The best and the worst OS

[lonestar]

Let's play a game! Inspired by a ZDNet Article, rate your favorite operating systems. Give marks from 1 (worst) to 10 (best) and explain why. You can rate Linux, Windows, BeOs, Mac Os

Let me start:

Windows 95 a 7: I enjoyed it. It worked well for me and was revolutionary, when compared to 3.1

Windows 98 a 4: IE 4 and a lot of bugs

Windows 2000 a 8: Rock solid, but little new features and buggy IE

Windows ME a 2: what a nightmare

Windows XP (gold) a 5: Nice new features, but it got infected the first day twice
with SP2 a 7: now it's usable

Windows Vista a 7: Nice new features, but huge resources hunger

Mac OS X Panther a 8: Rock solid and great features

Mac OS X Tiger a 9: even better, but still some ugly Finder bugs.

 

[trawler69]

This is just another 'mine's bigger than yours' thread waiting to happen.

I couldn't be arsed.

No it isn't Noelie I have used windows for years and dos and bbc basic befroe that, even sinclair zx 80. I speak as I find and I want computers to help us achieve our aims and recently i find that the mac can do that better than the others. No big deal it is just ev olution.

 

[mike_n_herrin]

I think this will be hard for me. The early days of windows i didn't know much about them so might not have known there were serious issues with some versions. I've not started using anything but windows until recently so my experience with other OSs is limited at this point, but i'll try. I'll start with windows

Windows 3.1: Gets a 4. I think it was neat, but i think the average joe didn't do much more than word processing with it or play a few limited games.

Windows 95: (a, b, or c) Gets a 8. It was revolutionary and it got SOO many regular folks onto the personal computer and hooked people to the internet with ease.

Windows 98 (and or SE): Gets a 4. I didn't notice that many "new" features. It didn't do anything more for me as a user than Win95 did. it did seem to blue screen a lot though.

Windows ME: I'm giving it a 3 only because it had system restore. Me didn't work well and had a lot of ...buggyness i guess.

Windows XP (Pro and/or SP2): I'm giving it an 8 because it made a lot of things easier. Prior to SP2 it had a lot of bugs and seemed pretty vulnerable to attach. Now here is where my knowledge starts to kick in because the other versions of windows were probably just as vulnerable, but this is when i really started learning stuff so i didn't know it before.

OS X: I'm giving it a 5. I think it was OS X (it's what ever was coming on new macs circa 2002). We had one in my lab at school. The only thing I could ever get it to do was browse the internet. I absolutely couldn't get it to do much else. other folks didn't seem to have a lot of problems with it, except our database program locked up on it a lot. so not being able to use it was probably just me.

Linux (Knoppinx): I give it a 8: I love this linux OS. it boots from USB drive and CD/DVD drive. it's versatile and can help you repair a broken XP install. It plays video and audio without installing a bunch of codecs or programs. it is FREE and comes with a ton of software for everyday use (all also FREE).

Linux (Ubuntu): I give it a 4: I think it's going to be a great OS and i agree with T-rex when he says he thinks this will get the general public interested in linux. However, until the latest release I couldn't get it to even boot on my PC.

 

[trawler69]

windows 95 was revolutionary and gets an 8, win98 was a fatter and more resource hungry version of it and gets 6. 2000 was solid and works well so 8. ME should have been aborted before birth so 1. XP can have a 7 as we lived together for so long. OSX 10.4.x I will not rate as I am new to it and can't form an opinion based on long experience but it is looking good so far.

Other O/S's Knoppix I keep it on a pen drive and it can do no wrong so 8
Ubuntu quite XP like not as nice as Knoppix so 7
MSDOS a revolution for its time and the last point where the user was in total control 7.5.
Amiga amazing what it could do with 512k of Ram in terms of graphics. It knocked the pc into a cocked hat 8.
BBC 32k Grew up with this, interfaced it to the real world in basic and assembler, nothing you couldn't do with it at the time. For it's versatility it has to get a 9.

 

[Corny]

Windows 95:
still quite buggy, but i could use all my DOS stuff and my various boot disks for all the game but hey THANKS for multitasking, i could hide my porn better

Windows 98 : still buggy, finally had internet connection sharing in version B. but BOY it was a PITA to use.

Windows 2000: my fav windows

Windows ME a 2: don't get me even started on that one ..

Windows XP a 5: i still don't get why i should use it instead of 2k

Windows Vista a 7: not tested

Mac OS X Panther a 8: a great toy for kids, that much that ms wants to sell his own toy, named vista, now, too.

 

[cityboy-stl]

Years ago I used IBM OS/2. It was a great operating system; stable, secure, very configurable and was 32 bit when Windows was still 3.1. I loved it. OS/2 began as a joint venture between IBM and MS and much of WinNT was built on the portions of OS/2 code that MS owned. Unfortunately IBM can't market beer to sailor and couldn't keep up with Microsoft and I had to switch to Windows.

 

[Corny]

oh i totally forgot: BeOS! totally cool multimedia OS, combining the power of a unix with a nice gui and easy to use OS. an OS that could play simultaneously 5 mp3s and two videos at the same time when windows already used 60% cpu power just with one mp3 on the same machine. too bad it didn't make it, however zeta is still available.

 

[_AJ_]

so far vista is great ill give it an 8 which can be revised up or down

osx would be 7.5 i just dont like it as much as vista
xp will be 7

 

[teadrinker]

This is rather outdated now, but it's still very funny:

--

If Operating Systems were Airlines

DOS AIR: All the passengers go out onto the runway, grab hold of the plane, push it until it gets in the air, hop on, jump off when it hits the ground again. Then they grab the plane again, push it back into the air, hop on, etcetera.

WINDOWS '95 AIRLINES: The terminal is very neat and clean, the attendants are all very attractive and the pilots very capable. The fleet is immense. After your plane arrives 6 months late, you begin to wonder why it has not arrived yet. Your jet takes off without a hitch, pushing above the clouds, and at 20,000 feet it crashes without warning.

MAC AIRWAYS: The cashiers, flight attendants, and pilots all look the same, feel the same and act the same. When asked questions about the flight they reply that you don't want to know, don't need to know, and would you please return to your seat and watch the movie.

OS/2 SKYWAYS: The terminal is almost empty, with only a few prospective passengers milling about. Airline personnel walk around, apologising profusely to customers in hushed voices, pointing from time to time to the sleek, powerful jets outside the terminal on the field. They tell each passenger how good the real flight will be on these new jets and how much safer it will be than Windows Airlines, but that they will have to wait a little longer for the technicians to finish the flight systems.

FLY WINDOWS NT: All the passengers carry their seats out onto the tarmac, placing the chairs in the outline of a plane. They all sit down, flap their arms and make jet swooshing sounds as if they are flying.

WINGS of AS/400: The airline has bought ancient DC-3s, arguably the best and safest planes that ever flew and painted "747" on their tails to make them look as if they are fast. The flight attendants, of course, attend to your every need, though the drinks cost $15 a pop. Stupid questions cost $230 per hour, unless you have SupportLine, which requires a first class ticket and membership in the frequent flyer club.

VMS AIRLINES: The passengers all gather in the hanger, watching hundreds of technicians check the flight systems on this immense, luxury aircraft. This plane has at least 10 engines and seats over 1,000 passengers. All the passengers scramble aboard, as do the necessary complement of 200 technicians. The pilot takes his place up in the glass cockpit. He guns the engines, only to realise that the plane is too big to get through the hangar doors!

UNIX EXPRESS: Each passenger brings a piece of the airplane and a box of tools to the airport. They gather on the tarmac, arguing constantly about what kind of plane they want to build and how to put it together. Eventually, they build several different aircraft, but give them all the same name. Some passengers actually reach their destinations. All passengers believe they got there.

--

-T

 

[lifeout]

"Best and worst" are so subjective. For desktops I still tend to run Windows -- mainly because I don't have time to switch to Linux.

For servers, I always use Gentoo Linux. Mainly because the package management software is excellent and their package database tends to include bleeding edge software. And being a software engineer, I like tinker.

But overall, the best OS is the one that does what you need it to while also avoiding hurdles and being overly cumbersome.

 

[nditalynow]

I like Windows XP very much, especially after SP2 was released. I would wait awhile if any of you are thinking of "upgrading" to Vista. I bought a new notebook in December that was Vista ready. I received two discs from the computer manufacturer last week. The first disc was a utility upgrade. The second was the actual Vista OS. I'm usually precise and take my time doing such things as upgrading any programs and such. Long story short; I'm very glad I made a set of recovery discs before I tried to install Vista. What a nightmare. I'm back to using XP at least until Microsoft works out the bugs. My friend, the computer geek/repairman told me today that he's had so many calls because of Vista's problems that he has to turn jobs away.

 

[miaplacidus]

DOS ( 5 ) - Fast and simple, but very outdated even for 1994 standards. Also single-tasking, which limited its usefulness especially for a multitasking maniac like me.

WINDOWS 3.x ( 5 ) - It was the first decent GUI for the PC platform, but it was very basic and too "hybrid". The non-preemptive multitasking brought problems when one ran too many programs.

WINDOWS 95 ( 7 ) - I learned how to use a computer with Windows 95. It was unstable sometimes, but otherwise it worked quite well and its GUI was refined for the time. Personally I prefer the Chicago user interface to that of the contemporary Mac OS 7.6.

WINDOWS 98 ( 5 ) - It introduced improvements on the connectivity area, but it was little more than an upgrade of Windows 95, one that was buggy and had an high tendency to "DLL hell". Plus, I think that its system requirements weren't justified by its new features.

WINDOWS 2000 ( 8 ) - Very stable, including all the improvements and the user interface of Windows 98 on top of the stable NT kernel. In my opinion the safest Windows OS. However, it still had some problems with most games, and it was never popular on home computers.

WINDOWS ME ( 1 ) - I rated it "1", but it deserves a -10. A compilation of all the bugs of Windows 98, plus a buggy System Restore function, plus some nice wallpapers and icons, on top of the outdated and not very stable Chicago-style hybrid kernel. I tried it on my computer and it never ran more than an hour without showing a blue screen.

WINDOWS XP ( 7 ) - I prefer Windows 2000. That's why give it a 7. Plus, whoever designed the Luna theme should have been killed.

UBUNTU LINUX ( 8 ) - Fast, stable and reliable, but not very user-friendly. Plus it has some compatibility problems.

SUSE LINUX ( 9 ) - This one is fast, stable and reliable as well, but it's more user-friendly. The graphical configuration tools are always a very good add-on to an UNIX-based system. However, the compatibility problems remain. I still can't make my sound card work under Linux.

 

[BrandonSBCA]

Windows ME worst operating system I've used.

Best I've used was Mac OSX and Windows XP Service Pack 2