How to juggle many computer platforms & Operating Systems?

[amigasociety]

Curious how the rest of you juggle multiple computer platforms yet still enjoy each one so non are going to waste, hardware and software included.

I enjoy many platforms, Mac OS X, Amiga OS 1.x up to 4.x, BeOS, NeXTSTEP, Atari 8bit, Atari TOS, and now tinkering with MorphOS.

Just wondering if I am getting in to deep where each platform will suffer non use as I have just too many to keep track of.  

Not a bad problem to have but wonder how you all handle it.

I use Mac OS X professionally so have to stay very proficient with it but the rest I dabble in.  Wondering if one of them whether it be Amiga OS 4.x or another platform will start to over-ride and be used more than the rest.

Since this is an Amiga site, I would bet you are all pulling for me to become addicted to Amiga but just curious is all how the rest of you juggle many older systems and OSes and giving them all equal time, or is that impossible and he Amiga just takes over my life.  :hammer:

tj

[CritAnime]

Good question.
 
My main day-to-day use system is a MacBook running Snow Leopard. It feels nice enough to do all my wordprocessing and such on aswell as web browsing. I also use and iPad to do tasks on.
 
My Windows rig is running Vista. This is pretty much a gaming system, if dated now, that really doesn't see very much use other than gaming and Winuae. It also has Ubuntu on it that I use for day-to-day things. But it need updating as it's still using a beta release of the latest Ubuntu and as such it's a little broken at the moment.
 
My Amiga 600 has just had a major overhaul and has now become a Whdload system. I am planning on putting some other wordprocessor and productivity programs on to make it a little more usuable when I can't be bothered to turn the laptop on, such as doing retro reviews.
 
I don't have so much trouble jumping between systems. Just every so often i will catch myself trying to do a Mac command on a windows system only to find the start bar pop up at me. Or I will try to do something on the Amiga terminal that I know it wont do lol.

[SamuraiCrow]

I've got a triple-boot AROS native, Haiku rc3, and Fedora Linux machine.  It doesn't see much use.

I've got a PowerMac G4 with MorphOS 2.7 unregistered.  The network card I bought for it doesn't work with MorphOS and the internal Ethernet adapter doesn't work with MorphOS either.  Therefore it remains unused.

I've got a Mac Mini with a Core 2 Duo that is my primary use system.  I access AROS Native and Xubuntu Linux under VirtualBox on it under MacOSX Snow Leopard.

I've also got a Windows Vista laptop that's been cross-graded to WinXP.  Some of the Vista drivers don't work under XP but I'm beginning to take on a liking for C#.net 3.5 and WinForms.  I wish there were some reasonable equivalent on the Amiga.

I wish I had the space to set up my Amiga 1200 but since most of the software on it is freeware, I can make do with EUAE on my Mac.

[amigadave]

It is impossible and the Amiga will take over your normal life.

Resistance is futile, you will be assimilated.  ;-)

[pontiac89]

Gotta say that I think multiple opsystems is the best way to go. Can't see ignoring whole categories of computing when there is so much interesting stuff in each of them. I have run across professional linux/java people who admit that .net rocks and just wish that it wasn't so tied to Microsoft.
I am personally into java, .net, linux, and various database systems, etc. I am just now getting back into Amiga systems after a long hiatus and mostly because of the FPGA aspect of it.
Paul L

[fishy_fiz]

I basically just use the best tool for the job.
My Windows box (i7-2600k/gf 570gtx) is basically a media centre system, connected to my main bigscreen lcd tv and is used for dvd/bluray and modern gaming (although its also set up with emulators and whatnot). I also do a little browsing with it from time to time, but inside a VM (I'll be damned if Im letting the main install go online after all the work Ive put into it).
Apart from this Ive got 1 core2duo@4.1ghz+gf 9600gt that I dual boot between aros and Windows. Not as powerful as the main system obviously, but AROS behaves nicely and performs quite well on it (fully supportded) and performs well enough with Windows software I cant live without (3dsmax and paintshop pro mostly). It also gets used for a lot of dev. centric pdf docs, either on Windows of AROS seeing as amigaos has no good pdf viewers for more recent pdf standards (it sits next to my amithlon machine and a1200).
I've also got another core2duo@3.86ghz that I run OS3.9/amithlon on. Probably my most used system and I do most of my everyday computing on it, plus use it for any system friendly development, lightwave3d, irc, webbrowsing, tv paint, imagine fx, hdrec, etc.
My a1200 gets used for custom chipset hitting development, some 2d pixelling, some gaming, scene demos, and fooling around with the plethora of classic software out there.
Last but not least my mac mini, which is running unregged MOS. While Im impressed with MOS so far I must admit to not using it a lot. This will probably change once I register it, but for now Ive mostly just tinkered with it, familiarising myself with MOS.

[Daedalus]

I don't think you'll suffer from using multiple platforms, it's more likely to be beneficial, since you will become more familiar with all of them over time, and will be able to think more easily about sharing data across platforms. I use several, some every day, some just to play with once in a while, but I'm not losing skills or anything like that due to it. I currently have an iBook with Tiger and a cheap Acer laptop with Lubuntu for my laptopping needs, an A1 with 4.1, an Ubuntu machine which also boots Haiku RC3 and AROS, a Windows box and my towered A1200. Generally I'm picking up more from playing with all of them than I'd ever gain just by using one.

[Duce]

I had quite a number of problems trying to justify a whole slew of different platforms, none of which really spoke to each other too well and most ended up being under utilized (Amithlon/UAE rig, SAM 440, a number of Windows PC's, iMac, Ipad and Xbox 360.

The solution I found:  Took a shoddy old case, Asus AMD X2 dual core mobo with 2 GB RAM, 1 32 GB SSD for the OS, 3x 2 TB SATA drives for storage.  Threw FreeNAS on that machine, SMBFS/SAMBA on the Amiga variants, etc.  Said FreeNAS machine is now headless, and several of the other machines use 1 monitor/keyboard/mouse via a 4 port Cables to Go KVM to save on space.

VNC clients/hosts on all machines, all networked thru a 16 port ethernet router, with a HP 8500 Pro Ethernet and wifi capable printer, and a DLink N Wireless Access Point also linked to said Ethernet router.

Find it a very good solution - store all files on the FreeNAS machine so they can all be accessed from every other machine, and the VNC solution allows me to logon any machine from another - including from my iPad, which I use a lot to access other systems, esp the SAM 440 my BBS is run on.

Whole network was drawn up in Visio, and I keep a printout with detailed info on it tucked away for quick reference (includes specs, ip's, etc for each machine) in case there's a problem with one of the machines in the network.

[Daedalus]

@Duce

Nice setup - awfully posh with your Visio charts I have mine scribbled on a page torn from a notepad and taped to the side of my PC. I have a nice little Cisco router which has a basic NAS server built in and is mounted on all the machines I use via SMB. I use a KVM for the monitor, also have VNC on some machines but never use it. I have an Apple Airport for streaming music across the network via wifi to the living room, and an ethernet bridge for connecting my Bluray player, satellite decoder, or anything else in the living room which needs a network connection but only has an ethernet port.

And most of the machines are named after custom chips Paula, Lisa, Fat_Agnus, Buster, Amber, Alice, Akiko and so on...

[Duce]

Quick and dirty Visio diagram that helps me keep track of what is what - inside Visio itself all components are detailed, right down to MAC addresses, RAM, drives, CPU's, SW, and IP's.

http://tinypic.com/r/2ceqnw5/5

[Darrin]

The only problem I have is trying to softboot my Amiga on occasions by pressing CTRL-ALT-DEL and wondering why it doesn't work.  

[Iggy]

Oddly enough, all modern GUI based OS' are so similar that I don't really have any problem moving between OS' either.

[Piru]

Lets see I use mainly 4 OSes (if you group various linux distros). At work I use mainly OS X Lion, with VMware Fusion running whatever I might need (win7, winxp, various linux distros).

At home I have 2 PCs, both running Debian GNU/Linux (server & desktop, desktop being connected to the 47" TV set via HDMI). Then 3 Macs running MorphOS, and 3 MacBook Pro laptops running OS X Lion.

I have no trouble switching between OSes and I do that constantly at work (copypasting stuff between host and guest, handling everything via keyboard shortcuts etc).

As to network: I have 100/10 Mbit fibre coming to my flat. I have that connected to my Debian server boxen (it also has 10 TB crypto-RAID6 setup for backups and other confidential material, including time machine for all the OS X laptops). The box is sharing the connection (NAT) via 16-port gigabit switch and 300Mbps WLAN (laptops). I also have 8 TB RAID5 NAS box for movies (both the NAS and TV do DNLA so I can play stuff from the NAS direct from TV).

This is just part of the setup. Yes, I could use some extra room

[Fud]

Curious how the rest of you juggle multiple computer platforms yet still enjoy each one so non are going to waste, hardware and software included.

I enjoy many platforms, Mac OS X, Amiga OS 1.x up to 4.x, BeOS, NeXTSTEP, Atari 8bit, Atari TOS, and now tinkering with MorphOS.

Just wondering if I am getting in to deep where each platform will suffer non use as I have just too many to keep track of.  

Not a bad problem to have but wonder how you all handle it.

I use Mac OS X professionally so have to stay very proficient with it but the rest I dabble in.  Wondering if one of them whether it be Amiga OS 4.x or another platform will start to over-ride and be used more than the rest.

Since this is an Amiga site, I would bet you are all pulling for me to become addicted to Amiga but just curious is all how the rest of you juggle many older systems and OSes and giving them all equal time, or is that impossible and he Amiga just takes over my life.  :hammer:

tj

This probably has been the formula from our Apple & Ibm compatible friends who smirk and/or put down the Amiga until they come to us to fix their computers and show them how to use them.

Was primarily Amiga 1.3 thru 3.1 but had to upgrade starting with Win95 thru Vista with limited use on Win7. Have tried Linux and feel the openSUSE is best I've tried out the bunch.

Keeping different OSes in one's head sounds mind boggling but once you start it the data accumulates which kinda makes you feel like Jobe from The Lawnmower man though there times you try keyboard shortcuts from one system then realizing why it won't work.

[cv643d]

I used to run different computars with different OS'es, but then I got hit with an arrow in my knee...

Unclutter your life, use one main OS as workstation, keep the rest for hobby stuff.

Tried to fool myself many times to have multiple systems. Sorry Win 7 is the new AmigaOS, its fast, multitasks, boots instantly, many great apps, great GUI when you turn off the aero stuff and make it look like Win2000.

For sure, I do not run Win 7 on my server boxen (look I used the word Boxen, not box because I am a cool computer dood with l337 skillzorz in all major appz), on the Web boxen (LAMP-server for my clients to check out web boxen work boxen on) I am running Ubuntu Boxen edition.

On the Fileserver Boxen I, holding 18 TB Truecrypt storage boxen system Off course I dont run windows, Ubuntu server Boxen edition there too (with GUI, hey its 2011 and you can point n click in servers). So thats two computars that are boxing with Ubuntu and one computar for Win7.

As for Amiga, what more can be done in WB that have not been done in past 20 years, nothing, so my Amiga boxen only gets used when I need to use specific Amiga boxen stuff.

If you use a system for a specific Boxen use you dont end up with a cluttered Computer boxen environment, you do not really need 10 different boxen with different OS but if it makes you feel better, do not let me piss on your parade.