The 2020 Operating System Thread

[Topcat]

Once again, it's that time for our annual OS thread..... What's on your mainstream system?

[stj]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

once again i voted Linux.

[Topcat]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

I'm still using Win7 mainstream (my office system)...

[Curious.George]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

Might have been better to wait until after the 14th to ask (?)

W7 for my primary workstations (i.e., anything that has to run COTS applications). NetBSD for my "infrastructure" and software development tools. Slowaris/SPARC to test my code for portability.

In re: the 14th: workstations will remain unchanged as they aren't routed so aren't vulnerable (except to physical assault). If W7 on this (routed) box becomes a risk, I'll run it in a sandbox.

[ratdude747]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

Home: Most Workstations (and the kitchen AIW) on 10 x64, one on 7 x64 (Xeon Iriwindale, not 10 compatible). Three out-of service workstations on 7 for the same reason. Most laptops on arch x64 and 7 x64 (minus an old PIII Latitude C800 I recently aquired). Server runs Debian x64. Two Atom Bay Trail tablets run modded 8.1 (one x32, one x64).

Work: "new" laptop runs 10 x64. VDI runs 7 x64. "old" laptops ran 7 x64, but turned over when I changed positions right at the end of 2019.

[Topcat]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

^
I knew this year's poll would be interesting. Last year was still overwhelmingly Win7....seems so many have ditched 7 for the evil known as 10......

[ratdude747]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

^
I knew this year's poll would be interesting. Last year was still overwhelmingly Win7....seems so many have ditched 7 for the evil known as 10......

7 Support is dying... for me it was Windows Media Player of all things (being able to pull album data for ripped CDs, specifically). Sure, there are third party apps, but aside from the greater evil known as iTunes, they all suck ass. Not to mention my newer workstations are are 8+ cores/threads, so 10 is better optimized for such configurations.

[Topcat]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

^
My office machine will be facing this sometime this year most likely. Odds are I won't do 10, I'll do a S2K12 R2 workstation build on it (supported until 2023). I will probably upgrade the machine as well and leave this one completely intact.... I have a nifty westmere 8~12 core system (depending on which CPU's I use in it) that's been mothballed for a couple years that will fill the void nicely....but I won't want to wipe the RAID on my office system....so instead I'll just mothball the system and bring in another one.

Not sure how long I'll run 7 beyond EoL....since support was extended for the Enterprise market beyond 2020, its a matter of time before security updates trickle their way out to non-enterprise users. IMO Browser Support is what truly does an operating system in (in the consumer world anyway)....when mainstream browsers stop supporting Win7, then it's indeed obsolete.

[TechGeek]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

Same as last year, Linux. Except this time, more machines in my fleet are running Ubuntu Server/Xubuntu 18.04 LTS. Only 3 machines left on 16.04. 2 are at the end of the line for Ubuntu Server (18.04 only supports x64, no more x86) and 1 just needs to be brought out and upgraded.

[Curious.George]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

for me it was Windows Media Player of all things (being able to pull album data for ripped CDs, specifically). Sure, there are third party apps, but aside from the greater evil known as iTunes, they all suck ass.

I use MP3tag to find album art (etc) as I typically have to fix the tags in the files, as well (to ensure some type of consistency between albums/groups/publishers).

[Topcat]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

I use MP3tag to find album art (etc) as I typically have to fix the tags in the files, as well (to ensure some type of consistency between albums/groups/publishers).

Do you remember the days of having to do that manually?

[sofTest]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

I converted all my own and my families computers from whatever version that was compatible and eligible before the official free Win10 upgrade date. Being my family main (remote) support person, I can say that support due to problems with Win10 and/or updates has become none-existent. A few user errors happens, but that isn't the OS' fault.

Since my employer, in Norway at least, upgraded to Win10 a year ago I'm happy my informal role as my departments support person has also almost dwindled away.

Being a Windows user since Win 2.x, beyond initial configuration, Win10 has been for me the most hassle-free Windows ever.

[goontron]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

Lotsa Unix and clones this year.
Linux on my Pi based NAS
AT&T System Five on a very old machine
9Front on a PIII machine
Windows 10 Pro for Workstations and Linux on my Xeon machine.....

[linuxguru]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

... Ubuntu Server (18.04 only supports x64, no more x86) ...

Linux for me on almost every machine, though some laptops may have a pre-owned/legacy Win 7 dual-boot that I didn't wipe off after acquiring them (sometimes just for BIOS updates, if I figure it might be needed later).

I usually do a fresh install of Lubuntu 18.04 Alternate AMD64, which is a relatively lightweight LXDE-based distro. It's also available in an i386 build, though I don't know if the app repos for the i386 builds keep up with the mainstream AMD64 builds - I tried i386 just once on an old Centrino or similar machine. Some of my Core 2 systems have a Fedora 27 or 30 install, which I'm going to nuke eventually in favour of Lubuntu 18.04.

Just minor strikes against Fedora, and I've contributed fixes and code to Fedora long ago, but Lubuntu generally just works. Firefox builds in Lubuntu tend to have plug-ins already pre-built and installed, including video codecs, screenshots and so on - while they generally have to be installed manually in Fedora. Lubuntu (Alternate) is also low-resource friendly, and will run happily in 768 MB, maybe lower, which is the norm for Centrino-era i686 machines. OTOH, Fedora generally requires 2 GB or more these days.

Lubuntu repos are generally very comprehensive and have obscure apps already pre-built and ready for installation - an example for me is Gerbv, which allows me to view Gerber files generated by any PCB layout editor, including legacy ones that are Windows-only. The portable file-exchange format is the Gerber format, which can be viewed on (say) a Linux workstation with an NVidia Quadro, QHD display or higher - these tend to be bulletproof BTX boxes like a Dell Precision T3400 or similar for me.

(I also use Lubuntu for gaming - 0.A.D is about the only game I play. Actually, the Fedora build is more recent, but the Lubuntu version is just fine.)

Word to the wise - if you plan to install a dual-boot Lubuntu and Fedora setup, install Lubuntu first, leaving empty space for Fedora, and then install Fedora. Grub will show both distros fine. If you install Fedora first, then Grub from Lubuntu will not identify the pre-existing Fedora installation, and you'll have to manually add entries for Fedora in the grub config. It also helps to have a FreeDOS install in a small primary partition of say 2 GB, into which some BIOS flashing tools and disk cloning stuff like Clonezilla can be placed - Clonezilla also comes with memtest86+, so you can easily test memory after upgrades or installation.

[linuxguru]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

9Front on a PIII machine

9Front looks interesting - I might try it on some old Centrino or PIII-class laptop (I don't even have a working PIII laptop any more. Not that it matters, since I can get working Centrino laptops for next to nothing - just snagged a working Compaq Presario V2000 with a non-functional/drive-locked HDD yesterday for ~$14. Very nice, but oddball-resolution display - 1280 x 768. Swapped in a HDD from an old Thinkpad, twiddled with xorg.conf, and everything just works fine, including the battery and the battery-charge applet, Xine for watching DVDs, etc.)

GNU/Hurd is another project on the wish list.

Another thing that I'd like to try is IBM OS/VS1 on an emulated IBM 370 mainframe running on a Hercules emulator, and revive some legacy Fortran/Pascal code that I wrote c.1982/83. It's a longer-term project without much payoff. I'll run the Hercules emulator on an Atom mobo installed in a mini-ITX case painted IBM Blue, just for laughs. Others have run Hercules on Raspberry Pis and IPaq handhelds in the past.

[eccerr0r]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

Still haven't reinstalled in >15 years (except for the new installs), still running (mostly single-boot) Gentoo Linux. Yes memory requirements are exploding, 2GiB for 32-bit, 4GiB for 64-bit -- else no Firefox (well, firefox-bin would still work). Ahh I remember the times when 256MB was fine for Gentoo... and how 2GiB just became fairly unusable for 64-bit self-hosting Gentoo.

Sometimes I wonder, people worry about the "One Standard Linux" and others worry about market fragmentation and the need to install more than one Linux requiring dual booting or VM... Can't have it both ways...

[BigTroll]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

I'll choose Mac like I did last year.I upgraded my 2012 MBP to Catalina and its ok but I miss the dashboard feature, my 2018 mac mini is still running Mojave and I might keep it on that a bit longer. As for my windows machines, ive gotten alot of 2012/2014 hardware for almost nothing so I did the other black sheep move and thats using Windows 8.1, it will have updates till 2023.

[lti]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

I'm running the same operating systems as last year. My desktop runs Windows 10, and my laptop has Windows 7 and Lubuntu 18.04. I only use Windows on the laptop for a USB video capture device that I should replace (video quality is awful, and the only software I've found that records audio properly is the poorly programmed XP-era junk that came with).

[Curious.George]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

Do you remember the days of having to do that manually?

Yeah, it's still not completely automatic for me as many titles are either "a bit wrong" or the person who contributed them had a different sense of how to tag tunes (wrong genre, date, contributing artist, etc.)

And, I have to ensure tags/filenames/folder structures are compatible with a variety of different devices (e.g., some extract titles from the tags, some use file names, some use "track number" tag, others just alpha sort on title, etc. -- still others just display them in the order encountered on the media! )

But, it's still a lot better than having to type everything from scratch!

[retiredcaps]

Re: The 2020 Operating System Thread

Will be upgrading all my systems to Lubuntu 20.04 LTS later in April. Running Lubuntu since XP EOL. I have very simple needs: a browser, password manager, email client, and calendar/todo.