Choosing an operating system for my desktop computer

Submitted by Bart on Wed, 08/18/2010 - 11:07

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My 7 year old desktop computer has finally died. After having replaced 2 disks, 3 power supplies, a VGA card, the USB ports, several fans and a monitor, its about time for this machine to retire. With its innards spilled onto floor and hooked up to multiple power supplies, its being kept alive long enough for me to copy all the important data over to my NAS.

I already looked around a bit and will probably reuse the case, power supply and some disks for the new machine. With a new gigabyte motherboard, core i7 CPU, plenty of RAM and an SSD for the operating system, it will probably be insanely fast compared to this one. But that brings me to the final choice, which operating system to use?

I have experience with most operating systems. My desktop has always been linux (first debian and later ubuntu), but I also own a macbook pro and use Windows at work. None of them are perfect, so choosing between them is pretty hard. Note that I can't really run OSX on the new hardware I plan to order, but I'll include it in the comparison as I could buy an iMac instead.

The most important functions for this machine are:

  • Running virtual machines (development environments & tests).
  • Surfing the interwebs.
  • Communication tools (IM/twitter/email/..).
  • Access shared data stored on the NAS via CIFS.
  • Connecting and disconnecting monitors while its running so that I can use one of them to watch TV.

So here is how I see the advantages and disadvantages of the different operating systems at this time:

Linux

PRO CON
  • My trusted desktop environment for years. I know what its good at and what its limitations are very well.
  • Easy shell scripting for bulk operations.
  • Lots of free applications, although not all of them are good.
  • Software updates for all applications, not just the OS.
  • Very easy software installation.
  • Has gotten pretty bloated over time. Definitely no longer the lean and mean OS it once used to be.
  • Inconsistent when it comes to accessing CIFS shares. Only certain applications can access files opened in the gnome explorer, for CLI tools you need to manually mount it again.
  • Very poor performance when accessing the CIFS share.
  • Support for multiple monitors and accelerated graphics in general is horrible.
  • The nightmare that is Audio.
  • Frequent upgrades required and every time something breaks.

Windows

PRO CON
  • good at dealing with CIFS file shares.
  • Easy use of multiple monitors.
  • Lots of applications and nowadays quite a lot of freeware as well. Most of the applications I use are cross-platform.
  • Not as easy to use scripting.
  • Its Microsoft and I'll have to listen to rant after rant about me selling my soul to the devil.
  • Main target for malware so I'll have to run an antivirus program which will affect performance.

Apple OSX

PRO CON
  • Pretty hardware and it has an Apple badge. Admit it, thats one of the main reasons they are bought.
  • Easy to use multiple monitors.
  • It can do scripting just like linux.
  • Lots of applications and several of them are quite user friendly. Even though I'm not a novice, I still appreciate a clean and simple user interface.
  • Its Apple, which as a company is far worse than Microsoft.
  • It has quite some troubles accessing CIFS shares. Especially if authentication or hidden shares are involved.
  • Bloody expensive and nearly impossible to upgrade the hardware afterwards.
  • Video and audio codec hell.
  • It will not allow you to choose anything other than Quicktime to open videos which are located on a read-only CIFS share.
  • Requires quite a lot of tweaks to work the way I want.

Conclusion

At the moment I'm leaning towards using Windows 7 as my primary operating system with a Linux virtual machine to run my collection of scripts. I'll still give Linux a try when the new hardware arrives, but I don't really expect anything amazing from it. Getting it to work has always been a struggle, especially when it comes to multiple monitors. I don't expect this to work properly, especially attaching and disconnecting the monitors while its running.
OSX has already been ruled out because of its price and lack of hardware flexibility. I'll simply keep running all the cool OSX stuff and image editing on my macbook as I already do nowadays. If I could run OSX on my own hardware, that would probably have won.

I have mixed feelings moving away from Linux on the desktop. It's still running on my servers of course, but now that a lot more has shifted to the web and the few other applications that I use have become cross-platform, many of the reasons that I was using it on the desktop have vanished. Quite the irony as most of these applications are open source.
On the other hand, as I look at all the Linux server admins, 90% of them are using macbooks. So I don't seem to be the first to admit that Linux has lost the battle for the desktop.

Comments

Jef

Sat, 09/18/2010 - 12:37

Je moet echt eens naar openSUSE kijken! Dat gaat je véél meer aanspreken dan Ubuntu.

Dit zat net in m'n mailbox:
https://lite.co-ment.com/text/lNPCgzeGHdV/view/

Tot voor kort gebruikte ik nog Ubuntu 8.04 LTS (Mint versie) op mijn 6+ jaar oude laptop omdat ik dan niet constant zou moeten upgraden en omdat het (uiteindelijk) werkte. Op die hardware is XP nu niet ideaal meer...
Het nadeel van Ubuntu is dat je met oude software blijft steken. Je kan wel ergens nieuwe debs of repos vinden, maar uiteindelijk lukt het niet meer omwille van de onderliggende bibliotheken. Er is een nieuwe LTS versie dit jaar, dus ik ging upgraden.
Ik heb eerst Mint geprobeerd, maar dat geraakte niet eens tot de desktop zonder een paar keer op enter te drukken! Daarna de gewone Ubuntu, maar die vroos vast op willekeurige momenten: totaal niet bruikbaar. Ik dacht toen een nieuwe laptop te kopen, maar eerst toch nog eens iets anders proberen.

Ik heb toen openSUSE geïnstalleerd. De weinige problemen die er zijn, waren simpel op te lossen. Echt een verschil met Ubuntu: de configuratie voelde zo professioneel aan dat Ubuntu wel speelgoed leek. Je voelt echt dat alles op elkaar is afgestemd. Commandline niet "moeten" gebruiken: er zijn deftige configuratietools voor alles.
Samba instellen? Start gnome-do type samba en dan ff configureren en klaar. Je moet echt niet eerst in een configuratiescherm liggen zoeken.
Ik heb een bug in mijn bios waardoor ik hyperthreading moest uitschakelen om freezes te vermeiden. Nu 2 boot parameters toevoegen, HT opzetten en het werkt! Nu is alles sneller dan ervoor ook.
De nieuwste software gebruiken? Selecteer bv Mozilla, Python, PHP,... uit het lijstje van installatiebronnen van de gemeenschap. Ga naar de OBS (openSUSE BuildService) om meer/nieuwere software te vinden die individuele personen aanbieden.
Zou je geen pulseaudio willen installeren? Gewoon ff afvinken tijdens de installatie.
En het ziet er nog goed uit ook. Desktopeffecten staan op en dat draait nog steeds vlot.

En de nadelen? De repos/community zijn niet zo groot als bij debian/ubuntu. Als je minder bekende software gebruikt, zal je deze van source moeten installeren.

Bart

Sun, 09/19/2010 - 10:58

Ik ben van plan een hele reeks live CDs te testen, maar de hardware laat wat op zich wachten. Dat komt ervan als je het laatste nieuwe koopt :)

Maar ik verwacht ook dat dat een probleem gaat zijn voor eender welke Linux distro, ze lopen meestal nogal achter met drivers. Vrijdag zou alles binnen moeten zijn, dus dan zal het testen worden.

Chris Wordpresshead!

Thu, 12/08/2011 - 11:46

I had the same debate as you a while ago, and have to confess to going down the route of Apple, and got a MacBook Air.

My frustrations with Windows reached a zenith after about the 3rd computer giving out to hard drive failures, was spending £500-600 on business computers from Dell and HP and getting on average of 18 months.

After starting a new project (a reviews and offers site for companies like Stan James/Victor Chandler) I treated myself to an Apple.

Have to say have been very happy with the Apple system, it just feels quality. I like functionality like "Shift+CMD+4" to crop images from the web and auto save to desktop - great when blogging.

Looking forward to a decade from now when it's all more streamlined. Still begrudge having to use 3 browsers, with Safari as main one, and Chrome/Firefox in use for add ons.

Good blog by the way, like to contribute to blog space myself.

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