Subj : Re: Computer operating system of choice?
To   : boraxman
From : DustCouncil
Date : Mon Feb 07 2022 21:07:17

 bo> Probably a banal question, but I'm curious as to what Operating Systems
 bo> people prefer to us.

All of them, in this room.  I learned a long time ago that there was no benefit to me personally to become some kind of OS partisan; in my situation, there are deficiencies in all OSes.

I am typing to you on Windows, in a PuTTY session, to my BBS, which runs Ubuntu.  This is typical.  My currently daily driver is Windows, but it is seconded by a Debian Linux box which acts as a file server and - not sure what to a call it - a "code box" which runs scripts, does backups, and so on.  I have no Powershell or batch files I rely on; everything that runs runs usually as a bash, Perl, or increasingly Python script on the headless Linux box.

Why run Windows on my desktop?  Software availability.  I no longer find it interesting to wrestle with Linux on the desktop (using WINE or whatever) to run the apps I want to run.  I will say for the record that there is nothing I like about Windows except:

* It runs the apps I want to run and am used to.
* It doesn't break often.

This file/server development box is not alone.  There is also a router - a PC with two network cards that all of my network is defended by.  The cable modem has all of its ports open; the restrictions are on my Router, which also runs Debian with iptables.  This allows me to do logging and monitoring of intrusion attempts (mainly botnets) by logging ports no one should be connecting on (21, 22, 23, 80, etc.).

I have a really horrid HP desktop running KDE.  This is used for bittorrent and a few other things.

Then I have a Macbook Air, which I bought less than a year ago, and which I just flat-out don't like.  I am unsure whether I dislike it because I dislike OS X, or I am so habituated to other desktop OSes, the fact that it works differently is an irritation (probably when I was younger, those differences would have interested me).  I may just sell the thing.  Nothing wrong with it but I feel like I'm constantly fighting to figure out how to do basic things with it.

A blend of Windows and Linux works well for me.  This homebrew Windows desktop is more than a decade old now.  It will need replacing shortly.  I will likely build a really powerful PC to replace it and dual boot Windows and Linux, with Linux as my daily driver, and Windows there as a second OS to run specific apps I want to run, when I need to run them.

All of my VPSes and the like run Ubuntu.  So when it comes to Linux I fixate on Debian or Debian-derived distros just out of sheer habit.  There's nothing about them I feel is deficient that would be served by running other distributions (if I did, I'd probably give Fedora a go).

I do like FreeBSD.  In fact I find it more organized and somehow more tidy than Linux.  However, it has deficiencies (can't watch Netflix for example, owing to stupid DRM stuff not available on Netflix) that I can't currently bridge.

From 2003-2011 I ran Gentoo as my daily driver; rolling release distributions break too much for my liking.  Gentoo's granular controls were impressive but I found myself using them rarely, but fixing breakages frequently, owing to the need to use stuff from the unstable branch too often.

This seems really long-winded.  I now inflict it on the lot of you.  

Sorry in advance.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
 * Origin: Shipwrecks & Shibboleths [San Francisco, CA - USA] (21:1/227)

.