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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
 
Location: Hull, UK | This seems like a good one to start with for anyone who comes over here, though you should be able to post your own topics if you want to. So, what's your favorite operating system and why? I imagine any responses will be predominantly Windows and DOS versions, but hey, if you like Linux or your masochistic and like running ZX Spectrum BASIC that's just as valid.
My favorite? Windows 3.11 or, more specifically, Windows for Workgroups 3.11, why? The interface just feels right to me, I like the utilitarian looks it has; the plain colors, the lack of pointless animations and trim, the sheer simplicity of making it do what you want and, at the same time, the complete headaches caused when trying to install certain hardware or networks, the light footprint which means it will even run on a slow 386 (Or even a 286 for the non-Workgroups version) fairly well. Even the quirks that don't make sense have a charm to them, such as how you use the "Disk" menu to share a directory.
Then there's the massive variety of applications available for it. Windows 3.11 was the first Windows to really hit home, quite literally. Previous versions had limited support at best with most applications preferring to remain in DOS, APIs like WinG paved the way for modern counterparts such as DirectX and some, such as Video for Windows, are even still used today with only minimal changes. Somehow, doing things in this operating system just feels right. As someone who uses MIDI quite often, I find the operating system and the hardware it runs on are ideal for controlling synthesizers, they never lose time and the latency is very low, almost impossible to perceive due to the availability of direct hardware access, modern operating systems use a Hardware Abstraction Layer which increases security and resilience to crashes, but adds latency. Also, the light footprint means you can abuse such a program quite a lot before things slow down.
Windows 95 is a close second. Whilst I'll admit any day that Windows 98SE was perfection so far as 9X was concerned, Windows 95 was the start of getting a computer into every home and it has a certain charm to it.
You might have a different idea though, feel free to share it. I won't be able to read it until morning though, I'm about to go to sleep at the time of writing this.
To close this post, here's a screenshot (in part, because I want to make sure attachments still work) - Cakewalk Pro 3.01 running in Windows for Workgroups 3.11.
 (Z_CW3.png)
Attachments
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 Z_CW3.png (30KB - 657 downloads)
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 8
| Well my favorite is Windows XP with dos 6.22 and WIN 98 right after that. For me 32bit XP runs great on almost anything 1-4GHZ and I currently have it on my main laptop and gaming pc dualboot with 7 on both because some newer games want 64bit os and 64bit XP doesn't like games very much. Also some strange problem with slow 2d on my main laptop under xp. But for me Windows XP is a great way to run older games on newer computers. And it's a great way to relive the times gone by and the fun I had with some of those older games. It's also a reminder of how fast time goes and it's kinda depressing so better not to think about that.
Windows 98 is great because it runs some of my favorite games well and has good dos support and usb storage if you install the driver. I use it on my older gaming laptops for fun on the go. And I have a bad habit of putting it on pentium 4 and athlon XP systems and overclocking the hell out of them :D
And DOS is amazing because of the simple interface and lots and lots of great games and memories. And because there are DOS emulators for android and pocketPC I can enjoy it even more when I can take my games with me wherever I go and all I need is my phone. It would be great to get a keyboard or gamepad case for my phone but they are expensive...
I have used linux quite a lot and I kinda like it but when I install it I use it mainly for web browsing and dosbox when I am too lazy to go get my dos system. And at the moment I only have linux on my netbook that hasn't seen any use for a year |
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Harris 286
Posts: 15
Location: Sunny Blackpool | If I had to choose a favorite Windows OS it would be Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64-bit (with ClassicShell) as PowerShell is usable in this release and there are appreciable performance improvements compared to Windows 7, especially in disk I/O handling.
If I had to choose a favorite Mac OS it would be OS X 10.10.5 as it's stable and doesn't mess with the multi-touch gestures as later releases do... it is also the last one that lets you load custom 'Menu Extras'.
If I had to choose a favorite Linux Distro it would be Fedora 24 right now, it performs admirably on an aging Core2 MacBook and with MATE installed is extremely pleasant to use.
I'm a little too young to be really in to DOS (only 20!) so I won't comment on that operating system. |
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Slow 8088
Posts: 3
| Windows 10 is my favourite.  |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | @varanoidas; Welcome aboard! That's a rather broad scope there within the ranges of Windows, though I can totally see why. Haha, time does indeed go too fast, as someone who started out when DOS was pretty much a guarantee if you went near a PC, I feel ancient every time I see the copyright date that appears with the command interpreter starting up.
@edneil; Yes, I actually liked 8.1 though I've skipped it and moved on to Windows 10 for my newest system. In some ways, it reminded me of Windows 95, in that it was a new thing an it was clear things needed to go in another direction, but it needed more refinement. The performance on both 8.1 and 10 though seems insane so far, I've also noticed that the Ethernet performance seems somehow faster and love the graphs when transferring files along with the new Task Manager. Obviously, as it's not on my list, I wouldn't say it was one of my favorite operating systems, but I'd take it over Windows 7 any day, the interface is just so much better for my workflow and it just works.
I really ought to get my hands on some Apple stuff some day, for some reason I've always been tempted to play with those early 90s machines that had the MC68040 chip, not sure what version of the OS they ran though as I'm mostly blissfully ignorant in the Apple department for the time being, I really should fix that. Linux eh? I kinda like Mint, mostly because it has worked when I've not had access to Windows and I've used to to fix some drives and recover some files from drives that weren't damaged. Odd really, because traditionally I've been a KDE guy if I've had to use Linux and Mint defaults to GNome. Tails is pretty good for what it is, whilst I have no use for Tor, I have used Tails discs because it is lightweight and great if I need a basic Live CD.
@Daniel; Ha! You're over here? Cool, welcome to my pile of internet driftwood... Now I wait for Dylan to sit behind the scenes and in a cruel twist of fate, or justified karma, execute the very plan I had to prank him against me instead when the bill has to be paid again next year. :P Can't remember when it is, probably mid-October. |
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 9
Location: long island ,NY ,USA | for me i would have to say windows 98se was my favorite OS . but right now currently windows 7 is is just stable and easy . but windows 95/dos will always have special place in my heart seeing they where on my first computer . |
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IDT WinChip
Posts: 237
Location: USA | Openstep! however a tie, or very close second would be BeOS
Edited by waybacktech 2016-11-03 2:31 AM
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Harris 286
Posts: 15
Location: Sunny Blackpool | DXZeff - 2016-11-02 10:06 PM
I really ought to get my hands on some Apple stuff some day, for some reason I've always been tempted to play with those early 90s machines that had the MC68040 chip, not sure what version of the OS they ran though as I'm mostly blissfully ignorant in the Apple department for the time being, I really should fix that.
I would recommend starting out with an earlier PowerMac G4 (the ones referred to as 'PCI Graphics or 'AGP Graphics' as you can run the classic Mac OS (8.6 upwards on these) and older versions of OS X too, and they don't suffer from irritating hardware quirks like the G3s did (mostly IDE weirdness)
Mactracker is the holy bible of Mac system info. The issue is that it is not available for Windows or Linux, just OS X(!)...
I have 'printed' the spec of the machines I am referring to as individual PDFs and they are available on my FTP server: ftp://ftp.ukrnet.co.uk - if you want the specification of any other system please let me know.
I also noticed further down how you like the new Windows8/10 task manager... well, a while ago I did some searching because I wanted this on my Vista & 7 machines. Some bright spark has re-implemented it to work on those OSes. http://dbcstudio.net/software/taskman/main.html
It is a little buggy but otherwise works well.
Edited by edneil 2016-11-03 7:55 AM
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 7
| I'd say, for retro use, the best system would be dos 6.22 with win 3.11 on a PC which supports disabling L2 and L1 cache to slow it down when needed (bubble bubble ). My favorite OS overall would be Win XP. For my main PC I use win 7 while I have good experience on a tablet with win 8.1 (after some mods) and very bad experience with win 10...
Edited by Nikolaos 2016-11-04 10:18 PM
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Chips 386
Posts: 38
Location: Canada | I usually just install whatever is time period appropriate for the hardware.
However, I enjoy win95 osr2, 98se, xp and win7. They're all in cahoots with the NSA so that's kind of a bummer though
I didn't like using dos even back when I had to use it so, none of that. First family computer was an IBM XT and my first computer in 1997 was an IBM Aptiva E03 which came with win95. |
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Slow 8088
Posts: 5
Location: Hell | As for Windows, my favourite OS is Windows XP. I don't like Windows 8 or later because Microsoft removed some features.
I've been using Arch Linux (I started using GNU/Linux since 2010, but not full time) lately and I'm not going back to Windows. |
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Slow 8088
Posts: 5
Location: Quebec, Canada | Favorite OS? Hmm... Windows 8.1 Update 2 x64 (With briefcases re-enabled) on a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop powered by an i5-4210U. Man i love this thing.
Next up on the list are : Windows 7 (getting bored with it), Windows Vista (Prefer it over 7 when it works, or that's just my Sempron not liking SP2), Windows XP (I love this one) and Windows 98.
I know, i like almost every iteration of Windoze, but every version has it's perks (the Pro variants with RDP, 8.1 with double-click mounting of ISO/VHD images) and their downfalls (Vista love churnin' that disk, 8.1 being a b!tch by restarting in my face because it's Update Time, etc.). Also, XP and Vista taste better in their Pro variants. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| My favorite operating system? Well... I do not have one single OS.
So I will list those that I have used, and found nice.
- MS Dos (3.3 to 6.22)
- Linux in general. (PPC and x86)
- WinNT 4.0 Workstation.
- Os/2 Warp 3.0
- Windows 3.11 for workgroups.
- Win95 and Win98se
- Windows7 (This is my "daily driver" )
- BeOS 5.0
- C64 Rom Basic
- AmigaOS 1.3 to 3.0 (Rather specifically WorkBench)
- MacOS 7.xx (Can't remember wich exact subversion)
- Mac OSX 10.4 (Just enough features, and not too many to make a cool OS)
- Different flavours of BSD Unix (the usual suspects: NetBSD, OpenBSD, PC-BSD...)
The most dreaded one, was the full retail version of Novell Netware.
Edited by Brostenen 2016-12-22 11:42 AM
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Slow 8088
Posts: 5
Location: Quebec, Canada | Brostenen - 2016-12-22 7:34 AM
The most dreaded one, was the full retail version of Novell Netware.
Never used NetWare (I'm only 15), how utter crap was it? |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| techboy411 - 2016-12-22 5:19 PM
Brostenen - 2016-12-22 7:34 AM
The most dreaded one, was the full retail version of Novell Netware.
Never used NetWare (I'm only 15 ), how utter crap was it?
Well... It's not crap as such. It is a very powerfull network operating system from the mid-90's. The thing that made it crappy for me, was that it is really hard to set up. First up, you need to make two partitions. One small for Dos and one large for NetWare. Then you need to install the, I don't remember exactly, somewere between 20/30 to 40 floppy's. I might be wrong on this number. It is after all 21 years ago, so it is funny that I remember it like it was yesterday.
Man.... I tell you. These were the days. When we were 40/50 persons, living on a hallway (the college dorm). The first year or so, there were no network provided by the school. So we had to make our own. And because no one really knew everyone, and people knewing each other indevidually and those that were in the same class were living apart. We had 10 mbit coaxial network cables in giant bundles across the floor, and up against the wall. Yeah.... There were no actual drawing of the network topology, yet everyone knew what cables were used in wich network. It was a fun time, when you had Os/2, MS-Dos, Win3.11, Win95 Beta/Test-release, AmigaOS, WinNT 3.51, Linux, Free-BSD and SGI computers, on multiple interconnected local networks. I had a Win 3.11 MailBox server on that network (yes Win3.11 has a mailbox program)
I think it was version 3.11 of netware I installed, back in feb of 1995. I have 3.12 on original CD. The ultimate hard thing about Netware, is to configure it. I gave up in 1995. It might be easy for me today. (Wich I don't think that I will be using. Just cool to have an original Novell Netware 3.12)
Netware lite on the other hand, are much more easy to set up. Though really hard, if you have little to no experience with MS-Dos ipx-odi set up. These days, it seems as no one really know how to set up an ipx-odi network, using coaxial bnc cables. When stuff is running, then it is actually pretty cool (and slow by todays standard) to use. Just don't touch the metal parts of the cable, when the computer is not grounded. You will recieve a high voltage shock, whenever there is activity on the bnc cable. 
Edited by Brostenen 2016-12-24 1:16 AM
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 11
| Well, I think mine was Windows 98SE, just because it was the first OS I played with. Of course when I could get a computer, I had Win3.11 with DOS 6.22 and I liked it a lot. However, the hardware where it ran was crap and so was the overall experience.
Anyway, I can't blame those systems, because I started enjoying programming with them.
For a daily usage, I'm fine with Windows 7 or Win10 (with all the modern crap turned off).
Nevertheless, and with the magic of emulation, I tried some other OSes which I couldn't use back then, such as NT 3.51 and 4. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Howdy, Cocus.
Windows 98SE is a real workhorse. I find it boring next to 3.11 but for the right reasons; it is a good thing because it shows the OS (when properly configured) works and the interface generally makes sense.
Always had a soft spot for the older NT systems, many seem to neglect that the first publicly available OS which featured a Start Menu was NT via an update, though Chicago had it in closed betas for a while before that in varying forms. |
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Fujitsu 186
Posts: 6
| Windows 3.11 with Calmira II
Windows 95B
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows 7
and from betas MS Neptune and Windows Whistler 4074 |
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Slow 8088
Posts: 5
Location: Quebec, Canada | techboy411 - 2016-12-21 8:17 PM
Favorite OS? Hmm... Windows 8.1 Update 2 x64 (With briefcases re-enabled) on a Dell Inspiron 15 laptop powered by an i5-4210U. Man i love this thing.
Next up on the list are : Windows 7 (getting bored with it), Windows Vista (Prefer it over 7 when it works, or that's just my Sempron not liking SP2), Windows XP (I love this one) and Windows 98.
I know, i like almost every iteration of Windoze, but every version has it's perks (the Pro variants with RDP, 8.1 with double-click mounting of ISO/VHD images) and their downfalls (Vista love churnin' that disk, 8.1 being a b!tch by restarting in my face because it's Update Time, etc.). Also, XP and Vista taste better in their Pro variants.
At the time, i hadn't used Windows 10... but now, Win10 sits behind 8.1 in my favorite OSes list.
So: 8.1, 10, 7, Vista, XP, 98.
And touchscreens are awesome. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Hmmmmm..... Came to an conclusion today. My favorite operating system are Linux.
Of course Dos and Win98 are the favorite ones on old hardware, just that speaking of the most favorite of all, it must be Linux as it is my daily driver now a days. I run Linux on my laptop (xubuntu flavour), I run Linux on the router (special factory standard, modefied embedded flavour), I run Linux on my OrangePI's (Raspbian and RetroPI flavour's) and I run Linux on my smartphone (Android).
Basically speaking... Linux is my favorite one of all systems, as it gives me exactly what I need, for standard daily computing tasks on all fronts. As I did mention, then Linux is crap on old hardware like 486's and such. It all depends. It's like trying to run Linux on Amiga's. Why? Will only result in reaching for the Workbench disks after 5 minutes. :-D
Speaking Linux and Amiga... Mmmm... I have had FS-UAE running on my Linux installation, with an USB CF card reader and 512mb CF Card as the harddrive. What I did was to use the actual device instead of an HDD image file. Works well and operates exactly like an harddrive would do on a 600/1200/4000 machine. Yeah... Linux rules in so many ways. The downside is the learning curve. I used some 16 years to get used to the way it is working/operating and then some 6 years to learn how to do tasks. Never had any real education in how to do stuff. Only tested like the first 50 or so distro's, and reading up on stuff at the different websites all over. If I can learn this, then I guess everyone can do it on their own. |
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Slow 8088
Posts: 2
Location: London | As for Windows, my favourite operating system is Windows XP.
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Slow 8088
Posts: 3
| Hi from me, first post here
My all time fav OS must be Windwos 98SE - it was the first that brought me a true multimedia experience. Everyone knows here the advancements it had over all other competition and previous Win versions. |
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Harris 286
Posts: 20
| I probably have to go for Workbench 3.0... it's the only one I didn't see get fat, bloated, and flaky from numerous patches and updates and hit it's limit in support for RAM and hence usefulness toward end of it's period of currency.
Certain Windows versions were good at certain times, on certain hardware, with certain updates/patches. WFWG 3.11 was probably at it's best in late 94, early 95, with win32s and winGs applied, with between 8 and 64MB of RAM, I think it got no faster and more thrashy with more than that. Win 95 was probably at it's best in about '97, win 98SE in early 2000 with dx7 and under 512MB, XP just after SP2 with <2G RAM, ME and Vista never :-P, I liked W10 better than 7 up until that 2017 Fall creators update, then it seemed to get bloatier, thrashier etc, might be a different story on hardware less than 2 years old, but on everything with more than a ghz and a gigabyte iit's 7 for me now, for MS stuffs anyway.
It's the same story with various linux distros they have brief periods of glory then fuck everything up. Like I liked Lubuntu/kubuntu etc from 14.xx thru 16.xx but don't like 18.xx |
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Slow 8088
Posts: 2
Location: 103.67.159.10 | Mine is windows 10 and 7, but i hate windows 8 |
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Chips 386
Posts: 37
| Speaking of MS stuff, I like both NT 4.0 and Win 2k. I also like Win 95 with Chicago shell.
MS-DOS and derivatives? Well, 3.x and both 5 & 6.22 are fine. And I still want to try DR products, hehe. Anyway, I'm not a true command line guy: prefer Norton Commander on a top of any DOS.
I love 1.x Amiga Workbench.
(Sigh, and where are all my Amigas now?)
And I quite like classic Mac System 5 & 6. GUI aesthetics, you know. Yet, my experience with both products is very limited.
For an everyday use, I'm on Win 8 ATM
& on stripped down XP & 7_32 installations for a specific tasks.
/BTW, MS Win 3.0 still have the most fucking exciting color schemes & backgrounds. Sigh. |
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Favorite Operating System?
