Which OS...

Alright, here's a little question/survey... which OS has given you the LEAST headaches? I don't mean if it's buggy or not, but which one was the least bother for YOU using. It could be buggy as hell, but a lot of people I know like ME for some reason... despite... err... yeah.

Personally, my favorite is Win 95. I kept it as long as I could because partly it was my first graphical OS and partly because I was young and hadn't the faintest idea of how to work anything more complex.

The one which gave me the most headaches must be when I installed Red Hat Linux and having no idea how to use it. I got by with a thin magazine which had included the discs for Red Hat. During the four weeks I used it, I managed to install TWO softwares. I guess I'm just an idiot or something.

Red Hat's not really intended for the desktop anyway. It was the first one I tried all those many years ago since it was the only one I'd ever heard of, but I got stuck at the website where they were offering "solutions" and service agreements. I think I eventually got to a download page and shouted "OMGWTFBBQ this will take weeks to download on my poor little modem, and download managers haven't even been invented yet!"

Hard to say which has given me the least, they've all made me swear at some point. I'd say WinXP gave me the most though.

Win95 gave me a lot of headaches because it was so crappy. My favorite OS is Windows 2000, I had the least headaches and the most fun, especially when using it for development, testing stuff, etc. Of course all OSes give you headaches every now and then, but Windows 2000's are sparse and I rarely have to give up. My least favorite OS in this department is any Linux flavour.

<<1 I can totally agree with Win2k being a good OS. Personally I rarely, if ever, encountered any problems with it. WinXP can be a bit of a bother from time to time, and there are some features that just bugs me, but it's fairly stable IMHO. I've actually been using ME a lot, my dad had it on his computer, and it was a PAIN! Mostly I think it was because the computer was riddled with spywares and viruses, but it was still an OS that never really appealed to me.

The thing with me is that I'm not that hardcore when it comes to programming and root-ing in general, I just want a decent OS where I can play my games, watch my movies and surf the web without encountering problems or difficulties. Thus, Windows is perfect for me.

I still like Unix-based OSs though, I'm just not that fluent with them.

Gentoo Linux. Like manna from heaven, I say.

In no particular order?  Far and away, MacOS X is the best os i've ever been troubled with.  In fact, I can only think of one case where it's given me trouble: the Finder is unable to browse Samba shares, for some reason, with out hanging.  WinXP SP2 is pretty harmless, as far as getting it set up the way I need, but its a very fussy, clumsy OS for the kinds of work I do.  Things fail, it won't tell you why, and you are forced to install third party software to work around it.  My primary computer, the one I use at home for browsing this here website, is Gentoo Linux, which has given me plenty of headaches, but non-the-less always seems to respond favorably to the 'Get a bigger hammer' approach, (wtf? x doesn't work, remerge nvidia-kernel, still doesn't work, remerge xorg, still no? fuck it, remerge system && remerge world)

The HP-UX we had to use when I was at school sucked.  OMG did that thing ever blow ass.  If faced with having to buy hardware for a commercial Unix, DON'T GET AN HP!

Windows XP has only fucked up on me when it was my own doing.

Slackware, once I learned how to use the command line, was very powerful and let me do anything I wanted to it.  I say that's ease of use.

I haven't used anything so far that has givn problems without me eventually figuring out what it was.

>>6
You definitely need to install more software on Windows to make it great (Perl, textutils, other utils, etc.) - and installing this takes 5 minutes, not 5 hours, because this is Windows, not Linux - and once you do you're all set.

Windows would be quite decent if:
a) Unnecessary services didn't run by default (and none listened to the network by default; fuck RPC).
b) They lost the rather dangerous browser.
c) They included some Unix CLI tools, at least as an install option.
d) Better seperation between admin and user.

>>9

[b) They lost the rather dangerous browser.]

Internet Explorer is for dopes. I keep it simply because sometimes Opera doesn't show what I want or I need to check how my website works in IE because a lot of people still use it (which baffles me). I can accept Firefox and other Mozilla-based browser, but I still think Opera is no.1

>>9
a) True; I shut them down after install.
b) True; I disable and never use it unless I explicitly run it for stupid bank websites (and I'm aware of its vulnerabilities).
c) True; I have a good collection of them I copy on each install.
d) Opinionable; I always work as admin and have't screwed it up or got screwed; all you need to do is to know what you are doing, use a firewall, and have your basic policy securities like runnning an antivirus on new stuff.

>>11
We all do that. The point is it would be better if it was like that by default. Things would run faster and there'd be less security issues (therefore less worms, spam, and DDoS botnets!). Nor is d) opinionable; while you know what you're doing, the majority don't.

That said, I still prefer windows for day-to-day desktop use. *nix are great for server and dev, but I really don't like using them for desktop.

>>12
Oh, yes, well, you're right, in d) I didn't want to say "No! Keep Administrator for my grandma!", I meant I wouldn't use that personally, but yes, end users shouldn't be given the chance to screw it up, because that's not too hard to do if they don't know what they're doing. So I would agree that all of your points should be implemented, just I wouldn't use the last one.

On point 4

A single user PC, Such as the one you are almost certainly using right now, does not need both priveleged and unpriveleged accounts.  If its owner messes shit up, its their own damn fault, they know how they did it, (presumably) and they aren't fucking it up for anyone else.

On the other hand, a shared workstation or full fledged server should definately have a separation between the two.  You don't want some asshat at your office deciding to install some internet game his grandma linked him to while they were on AIM that installs 6.3 GB of spyware cause he can and he feels like it'll help everyone be more productive.  Retards should not be allowed to administer the workstations everyone has to share.  Similarly, for any sort of internet (or intranet, either; same asshat) which users may sensibily 'log on' to without having precisely managed priveleges for that.  It will ruin your day.

Windows can do this, but is not well presented, by default cause all you retards ever want is an easy way to install the naked models patch for Unreal Tournament 2K5 without any hassle or annoying pop-up saying "No, your little sister will try to play that and then ask your parents hard questions like 'where do babies come from'"

also sage