The online racing simulator
Operating System Poll
(226 posts, started )

Poll : Which operating system do you use for LFS?

Closed since :
Windows XP
369
Windows 7
305
Windows Vista
155
Linux
28
Windows XP x64
13
Macintosh
7
Windows ME
5
Windows 98
2
Windows 2000
2
Server Longhorn (2008)
0
Server 2003
0
The fact 'it felt bad' is what made it awful. Plus the overactive UAC (which you might turn off, but 99% of people probably leave on the default settings and get annoyed by it - I had to; they weren't my PCs!).

7 is snappier - this, in my opinion, is a MASSIVE difference. Snappiernessism is what makes an OS feel like it's working with you rather than against you. OS-X is snappy, which is why people like it (subnormal people admittedly, but still ). UAC is handled FAR FAR FAR FAR... FAR better in 7, which is important for most people. But not you. Personally, I leave it on now, on the basis that one day it might, just might, stop me doing something I regret.

I never recommended Vista. Until about a month ago I recommended XP. I now recommend 7 unless (and it isn't a big unless) your computer isn't up to the task. But if it isn't, then you probably aren't in the market for a new OS.
same poll on hdbits.org, results bit different
Attached images
os.png
Quote :I can use 7 right after I see the desktop and not wait another 15 secs for everything being loaded.

Yep, you can click firefox and jump straight on the web. Not possible in Vista on my system.

I'd agree with Jakq in that W7 is probably more like an expensive and glorified service pack update for Vista. It's Vista's Uber patch. I can't join the chorus in hating Vista because I didn't have any real problems with it. It could be frustrating at times, but I've expected that of computers all my life. But W7 is almost like a breath of fresh air- it makes being at the computer a nice place to be, kind of a bizarre notion... but there you have it.

[etals:]
Except it's just Vista with a facelift. I used Vista and it works the same on the same hardware.
Windows XP, SP3, All is Right.

it works with 2x Core 2.30ghz.

2gb memory.

Lfs Work good. Computer is useful for internet and playing.
I used Vista, didn't have any problems with it, never thought it ran slow and didn't have any driver issues.

I went to Windows 7 because it cost £45.

Windows 7 runs much better than Vista did on my computer. It installed faster and easier, it boots and shuts down faster, it opens programs faster and uses less resources than Vista did. It had everything my computer needed to get going, I didn't have to get out the motherboard disk like I did with Vista. I think it's better to use, less bloated than Vista.

I'm not hating Vista, just saying Windows 7 runs better for me.
much more features, and less popups then vista, which i like a lot more....the taskbar is pretty nice.

when i turn on my tv as a moniter it usually made me set everything up because i have one tv and one moniter and it could not think for a second i want it how I want it...seven even when i dont get the tv turn on perfect, or even at all, and come in a bit late, it is set up exactly how i want it as soon as it turns on enough to get data
Quote from AutoPilot :That's an old complaint fixed in SP1 or SP2. You can see the benchmarks for file copying, and Win 7 is about 1-2% faster.

No it's not fixed by SP1/SP2. Improved I agree, but not fixed. Vista still sits and waits for a long time before it starts it's copying compared to XP. The larger the file or the more files you're trying to move/copy the worse the lag is while it sits there "calculating".

Seeing as you're so fond of quoting figures, do you know exactly how the benchmarks were carried out? As someone with a scientifc/engineering background myself I am very aware of the significance of testing methodology on determining results. Having not seen the tests I won't argue with the figures you're quoting, but I must say that the majority of benchmark testing articles I've ever seen are very good at reproducing pages and pages of numbers, and describing the test "environment", but tend to fall down quite significantly on explaining in detail the exact method used to carry out the tests.

A proper and rigourous test paper would consist of significant amounts of detail describing the exact methodology of the testing. Usually significantly more of the paper is given to the methodology than the actual results themselves. Almost the complete opposite to what is usually seen in most computer magazine/website "evaluations".
Quote from AutoPilot :I've already said that I agreed UI seems faster, but if you have a newer rig, you likely didn't have issues with stuff like opening menus in Vista.

Sure, probably true. But Vista has been out a few years and it shouldn't require a new PC in order to run well. Plus, it's a well established mechanism for assesing an OSs resource use and efficiency by seeing how well it works on older spec machines. The very fact that Windows 7 can run better on machines that Vista baulks at is a testament to it's improvement.

Quote from dawesdust_12 :Except it's just Vista with a facelift. I used Vista and it works the same on the same hardware.

Except it's not, because it's had revisions of the kernel. By definition any OS that has had a kernel revision is more than just a "facelift".

Anyway, even it it was "just" a facelift, that just goes further to prove how much MS messed up by releasing Vista when they did. All the talk of benchmarks is completely missing the point. Vista and Windows 7 are products and will be viewed by the general public as such, not as games test platforms. The general public care as much (if not more) how easy an OS is to use and how it "feels" in use than how fast it is. It's exactly that ease of use that has led to Windows popularity and a large part of the reason that it has never been challenged by the likes of Unix/OS X/Linux etc despite their inherent superiority in significant ways for a long time, (not so much if at all now though).
Quote from gezmoor :No it's not fixed by SP1/SP2. Improved I agree, but not fixed. Vista still sits and waits for a long time before it starts it's copying compared to XP. The larger the file or the more files you're trying to move/copy the worse the lag is while it sits there "calculating".

Seeing as you're so fond of quoting figures, do you know exactly how the benchmarks were carried out? As someone with a scientifc/engineering background myself I am very aware of the significance of testing methodology on determining results. Having not seen the tests I won't argue with the figures you're quoting, but I must say that the majority of benchmark testing articles I've ever seen are very good at reproducing pages and pages of numbers, and describing the test "environment", but tend to fall down quite significantly on explaining in detail the exact method used to carry out the tests.

A proper and rigourous test paper would consist of significant amounts of detail describing the exact methodology of the testing. Usually significantly more of the paper is given to the methodology than the actual results themselves. Almost the complete opposite to what is usually seen in most computer magazine/website "evaluations".

Starting to copy files was always faster on my Vista home desktop than at work where I have XP. Of course, my PC at home is siginificantly faster in every way, so it's far from a fair comparison, but still, I did not experience this. Perhaps a problem with your system?

As for the testing, I have trust in some of the sites like anandtech as I've been following them for quite some time, and they do sometimes go at length to describe their methodology and it's fundamentally sound. Of course there can be flaws, but I'm not sure how many things can go wrong in measuring how long it takes to copy something. And many sites report the same results.

Yes, it's nice when new OS-es run nicely on old systems. But I think it's reasonable to expect that it will make use of more resources as the hardware improves. Vista came out 5 years after XP. I bought a rig in 2003 with XP and in 2008 with Vista, also 5 years diff. The latter one has 12x more RAM than the first one, is it so bad if Vista uses 2x more RAM than XP? And it's mostly due to the aggressive prefetcher (they just made it less aggressive in Win 7, they could've done it for Vista with a patch...) and I actually appreciate that OS would try to use all the RAM it sees.

I'm not saying Win 7 is not better, it is, but I don't agree it's by a long mile, or as someone had put it "pisses all over Vista"...
With SuperFetch and the likes, it's completely irrelevant how much physical RAM remains free, what's important is how much of it is used by the OS itself.
Quote from AutoPilot :Perhaps a problem with your system?

It's a well documented, widespread flaw. So maybe thousands of people have the same problem. Or, more likely, it's a flaw with Vista itself, and you just so happen to be one of the few not suffering because of a rare hardware spec that avoids it... or something.
Linux, but I play LFS on Windows (I play it rarely however). The distro is self-developed: http://linvo.org
Snow Leopard
#193 - Uke
Windows Vista 64bit, soon Win7 64bit :F
Although I use Linux (Ubuntu) as my main OS, I play LFS on Windows 7 RC.
Quote from Shadowww :It >could< be repack of debian too. :P

Or just about any base distro running the Gnome desktop environment.

After scanning the website, it's actually based on slackware

/offtopic
Quote from Degats :After scanning the website, it's actually based on slackware

:o

So it's not (yet another) I-have-created-my-own-distro-with-Restorator-or-something. Worth looking in I hope.
Windows Vista Home Premium 64 bit
Win7 64 bit here
* BUMP *

Two more days left on this poll.

Operating System Poll
(226 posts, started )
FGED GREDG RDFGDR GSFDG