What is your main OS besides the Amiga OSes and why?

[guest11527]

Actual credit card terminals and backbones don't use Windows.  

Well, maybe that goes for the backbones and the servers, but the actual terminals (what's inside the ATM) is pretty much Windows here in Germany, XP, sometimes even Win2000 or OS/2. I don't even want to think about security... Much the same goes for ticket machines for bus or train services.

The servers for internet banking services - now that's a different story.

[psxphill]

Basically the whole banking sector concentrates around certified Unix solutions.

Certified for what? Have you seen the number of exploits in unix systems?
 
 Windows certainly has a bad reputation, but it's generally not deserved.

[guest11527]

Certified for what? Have you seen the number of exploits in unix systems?

Unix servers have usually certified hardware, certified for the corresponding Os (or vice versa). We have here servers certified for Enterprise Ubuntu and SLES, thus commercial variants of Linux distributions that include service and support for some years, including security patches.

Actually, if you count the number of exploits on *ix and Windows, then there's not much of a difference - if you check how fast such exploits are fixed, then *ix is usually way ahead. Humans make errors,regardless of whether they are employed by M$ or not.

What makes *ix so interesting is that it is a pretty modular system. System components that are not installed do not have exploits. Win is much less configurable (even the server variants) - you basically get what M$ delivers, and if that doesn't fit your needs, you're in trouble. M$ delivers, however, a whole ecosystem, i.e. a whole suit of products that work together (and probably not with anything else). Well, that's the "golden cage" of M$ - this can be good or bad, depending on your needs (or your ability or willingness to pay). If you "just" need a working system, this can be quite an advantage.

[amigakid]

I use Windows 8 on a Lenovo touchscreen laptop and have Mac OSX Yosimite on my iMac.  Honestly I use the Windows 8 more, love it on a touchscreen and it utulizes hardware really good actually.  Took getting used to but after using it for a week or so I really liked it a lot.  Mac OS isn't too bad but don't think it's all that and I prefer the Android and Windows store over the App Store.  Think the App store isn't as easy to navigate and I see things on there that you have to buy but is free on the other two.  Also some of the prices (I don't mind paying and supporting the developers) are ridiculously expensive.  Don't get me wrong I do like some of the stuff but am truly grateful to have all three (plus my beautiful Amigas of course that are my ultimate love and be able to have access to everything out there (some stuff in App store not available in the others, but not that many anymore honestly).  Cheers

[amigadave]

Windows certainly has a bad reputation, but it's generally not deserved.

Maybe from your POV, but from mine, Windows bad reputation is very deserved.  IMO, it is bloated crapware that can slow down even the best systems.  It's only redeeming features are that it runs on just about anything, and there are some applications that can only be run on a Windows system and nothing else.

With all this power we have with today's CPU's and video cards, you would think that the response of the latest version of Windows should be instantaneous, but it does not seem to be much better (if any) on my i7 laptop, or i5 desktop, than Windows 97 was on Pentium class hardware.  I am talking about the responsiveness of the Windows desktop and sub-windows.  Multi-tasking still is not as smooth as it was on my 7MHz A1000 in 1987, though it has improved a little bit from the early days of multi-tasking on Windows systems.

My two Windows PC's aren't the fastest available, but they are faster than the average PC's out there and both have good discrete video cards, so again IMO, they should perform much better than they do.  If I didn't need Windows to run a couple of applications that I can't get on Linux or MacOSX, I would never run any Windows OS, and I would convert both systems into Hackintosh's, or one into a Hackintosh and the other into a very lightweight and fast Linux distro.

@TeamBlackFox,

I agree that none of the Amiga or Amiga inspired platforms are satisfactory for my needs as a daily system.  Security being the main reason I would not use an Amiga or Amiga inspired system for all of my daily needs.

[psxphill]

I would never run any Windows OS, and I would convert both systems into Hackintosh's

Weren't people buying apple intel laptops and installing Windows because it was really fast hardware but MacOS ran slower than Windows?

I don't know what bloatware you have. Some PC manufacturers install a load of software for you, I always reformat and reinstall.
 
 I don't remember the Amiga 1000 being particularly fast when the disks were grinding away or when bringing a window to the front as it redrew the contents.

[Blinx123]

@psxphill
Windows is, quite undeniably, sluggish.
Indexing is way more read intensive than it should be, some things just take forever to appear and killing a process/task seldom works on the first try.

Even Microsoft kernel devs themselves admit that they're somewhat behind other operating systems.

The Windows NT kernel is really progressing at a snails pace, compared to Apple's XNU, the Linux kernel and BSD.

Work outside the kernel isn't any better either. One literally can't go through the day without reading news on GNU/Linux or one of the BSDs. The same cannot be said about Windows.

Weren't people buying apple intel laptops and installing Windows because it was really fast hardware but MacOS ran slower than Windows?

Actually, people are buying Apple hardware because it's the most compatible (i. e. they don't need to manually install as many drivers).
As far as performance is concerned. That's actually quite a bit of a myth. The agency publishing those performance benchmarks later admitted that they compared a clean slate Windows installation on the Macbook to HP/Toshiba laptops running all the pre-installed bloatware.

In hindsight, earlier (pre-2013) models could actually perform worse under Windows, since they all rely on an earlier version of Bootcamp that didn't support EFI natively, thus relying on HDD performance inhibiting Bios emulation. AFAIK, the Macbook Air 2013 was the first one to include an UEFI 2.0 compliant boot loader that could boot into UEFI Windows natively.

[TeamBlackFox]

AmigaDave,

Glad we agree on that! Just to correct you there, Windows runs on just about any x86 or ARM hardware, NetBSD is by far more portable supporting over a dozen architectures in mostly usable state and about two-dozen that are in development.

In regards to the Windows and Mac discussions:

Windows is a complete ecosystem, like BSD, but far more constructed, so trying to remove anything that it comes with is mostly useless. BSD provides the bare minimum with which to build a complete system, and minimally constructed at that.

GNU/Linux and OS X have more in common with each other than most realise, considering they're both patchworks of various projects that can, but not necessarily will, work smoothly together. GNU/Linux at minimum has GNU providing the shell, the core command set, and the compiler suite, Linux providing the kernel, and various other projects including Systemd for startup and greater userland tools, X or Wayland providing display protocol, various windowing systems and desktop environments providing graphics. OS X has a Mach kernel, BSD kernel modules, a mix of GNU and FreeBSD command set and user land, launchd providing startup, and various in house Apple projects providing audio, display and graphics protocols.

One of my biggest gripes with Apple, and to a lesser extent MS and the NG Amigas, is the heavy reliance on vendor lock-in tactics. Apple controls hardware, software and everything in between so the consumer is left with a device that will only perform satisfactory until Apple decides to can support for it. MS relies on tactics like Secure boot, UEFI, and breaking ABI compatibility between releases to force users to upgrade software suites, and to control the hardware's usage. This is why I oppose moving to x86 for NG Amigas, because the general approach will likely be to using custom built devices like Apple to control the amount of support for hardware, as the  thousands of volunteers who code Linux drivers can't even support a third of the devices on the market, so the tiny Amiga community certainly will fail at that. At least with the recent OPENPOWER development there is a chance that once OS4 or MorphOS is feature complete and modernised, that various companies could provide hardware for them without patent encumbrance and allowing other open source projects like NetBSD or the Linux kernel would take interest since both have a huge interest in open hardware projects.

Anyways getting a bit off topic here.

[Blinx123]

@TeamBlackFox

Just wondering. Do you know any specific part of the pre-installed Mac OS X userland that is GNU?

One would think Apple would be smart enough to avoid GNU. Not just because it's bloatware but also because of its license.

[carvedeye]

Maybe from your POV, but from mine, Windows bad reputation is very deserved.  IMO, it is bloated crapware that can slow down even the best systems.  It's only redeeming features are that it runs on just about anything, and there are some applications that can only be run on a Windows system and nothing else.

Well I can honestly I have no problems when using windows it runs very quick and I get no slow down what so ever, as long as you have decent software to help maintain the OS you are good to go.

[Blinx123]

Well I can honestly I have no problems when using windows it runs very quick and I get no slow down what so ever, as long as you have decent software to help maintain the OS you are good to go.

Didn't you say before that Windows was the only "modern" OS you were using?
Don't get me wrong, but I think you're lacking experience with another OS to truly be aware of what people consider "quick".

That aside, other OS' run considerably better on much less recent hardware.

My 14 year old office laptop running GNUStep is as snappy as my colleague's 1 year old Windows 8.1 laptop with a Samsung SSD and 32 times the RAM.

[TeamBlackFox]

Yeah bash and binutils are from GNU.

[carvedeye]

Didn't you say before that Windows was the only "modern" OS you were using?
Don't get me wrong, but I think you're lacking experience with another OS to truly be aware of what people consider "quick".

That aside, other OS' run considerably better on much less recent hardware.

My 14 year old office laptop running GNUStep is as snappy as my colleague's 1 year old Windows 8.1 laptop with a Samsung SSD and 32 times the RAM.

Yes but its not the only one I have tried.

[Blinx123]

Yeah bash and binutils are from GNU.

Oh. Right. Been using zsh for so long, I completely forgot about bash. ^^
binutils seems to be a wild mixture of licenses. ld is actually BSD derived and strip seems to be reimplemented by Apple. as is definitely GNU.
Didn't even realize Mac OS X had so much GNU under the hood. I might consider switching to another, GNU free OS now. Lol.

[toRus]

Weren't people buying apple intel laptops and installing Windows because it was really fast hardware but MacOS ran slower than Windows?

Actually, people were buying Apple x86 laptops because they were fed up with all the issues and viruses on Windows AND they believed they would feel safe knowing that they can always dual boot (or emulate) Windows if they find it hard to find the apps/games/warez in the macland. The build quality, the looks, the stability, the strong resale value of the hardware & software helped too. Many of them never looked back. Old mac users never liked them anyway - they call them switchers.

[Linde]

Certified for what?

Certified for being UNIX? UNIX certification is a thing in itself for starters.

Have you seen the number of exploits in unix systems?

Please point to them and convince me that you are also aware of exploits available for other systems and are making a fair comparison.

When exploitable OpenSSL and bash behavior was found recently, I could upgrade these software components within 24 hours of the open disclosures of their discovery to have them fixed. Had the same thing happened in Windows, I'd probably be waiting for the behavior to be exploited in the wild before the issue was even addressed, and Windows software has had its fair share of security holes. The only reason these exploits make the news is because of full disclosure, that UNIX-like systems make up a large part of the internet infrastructure, and the relative infrequency of such issues on UNIX-likes.