What Desktop OS do you primarily use?

Which OS

  • Windows XP

    Votes: 5 10.4%
  • Windows Vista

    Votes: 2 4.2%
  • Windows 7

    Votes: 27 56.3%
  • Windows 8/8.1

    Votes: 11 22.9%
  • Mac OSX

    Votes: 7 14.6%
  • Linux/Unix

    Votes: 13 27.1%
  • Other

    Votes: 1 2.1%

  • Total voters
    48
  • Poll closed .
My wife has been told to upgrade her medical-transcription computer from WinXP to Win7. *sigh*

Her current laptop has a Core2Duo 2GHz and 2GB RAM (in a wonderfully generic Dell D630 that I have a couple spares of), so I'm thinking I might just leave her on that.
 
Well I don't see much use in a pre-XP OS as a desktop operating system, you essentially can't browse the web because of lack of software support from any modern browser (not to mention you can't actually install anything from that era on any modern hardware, so you'll be limited to hardware which would be excruciating for web browsing), and can't open file formats that anyone else uses on their modern computers.
 
This thread reminds me of one of my favorite XKCD comics:



Alt-text: What do you want me to do? LEAVE? Then they'll keep being wrong!

I think that basically sums up the Windows 7 vs Windows 8 debate. Neither one is so clearly better as to convince the majority, but those who do prefer one vigorously defend it because the other party is "wrong". There's no room (or very little) for "better in some situations" or "personal preference". IMO, it basically is similar to a debate about what the best pizza toppings are - not unlike other classic debates such as Mac vs PC.

Although in the Mac vs PC debate, there really is a superior option - nah, there are valid reasons to prefer both. And trying to convince a happy user of one that the other is superior just causes religious wars.
 
Well Mac OS and Windows each have features that other is missing, neither has a feature set which is a nearly a superset of the other's.

Not including any subjective UI stuff:

I want Quicksilver, Applescript, per-screen DPI adjustment and a keyboard shortcut to switch between windows of the focused app in Windows.

And in Mac OS I'd like synced OS settings between PCs, proper window previews and useful window size/position management.
 
You can possibly do the keyboard shortcut switch using AutoHotKey or something.
 
For years now I've been on Windows 7, but I voted 8.1 because that's what my new computer (that just arrived today, <3) has. I'm willing to admit that my disdain for 8 is prejudice, and I'm genuinely happy to embrace the notion of getting used to using it.

... And by that I mean bending it to my will, >:3
 
I visited my dentist the other day, they had just upgraded their systems a short time ago from XP to (surprise, surprise) Windows 7.
 
Win 7 64bit is best OS.

If you are still on XP, you should dump it. It is completely unsupported by security updates now.
 
Why does that matter though? Are there still zero-day vulnerabilities? If the platform is stable and secure today, what makes it stable yet insecure a year from now?
 
Well, XP isn't secure today.

Basically every Patch Tuesday, MS is going to patch a new set of bugs which very likely apply to XP, but XP isn't going to get patched. Checking the list for this week, there are some patches for bugs which make IE (on XP) or Office 2003 (on any OS) very dangerous to use. There's also this (among other things, I didn't look at the entire list very carefully). One of the common recommendations for people still running XP systems is for people to run non-admin accounts to limit damage from potentially malicious software that gets run when they're logged in. Combined with other vulnerabilities this exploit makes that useless, as it allows software run on limited user accounts to run as LocalSystem. There are already in-the-wild exploits using this vulnerability.
 
Why does that matter though? Are there still zero-day vulnerabilities? If the platform is stable and secure today, what makes it stable yet insecure a year from now?

It doesn't actually become any more insecure technically, it's just that as time goes by, people discover more of the existing security holes. While a Windows version is supported, Microsoft will patch those as it learns about them (sometimes before other people do, sometimes after), but once a Windows version is not supported, Microsoft generally does not patch those security holes even after it learns about them. So while the total number of security holes remains constant, more and more of them become known to various groups of people, and thus they become easier to exploit.

That said, even supported versions of Windows are not entirely secure. There are almost certainly security holes in Windows 8.1 that Microsoft doesn't know about that could be being exploited today, and could be in the future. There will still be zero-day vulnerabilities, affecting XP (and earlier) through 8.1 (and eventually, later), it's just that it's unlikely that Microsoft will fix them on XP. My suspicion is Microsoft would in fact patch XP if something really severe happened, since it would look really bad if they didn't when XP has over 20% usage share, but for the more ordinary stuff, they won't. They're already issued one XP patch after the official end of support.

My position is that how you browse the web still greatly outweighs what operating system you are using. Someone who's smart about their web usage will likely do just fine on Windows 2000, unpatched since 2010, whereas those who are careless will still get viruses on Windows 7 and 8.1, even when fully patched.
 
I'd be really surprised if MS patched XP again.

The last patch was because they issued an out-of-band patch for IE, and the general expectation was that people would have until this week before MS would release a set of patches where XP wasn't supported.

And any big MS customers still using XP are paying millions for patches with a forced migration plan to get off XP anyway.

Windows 2000 doesn't do so well on the web anymore as it's been years since security patches have been released for any browsers that work on 2000. So I guess as long as you never browse to any malicious sites, and none of the sites you browse to ever get compromised...
 
Mostly I use Win7. As an alternative desktop I use Linux at home (and on some VMs at work as well, as well as Solaris but I guess those don't count as desktop OS ;) )
 
Mostly OSX Lion. Sometimes gaming on Win7. I'm going to have to upgrade the macbook sooner or later and may replace the windows machine with SteamOS. Perhaps.
 
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