What Operating System Do You Use? / What Unique and Obscure Interests Do You Have?

[Rich Engelhardt]

Okie dokie - believe what you will and - good luck.

I still find fault with this - "the total lack of malware is a huge attraction" - that's both untrue and it helps promote a dangerous attitude.

[Marshall Harrison]

I started my career 30 years ago developing in C on an unix system. I then moved to DOS/Windows and finally 4 years ago to a Mac. I love OSX and Linux. I still enjoy working from a Unix shell. But I don't do anything but small personal projects since retiring in January of this year.

[Tom Stenzel]

I started with CP/M, ran that computer until 2002 when we moved to our present 1000 square foot mansion. I didn't have the space for all my toys and lost it and my 8 track recorder. Dang.

By then I had already gotten a 386 that first ran DR-DOS 6, then OS/2 Warp. I stopped using OS/2 as I decided that DOS filled my needs at the time. I moved to Novell Dos 7 when I added a CD-ROM. If anyone remembers, Digital Research got around the MS-DOS 3.x 33 meg partition size limit by using the Compaq extentions. DR-DOS 6 wouldn't support CD-ROMs or if there was a fix for it I never found it. Also it would report itself as DOS 3.3 to any program that asked so Dbase IV wouldn't run. It needed DOS 4 or higher. Novell DOS 7 fixed those problems.

I sure got my money's worth out of both WordStar 7 and Quatro Pro 5, ran both for about 18 years.

Then I lifted a HP computer from the trash- CPU box, monitor, speakers, keyboard and mouse. It needed minor repair and worked without a problem. I went back to the owner, he had replaced it with a laptop and was done with that old junk. Then I mentioned that everything on the hard drive was intact- resumes, school work, all kinds of personal info. Did he want anything? Yep, he wanted the MP3s on the hard drive. A couple of DVDs later he had his ELO, Dio, Black Sabbath, Dead Kennedys and Beasty Boys back in his hands. I then deep sixed everything off the computer.

It ran Win XP until support ran out. It now runs Debian Wheezy with the Mate interface. Other and newer versions of Linux wouldn't work with the video. Plus the Athlon XP processor lacks the SSE2 (I think I have that right) instructions that some programs like the Chromium browser need. But it shuffles along.

I also experiment with an obtuse operating system called Emacs. I understand some use it to edit text in some fashion but I'm not so sure it's possible.

My wife's laptop runs Win 7. She also runs Linux too but she doesn't know it, it's on her Nook Simple Touch. It just works, exactly what a computer is supposed to do.

Don't remember all the operating systems I used at work. One memorable OS I did battle on was QNX on the desktop, back when microkernels were going to take over. VAX-VMS ver. 4 was another. I do know that they still have at least two laptops with Win98 on them to support old equipment.

-Tom

[Curt Harms]

SOHO routers are very much an issue and 90+% of those run some form of Linux. Manufacturers don't have a great record for security updates once a model is superseded but the superseded model will soldier on unpatched. If I were a malware-for-profit guy, would I rather go to the effort of infecting machines separately or would I rather infect the single point through which all data flows? The move to HTTPS should help with that, I guess.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/0...ors_dont_care/

[Alan Caro]

Luke Dupont,

I started with DOS 6 / Windows 3.1 in 1993 (IBM 486 DX/2 50, 2MB RAM / 85MB HD) and have so far never escaped Windows. I use the word "escaped" as I find I constantly yearn for Windows to be so substantially different that it would become probably some flavor of Linux. I am completely sick of what I call the Windows' HFB's > "Helpful Fuzzy Bears" and moreso, the really unattractive graphic aspect- it's grim as hell. Windows is what I imagine life was like in Soviet Russia but as advertised by Madison Avenue. Linux appears to be made for grownups - a group to which I aspire, is elegant looking, and has a better integration of processor, memory, disk operations with the GUI. It's a cliche, but windows does still have a strong sensation of a thin- and clunky GUI pasted over DOS. I wish MS would have some kind of stripped down version of Windows- minus the HFB's and oriented towards performance, and as I dream of that, I realize I'm dreaming of Linux. Linux just looks as though an engineer- with aesthetic discernment, designed it. Mac, however elegant and reliable it is, does also have a quality of smugness, but that may be that the systems are designed to be tamper-proof and I like to tamper -heavily.

The problem for me is that I use a single computer for several different tasks: 2D /3D CAD, rendering, graphic design, fairly heavy documents- with database orientation, and also for music production, including running a MIDI controller with 1.2TB of samples. These uses require the system to have high performance in every parameter: high single thread for CAD, multiple cores for CPU rendering, a lot of memory for CPU rendering setup- large renderings need 38GB+, a fast disk system with disk caching for low latency in MIDI samples. This means that I have to use a variety of components for which there will only be drivers in Windows and Mac. My current main computer:

HP z620_2 (2017) (Rev 4) > Xeon E5-1680 v2 (8-core@ 4.3GHz) / z420 Liquid Cooling / 64GB DDR3-1866 ECC Reg / Quadro P2000 5GB / HP Z Turbo Drive M.2 256GB / + Samsung 860 EVO 500GB + HGST 7K6000 4TB / Focusrite Scarlett 2i4 sound interface > 2X Mackie MR824 studio monitors / 825W PSU /> Windows 7 Prof.’l 64-bit > 2X Dell Ultrasharp U2715H (2560 X 1440)
[ Passmark Rating = 6200 / CPU rating = 16954 / 2D = 819 / 3D= 8850 / Mem = 3031 / Disk = 14473 / Single Thread Mark = 2371 [6.24.18]

The key for success is the quite good single-thread performance, courtesy of running the E5-1680 v2 at 4.3 GHz (rated as 3.0/3.8) on all eight cores.

For a tiny amount of woodruining content, the above is going to have this future marine plywood home:

Computer & Music Desk_MR824_3.9.18.jpg

Computer & Music Desk_Simplified_F EXP_1.20.18.jpg

I'm a big fan of what I call "small worlds": interests, activities, and obsessions, and mine have been old cars; I've had about 35 from 1928 to 1994, plus keyboard instruments of which I have a harpsichord, clavichord, piano, and two MIDI keyboards. But those are not rare and obscure. For engaging, obscure discoveries, being interested in the history of science, including Alchemy, and as a fan of illuminated manuscripts, there is another level of obscure with the mysterious "Voynich Manuscript (MS)". From Wikipedia:"The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an unknown writing system. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and it may have been composed in Northern Italy during the Italian Renaissance.^[1][2] The manuscript is named after Wilfrid Voynich, a Polish book dealer who purchased it in 1912.

The manuscript, which resides in the Beineke Rare Book Library at Yale, is something related to Natural Philosophy, which would include Alchemy and natural medicine, but the text has never been deciphered. Many cryptographers have tried, some think it's an elaborate hoax, but even many of those are still hooked. There is more than one site devoted to it. Here one:

http://voynich.nu/index.html

Have a look through the Voynich Manuscript site, watch John Gielgud as Prospero in "Prospero's Books", and then read Goethe's "Faust"; it makes a kind of set of alchemical strangeness.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet

Now there is a post with a bit of a range: Linux to Shakespeare,..

Alan Caro

[Jim Becker]

I forgot to add in my original post along the lines of "history" that many folks are mentioning that my first "personal" computer use was on a Commodore PET in the late 1970s that was owned by a former father-in-law. He knew how to make that thing "sing" and even sold a relatively sophisticated astronomy program for it for awhile. I later worked for Tandy/Radio Shack for 7 years and sold that complete line (including to school districts) and then moved on to selling turnkey systems based on SCO Xenix. That eventually evolved into UNIX systems from Motorola and some other providers as well as working with Banyan Vines networking which was also UNIX related under the hood. Linux came heavily into play with my former employer in the telecom world, but I was not working "on" systems; rather, I was designing and selling them.

[Rich Engelhardt]

Banyan Vines

Wow! There's a blast from the past. Street Talk was a remarkable idea and well ahead of the crowd - back in the day..

[Marshall Harrison]

From reading these posts it sounds like some of you guys worked on the same ancient systems I did. I didn't do much with mainframes but I did play around with an Old PDP8 and paper tape while upgrading the rat lab equipment to run on an IBM AT.

If you are as old as you are claiming then you will probably remember this and enjoy it The Bastard Operator from Hell

He was kind of a hero for those of us doing system administration on Unix.

Turn your sound down before following that link if you are at work.

[Jim Becker]

Wow! There's a blast from the past. Street Talk was a remarkable idea and well ahead of the crowd - back in the day..

Indeed. And I had the pleasure of working on the team one year that provided the network for Interop. I'm still in touch with some of those folks, actually.

But at the time, like now, "the best technology" didn't always win the race and Novell ruled the major percentage of the market. (I feel the same way about a particular 800 pound gorilla in the telecom world, too...great marketing but significantly better technology is available if folks want it...and want to pay less, too. )

[Rich Engelhardt]

But at the time, like now, "the best technology" didn't always win the race and Novell ruled the major percentage of the market

Anyone want a real deal on a Beta video recorder? LOL! Yeah, true dat - about "the best" vs "the cheapest".
Beta beat VHS in every way but the most important - cost of tapes....

[Jim Becker]

Anyone want a real deal on a Beta video recorder? LOL! Yeah, true dat - about "the best" vs "the cheapest".
Beta beat VHS in every way but the most important - cost of tapes....

Yea, I was a Beta user, too...both for video and I also used it as a "mastering deck" when I was mixing down multi-track music recordings for awhile from a four-track.

[Wade Lippman]

I started out 49 years ago (lets see someone beat that) programming Fortran on Whatfiv.

Marshall, I also used a PDP8 in 1969. Geez that was hot for its day. 4k of memory IIRC. Don't remember the operating system, but the language was Focal.

[Jim Becker]

PL-1 at Penn State (punch cards ) and I later learned Fortran and Cobol "on the fly" so I could help my spouse at the time grade papers for the programming class she was TA-ing. She got very sick and we couldn't afford to lose the income...

[Mike Henderson]

I started out 49 years ago (lets see someone beat that) programming Fortran on Whatfiv.

Marshall, I also used a PDP8 in 1969. Geez that was hot for its day. 4k of memory IIRC. Don't remember the operating system, but the language was Focal.

That's easy. I did my first programming in Fortran in about 1963-1964 when I was in college. Programmed an electrical circuit design for a class. If I recall correctly, it was on an IBM 1401.

It was really assigned to be done with slide rules - profs were not computer oriented in those days. The speed at which the 1401 solved the design just amazed me. It would have taken many hours on a slide rule and there almost certainly would have been errors.

I did some PDP8 assembler language programming later in a programming class, probably in the 70's after my military service.

Mike

[Alan Rutherford]

I can't top either of you, but how often do you hear "Microsoft" and "Fortran" in the same sentence? Around 1979 I was getting my Computer Science degree. I had a Radio Shack TRS-80 and got away with doing a lot of my homework on that instead of the PDP-[something or other] on campus. Microsoft had Fortran for the TRS-80 on a cassette tape. The one I bought was defective and since I lived in Seattle, I took it back to Microsoft. At the time they had 10-15 employees and were upstairs from a bank in Bellevue, WA. I remember the place as being chaotic. Maybe "dynamic" would be a better word. They have upgraded their office a bit from those days.