The 2022 Operating System Thread

[momaka]

Well first off, Nappy New Year to everyone!

So what's going on?! - How come we don't have an OS thread for this year? Did everyone just move to using phones? Windows 11 killed everything? Or perhaps now that some of us have the Covid vaccines, I guess M$ is already running in our bodies so we don't really need computers anymore, right? (OK, I probably better not open that can of worms here. )

Anyways, ya'll know the drill: vote what OS you're running on your "main" PC.

I know that might be tricky for all of us, since I'm sure everyone is running multiple PCs for various different reasons (and often times with different OSes too) - be it work, leisure, hobby, and etc. In regards to work, I imagine almost anyone with an office-issued computer is probably running Windows 10... so not sure if that should be considered as a "main" PC... but up to anyone to decide for themselves.

Would be interesting to see how Windows 11 is going to impact the vote... and how many Win7 "hold-outs" are still remaining.

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I'll start the vote with a tally for Legacy Windows - in my case, Windows XP. Yes, I'm still able to 'putter on it, despite being extremely outdated at this point. Considering my main use has been looking up datasheets, organizing pictures and music (mp3/mp4), email, tax/document prep, and paying for bills, the trusty ol' Optiplex 170L is still capable for those tasks. Alas, the Mypal browser has really been a godsend! If all I had to use was Firefox ESR, I would have ditched XP for online use already... or at least mostly (hint: badcaps.net still runs wonderfully fast on Opera 12.18.) I imagine with a much more powerful CPU - particularly something with really good single core performance - may even make it possible to use on Youtube and similar. That's actually the plan for me... or has been for the last 2 years, but for some reason I'm too lazy to tear away this old Pentium 4 "beast". Next year (January of 2023) would make it 10 years since commissioning it as my main PC. And it's a 17-year-old machine already! Let's see if them new Ryzens and 12th gen Intels can make it that long.

Also, in regards to "Legacy Windows" - I'm aware that Windows 7 actually belongs to that category too now. However, the fact that it's still supported by most modern browsers, that you can still install it on a good number of new PCs (if needed/wanted), and that some (very very few?) organizations still haven't switched to 10... I think we can give it another year or so before including it into the Legacy list, which comprises mostly of truly "outdated" OSes, as you can see.

[dmill89]

I guess I'll go with 10 since 2 out of 3 of my "main" PCs are running it (my work laptop and main personal laptop are on 10, my main desktop is still on 7).

[eccerr0r]

still haven't changed, and not going to brag about the distribution.

[stj]

i voted, no need to say what.

*but* who's the sheep that voted for win11???
must be the guy who got the gates-vax!

[Topcat]

Damn Momaka!!! You beat me to it this year!!

BTW, where the heck have you been?!? Your posts are greatly missed!

[Topcat]

My office machine just got Server 2016, which is the W10 interface but without forced updates or telemetry....so I voted 10, as it's my main system. The former office system is now my bench system, and it's still on Win7 with zero plans to change that.

I'm delighted to say I don't have anything new enough to run win11, as IIRC it requires a 7th or 8th gen (don't remember which) or newer intel, not sure what gen ryzen....but unless something has changed, 11 requires hardware fixes for spectre/meltdown flaw.

[ratdude747]

I'm still a mixed case to the point of no option being correct. So, if I'm gonna lie, I'll lie and have fun, and thus voted "What's a PC? My phone can do everything I need in this world!"

In all honestly though, For me since last year the only real change has been using Android for more things (phone and head unit) and the confirmed retirement of my two bay trail tablets running windows 8.1. Thus:

Laptops: Arch x64 with Windows x64 Dualbooted (10 x64, 7 x64 or 7 x64 + XPx32), Primary use is Arch

Workstations (and work laptop): 10 x64

Church AV system: Mac OSX 10.5 (Powermac Dual G5), Mac OSX 10.11 (Early 2007 iMac), 10 x64 (Acer SFF). And an old Thinkpad T41 with 7 x64.

Server: Debian X64

Phone and Ford Ranger Head unit: Android (have been using for a lot more things than last year, but by no means a full replacement :p

[desert-rat]

Linux Mint. I have Ubuntu studio on one laptop. I don't really care for anything windows anymore.

[eccerr0r]

Last year 10 won with most votes and 7 just behind in second...
In 2020 10 and 7 were tied...
In 2019 7 won and 10 in second place...

Will this year be the year of the Linux?

[lti]

I'm still running Windows 10. I was going to put Linux on my laptop and dual-boot, but I keep filling its SSD.

I installed Windows 11 in a VM, but I didn't go beyond deleting the social media shortcuts and links to sketchy-sounding software from the start menu. There's already too much corporate "own nothing and be happy" bullshit in Windows 10 and Samsung-customized Android (and I don't know how many other phone companies force-install bloatware to interface with "smart" devices and don't allow you to remove it while refusing to give you security updates because your phone is "too old").

[Dan81]

10 LTSC on my sig i5 3470, it's an old as hell install from a P45 mobo (not sure what was it, I think back when I had a Lanparty DK P45-T2RS) and there's too much data and I don't have a bigger drive to save my stuff onto. Will hopefully track a 3 or 4TB drive and then finally move my data there, the two Seagate Barracuda ES2s I have in there have well done their job and are still speedy.

Then there's the most recent Q9400 build I've done. HD4850, 4GB of DDR2, Allied AL-8500BTX PSU (recapped, rebuilt with upgraded silicon), ASUS P5E-VM DO mobo and some random case I have no idea who made it. It's got a cheap 500GB Seagate 7200.10 I got from a car boot sale, has 98% health. There's somebody who is interested in the (rather spicy) photos off it, so will back them up on a 2.5' Toshiba 500GB drive and wipe the current 7 install and run 10 LTSC on it as well.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

Last year 10 won with most votes and 7 just behind in second...
In 2020 10 and 7 were tied...
In 2019 7 won and 10 in second place...

Will this year be the year of the Linux?

I guess we will see.
I set up the poll to remain open for 90 days. Figured that should give people enough time to vote (should anyone take a leave of absence for a while like I did, lol ). I sense it may still be a few more years before Linux gets there... but if MS keeps it up with the silliness, I think we eventually will get there. So far, Win11 looks like nothing more than Win10 with rounded GUI corners and higher system requirements (I guess it takes an 7th/8th gen Intel CPU to do that? ) ... at least on the surface, those seem to be the few big changes (but always beware of what's lurking beneath the surface! )

Originally Posted by Topcat

Damn Momaka!!! You beat me to it this year!!

BTW, where the heck have you been?!? Your posts are greatly missed!

Thanks for the welcoming!
Well, I've been here (physically)... just can't say the same about my mind. And before I knew it, looks like almost 3 months have passed. The turn of the new year really made me realize how long it's been... and then this thread came to mind. Was surprised when I didn't it yet... so there went that.

Actually, you can partially blame Windows 10 for my "disappearance". Had a family's friend ask me why his laptop was so slow (a 2-3 YO Intel Celeron with Windows 10 and 5400 RPM mechanical HDD - 'nuff said )... and why he couldn't open Control Panel or get to any settings. I couldn't figure out the latter, but I noticed he put some "free" "driver updater" and "registry cleaner" "tools" on there, so I didn't spend too much time dwelling on the matter. He didn't have any personal files on that laptop and just wanted it for use with his TurboTax (since TT won't work on anything older than Windows 10, IIRC - bastards! ) Thus I did a complete reset on the laptop and those issues disappeared. But it was still miserably slow. Went and grabbed the cheapest 120 GB SSD at Micro Center and cloned his old HDD to that - frikin' night and day difference!

Now, I've setup/reinstalled/reset a good deal Windows 10 machines before (back when I used to work at Micro Center some years ago), but never ever went to much in-depth to configure the OS, aside from getting all the drivers running. This time, since it was for a friend, I did. And since he is an older fellow, I really wanted to get rid of / stop all of the annoying nagging that Windows 10 likes to throw up randomly - like Cortana asking stupid questions or Windows making BS suggestions. It's been my observation many times now that older, non-tech-savvy folks may easily get confused when Windows 10 switches focus to a different window on them while they are doing something. So I like to make an OS as "quiet" as possible - i.e. easy to see where things go and not have anything steal the focus - especially Cortana!

So I started nosing around with all of the Windows 10 settings and... oh boy, does it really REALLY have a ton of shit in there. Since this was a Win 10 Home machine, I guess there's no (easy) way to stop the Telemetry stuff. But just going through every setting and trying to minimize the Telemetry stuff being monitored took me no less than 3 days - no exaggeration there! Too many damn layers! And it doesn't help that some settings are still in the old "Control" Panel, but then similar or duplicate settings also exist in the Settings menu... some of them feeling very ambiguous as to which affects what.

Anyways... with all that said and done, I did manage to get that laptop performing pretty well (FWIW.) But if there is one thing I can conclude from this ordeal: I won't be getting Windows 10 on any of my machines anytime soon... or at least try to avoid it for as long as possible. Certainly willing to give Linux a try before that.

Originally Posted by Topcat

I'm delighted to say I don't have anything new enough to run win11

Same here.
The newest (in terms of hardware and not new-to-me ) is my Optiplex 790 with its i5-2500. Actually, I had an HP SFF box with Intel Pentium G3260 (4th gen Intel??) But I brought that to my parents' house this summer, so they can have a newer machine (still put Windows 7 on it, though.)

[ChaosLegionnaire]

with regards to decrapifying win10, i heard there's software around that lets u do that. some members like topcat posted links to some of them on how they decrapified win10 with the help of some software. a software that lets u load and save windows 10 registry settings to a file would be great to quicky decrapify multiple computers with win10! godsend and saves a lot of time!

[stj]

Originally Posted by ChaosLegionnaire

with regards to decrapifying win10, i heard there's software around that lets u do that.

it's called "FDISK"

[TechGeek]

-Debian Testing on main systems (including my workstation system)
-Debian 10/11 on servers
-FreeBSD Hardened on my firewall system
-(Coming Soon) 2KSP4 Pro + WinXP Pro x64 SP2 on the A64 gaming system.

[eccerr0r]

Originally Posted by stj

it's called "mkfs"

ftfy

[eccerr0r]

Anyone's using rolling release OS and kept rolling with the punches?

I wonder how much detritus has been left around since I first installed on one machine almost 20 years ago. With the rolling release it's about as up to date as a machine installed yesterday without the mkfs.

Though I might be making one very serious change to it soon...

[TechGeek]

Originally Posted by eccerr0r

Anyone's using rolling release OS and kept rolling with the punches?

I wonder how much detritus has been left around since I first installed on one machine almost 20 years ago. With the rolling release it's about as up to date as a machine installed yesterday without the mkfs.

Though I might be making one very serious change to it soon...

Yep. I like the way Debian Testing approaches things. Just 'sudo apt update' and 'sudo apt upgrade' followed by 'sudo apt autoremove' with a 'sudo apt full-upgrade' every couple of months or so, complete with full disk images.

[kjmyoung]

I actually have several. For work I use Vsphere which has Windows XP and 7 to diagnose customer issues

I have a Mac running Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur and Monterey for troubleshooting user issues

I have a HP Zbook running 10 and 11

[Per Hansson]

Seeing that my reply in last year's OS thread was kinda lazy I'll just make it a theme and quote myself from this other thread: "Anybody here still uses Win 7?"

Originally Posted by Per Hansson

Of course, any respectable Badcaps user would not touch anything newer than Windows 7 with a 100 foot barge pole!
Extra points given to those that finally had enough and switched to Linux!