What OS do you use?

[nagano]

It is really strange that Linux has completely solved the package-management problem for 10 or 15 years, and Windows still has not even attacked it. I sit around with a bunch of old versions of stuff on my Windows machines just because every program has an inconsistent updating mechanism or no updating mechanism. How hard can this be? Even if Microsoft doesn't want to maintain an apt-style repository of Windows software, can't they expose some API that programs can register with to check for updates, and some central management screen I can look at to see the updates?

I think Windows 8 apps are their idea of a solution to that, but being tied to Silverlight is not so great.

[kirkmc]

It is really strange that Linux has completely solved the package-management problem for 10 or 15 years, and Windows still has not even attacked it. I sit around with a bunch of old versions of stuff on my Windows machines just because every program has an inconsistent updating mechanism or no updating mechanism. How hard can this be? Even if Microsoft doesn't want to maintain an apt-style repository of Windows software, can't they expose some API that programs can register with to check for updates, and some central management screen I can look at to see the updates?

Is there no equivalent of the Sparkle update framework for Mac OS X on Windows? It's a framework that individual applications use which checks for updates, presents a dialog if one is found, then downloads and installs the update. It only activates when you launch applications, but that's good enough for most people.

[cata]

If there is, then I (A Windows developer, albeit not for consumers) don't know about it and I can't say I know of any Windows software that uses it.

[kirkmc]

If there is, then I (A Windows developer, albeit not for consumers) don't know about it and I can't say I know of any Windows software that uses it.

Interesting.

Sparkle is an open source thing, and a lot of indie developers, and some major companies, use it. Interestingly, the guy who created it got hired by Apple.

[nagano]

If there is, then I (A Windows developer, albeit not for consumers) don't know about it and I can't say I know of any Windows software that uses it.

Interesting.

Sparkle is an open source thing, and a lot of indie developers, and some major companies, use it. Interestingly, the guy who created it got hired by Apple.

Thanks for mentioning this. Apparently there are two similar open-source projects, Winsparkle and wyUpdate, which run on Windows.

[cata]

Those look cute -- I'll keep those in mind next time I write something that I want to distribute to people!

[Li Kao]

Thanks for mentioning this. Apparently there are two similar open-source projects, Winsparkle and wyUpdate, which run on Windows.

While wyUpdate itself is open source, you still need to buy wyBuild, the application that creates the updates. Unless somebody
else wrote another program that creates updates for wyUpdate.

And WinSparkle seems to be only an update checker, not an updater. Pretty useless IMO.

[Bonobo]

I've used computers since, uhm, 1983 or so, and I’ve used more operating systems than I have fingers on my hands (I still have 5 on each hand ).

My favourite OS is OS X, followed by iOS, but I’m also Windows-savvy, having taught media stuff and OS usage on Mac OS “Classic”, OS X, and Windows.

Greetings, Tom in Germany

[hyperpape]

I'm not there yet, but I'm wondering if in a year's time, I may be the guy who asks why Emacs isn't included as an option.

[SpongeBob]

I just tried out Linux again (Ubuntu), but it can't compete with the maturity and stability of Windows 7.

[wms]

I just tried out Linux again (Ubuntu), but it can't compete with the maturity and stability of Windows 7.

I wouldn't recommend anybody try Ubuntu or any other gnome 3-based Linux right now. A year ago Ubuntu and others were quite good, but then they upgrade to a new version of the UI called Gnome 3 and there are big problems. The gnome team has ideas about UI design that I disagree with strongly so they took away a lot of the useful features when they went to Gnome 3 and made it very difficult and awkward (and they introduced a lot of bugs in the process). The only way I'm able to get work done is by installing the gnome 2 UI layer on top of gnome 3, and that itself is clumsy in same places.

There may be some Linux distributions that don't use gnome 3, but Ubuntu for sure does, so stay away.

[Kirby]

I primarily use OS X. When I'm in the mood, I run gentoo (with fluxbox) on a vm. When I want to play on tygem, I use windows 7 (or iOS on my iPad).

[jts]

I just tried out Linux again (Ubuntu), but it can't compete with the maturity and stability of Windows 7.

I wouldn't recommend anybody try Ubuntu or any other gnome 3-based Linux right now. A year ago Ubuntu and others were quite good, but then they upgrade to a new version of the UI called Gnome 3 and there are big problems. The gnome team has ideas about UI design that I disagree with strongly so they took away a lot of the useful features when they went to Gnome 3 and made it very difficult and awkward (and they introduced a lot of bugs in the process). The only way I'm able to get work done is by installing the gnome 2 UI layer on top of gnome 3, and that itself is clumsy in same places.

There may be some Linux distributions that don't use gnome 3, but Ubuntu for sure does, so stay away.

Wow, it's interesting to know that. Just a week ago I leapfrogged two (or maybe three?) upgrades, from L to N, and I was immediately struck by how wordfiltered slow everything is now.

I originally preferred Ubuntu to Windows because I was finding Windows XP to be too slow and too unstable. I was always restarting all the time, and everything was calling on other software, and five thousand things would try to launch on start up and I'd have to keep re-bleaching the directory and... it just wasn't worth it. This was without running any anti-virus software at all, by the way, which meant that I had to be very selective about where I permitted js, which has gotten harder and harder as web designers have embraced everything that MySpace had to teach us about how to make eyes bleed.

The biggest problem I've been having with N is that the network manager has an egregious memory leak, but I've definitely noticed how ugly and buggy the Mac-facsimile gui is. The reason I originally looked into switching to Linux was that I loved how minimalist and speedy the unix shells at college were, and wanted something similar. No more.

While I'm engaging in free-form reflection on my OS choices, I should say that when I first switched to Ubuntu full time I didn't think that learning to use the new applications would be too hard, and I assumed that over time I would absorb details about how to stay in control of my computer, they way I did with Windows. Sadly, wrong on both counts. I was surprised by how much human capital I had invested in little things like how to use Microsoft Word, and I was surprised by how little control I have over gnome (or compiz, for that matter), and therefore how little I learned to manipulate it.

So wms - Does this mean that another upgrade to O, the latest Ubuntu release, isn't going to fix my desktop or make it pretty again?

[jts]

PS.
Saying things like "little things like using Word" is very much like saying "little things like making human sacrifices".

What can I say? The Sun God needs power for his never-ending struggle against darkness.

My experience was that AbiWord and KWord (or whatever it was called) were ridiculously slow. OO was also pretty slow, but not quite as painful; however, all of the default settings are really, really, really painful (two biggest pains were the predictive typing - please, just feed me my own spleen and be done with it - and footnotes, but all formatting issues were unnecessarily complex). Now that I've upgraded to N I have LibreOffice instead. I was very excited to try it, but under N my computer is just to slow to bother with opening any large documents.

[wms]

So wms - Does this mean that another upgrade to O, the latest Ubuntu release, isn't going to fix my desktop or make it pretty again?

O is no better. A few bug fixes, but still the same slow, hard to use UI. Still missing critical things like a separate bar for minimized apps and the ability to choose what goes into the status bar.

Edit - Thinking about Xubuntu and similar solutions. For now, putting the Gnome 2 shell on top of Gnome 3 makes it usable (just barely), so I'm hoping to ride it out. Hopefully saner heads will prevail eventually.