come with the microsoft store and anything related to it (though one can reinstall it with a single powershell command if needed).

My laptop also runs 10 LTSC IoT 2021, and my older/retro PCs run a mix of Win10 LTSC 2019 (1809), Win7, Vista, WinXP, Win2k, 98SE, 95C, NT4 and WfW 3.11. Or just plain DOS.
The Intel SAI2 dual tualatin board topcat sent me some 14+ years ago runs Win2k Advanced Server just because why not 😂 It served as a ridiculous minecraft server for a couple years running a very stripped-down XP.

Also re the browser vs. YT thing further up... make sure to block the browser from (attempting to) play AV1 or similar modern (read resource wasting) video codecs, especially on old(er) rigs. "h264ify" and "not yet, AV1" plugins/extensions help with that

[eccerr0r]

If not laptop CPUs, what about server CPUs then, lol...

Well, I don't have any machines other than my itanium that can take rdimms, though multiple can use ecc, so other than the itanium they all should have desktop-like latencies for a particular DDRx speed... I never really tested memory latency on the itanium. I don't even have the whole machine loaded up with DIMMs either, only have 4x1GiB DDR1 RDIMMs in it IIRC and I think it can take 4 more RDIMMs. Not sure what I'd do with a 16G 2xItanium2 box however, my 64G Xeon runs circles around it...

[ChaosLegionnaire]

By Opera, do you mean the oldschool Presto engine one or the newer Chromium-based one?

yea the presto one obviously. the new one with chromium is just chromium to not want to call it opera anymore...

But again, my complaint with Supermium is that it's video rendering on YT is pretty trash compared to FF's - stutter fest all the way.

didnt realize this until i started watching some news channels live on youtube. even in an embedded webpage, yt full hd video (1080p) uses like 60-80% cpu even on my 4ghz overclocked c2d e8600.

the gpu usage also kept toggling the gpu clocks between full 3d clocks and 2d idle clocks every 30 secs. the gpu temp graph now looks like a minor sine wave. dont think the gpu will last with all those heating and cooling cycles from all that constant clock adjustment thrashing.

in contrast, 360chrome only uses 20-30% cpu when watching the same video at full hd and the gpu usage remains constant without constant clock adjustment thrashing. looks like supermium still has plenty of room for improvement! and gone are the ie and netscape days where u could just make do with a single browser that does everything on the web...

I don't know about the world's fastest single-core CPU, though. Was Core 2 Solo (remember those) simply C2D with a 2nd core disabled? If not, then the C2S might be the winner here, if it's truly a single-core CPU (by design.).

i think for sanity's sake, im only talking about desktop cpus. core solo was only available as a laptop cpu and wasnt available on desktops.