Poll: What OS will you be on next year?

[not just souLLy now]

OSX, glad I made the switch. Still have a SFF shuttle machine with XP at home I'm running as a torrents/testing/media box but otherwise I can't see me ever buying or building another windows machine for myself.

[Juan]

which distro are you on, Juan?

Right now, Ubuntu 32 bits. When the next release comes out, I'll switch to Kubuntu 64 bits. Of all the KDE4 distros I've tried, it's the one I liked better.

[Zealous zerotype]

Next year I will still be using Leopard as all the macs I own are ppc macs and for the non mac machines I own they will either be using win7, tiny xp (but i have hopes for the netbook version of win7 for underpowered machines in general) or vista. As I have vista on my laptop, it runs fine and im just kinda meh about upgrading it since it is running fine and I don't wanna deal with a juarez copy since i dont wanna buy a bunch of upgrades. I still have a machine dualbooting between xp and win7 and it is kinda hard to decide as win7 does not really add that much yay, but ill probally still take it to win7 anyways. As for snow leopard I wish I had an intel mac (I have aa 32bit intel hackintosh, but i do not think itll run snowleopard, if so awesome), but hell i still have 2 machines running tiger just fine (my ibook which i use 5days out of the week if not more while at work) and my b&w g3 which I dont have a place for it atm which is a shame as it is a complete matching system (monitor, kb, etc..)

[AuroEdge]

I'm fighting a fight I can't win, but I will eventually have to learn how to use a mac for school. They require the use of too many apps that are mac only for me to try and stick to Windows.

[impetus]

I ready preordered a copy of Win7 HP, then realized it didn't have the XP compatibility virtualization. Doggone it

[Safety in Nimbus]

Ubuntu. I've been using Kubuntu since edgy eft (6.10) and I recently switched to the gnome interface. Although it's not as aesthetically appealing as the KDE interface I'm drawn to it for it's simplicity. I'm really impressed with Windows 7 so I may install that on my wifes laptop.

I would really like to try a mac OS but that actually requires a mac. I know there's a way to install it on a PC which I may check into for one of my two spare desktops that I have laying around the house somewhere.

[|darc|]

How's it going KoF? Haven't seen you here in quite a while.

My desktop is running XP right now, but I just downloaded the Windows 7 final version and I'll install that and see how it is.

[Mattiethomas]

On Vista now, but I tried the Windows 7 beta and liked it a lot. Much faster and more smooth. I'll probably upgrade sometime next year when I get bored of Vista.

[AuroEdge]

My school will be a quick adopter so I'm hoping Windows 7 isn't too much more than Vista is right now ($14.95).

[pavelbure]

most likely snow leopard. $29 upgrade is like nothing for a upgrade.

[BlackAura]

Despite typing that last post on my Macbook, from Mac OS X, I completely forgot about it. This thing will probably be running Mac OS X 10.6 next year as well.

I've been using Windows 7 for a few days, trying to get some work done, and it's actually really starting to irritate me. Specifically, the new taskbar. The taskbar itself works fine - very much like the dock in Mac OS X, in fact. As with the dock, blurring the line between a running and non-running application is a good thing. If I want Firefox, I click on the icon, and Firefox appears, whether it was running or not. Great.

The problem is that no Windows application, including those that come with the OS, is designed for this kind of task switcher. They're designed for the Windows 95 style taskbar, with a button for each window. As soon as you have more than one window open for an application, it starts getting awkward to switch between them.

Mac OS X has this problem as well, but it's handled differently. For one thing, most OS X applications don't open lots of extra windows (usually just the one). Clicking an icon on the dock brings all of that application's windows to the front immediately. I much prefer this behaviour, particularly for things like Finder.

The Windows 7 version of Explorer actually resembles Finder a lot. However, I only dislike Finder - I actually loathe Explorer in Windows 7. As with Finder, you pretty much need to have multiple windows open to do anything useful with it, but unlike Finder, switching between windows is a pain in the ass. At least in Finder you get spring loaded folders...

It also sorely needs something like Expose - a way to switch between all the windows in the current application, without having to squint at tiny thumbnails, that all look identical anyway. And no, Flip 3D just doesn't cut it - it's completely useless.

That's not even thinking about all the window management things I miss from Linux (particularly KDE). Being able to move a window using alt+drag, rather than using the title bar. Being able to resize a window without needing to use the edge or corners of the window. Snapping windows to the edge of the screen and to each other when moving and resizing them. The ability to send a window to the back by middle-clicking the title bar. Being able to shade a window (reduce it to just the title bar). Being able to make any window always appear on top. Being able to scroll using the scroll wheel without giving the thing I want to scroll keyboard focus (OS X and Linux do this correctly - the scroll wheel behaves like a mouse button, not a keyboard button). Or, from Mac OS X, being able to select a background window by clicking anywhere on it, without that click triggering something inside the window.

[Zealous zerotype]

BA, My best suggestion to you is to find a good expose clone for windows I remember seeing some and that is with out a doubt what I will be using on windows 7 once I install it (if I find the one I was talking about seeing I'll link it as it was very good).

[Specially Cork]

The problem is that no Windows application, including those that come with the OS, is designed for this kind of task switcher. They're designed for the Windows 95 style taskbar, with a button for each window. As soon as you have more than one window open for an application, it starts getting awkward to switch between them.

Every application I have, I hover over the icon on the taskbar and preview of all the windows appear and I just click on one to view it, or click the X to close it, the icon also expands with little tab marks to show how many windows are open. I've not found an app this doesn't work with yet, and I wouldn't consider it awkward.

[|darc|]

The problem is that no Windows application, including those that come with the OS, is designed for this kind of task switcher. They're designed for the Windows 95 style taskbar, with a button for each window. As soon as you have more than one window open for an application, it starts getting awkward to switch between them.

Every application I have, I hover over the icon on the taskbar and preview of all the windows appear and I just click on one to view it, or click the X to close it, the icon also expands with little tab marks to show how many windows are open. I've not found an app this doesn't work with yet, and I wouldn't consider it awkward.

I find this extremely frustrating. But then again, I turn off window grouping in the taskbar in Windows XP as well. It just doesn't make sense for me to click on the taskbar icon and click again on the window I want to view. It takes too long and it frustrates me when I'm trying to quickly complete a task. And because Windows apps are usually maximized, it's even more difficult to get through apps that have multiple windows as I have to essentially deal with a taskbar with a depth of two.

It's so much easier to do it in OS X with hot corners. Fitt's Law says the four pixels most easy to access are the pixel the cursor's already at and the four corners of the screen, and the four corners are what I use to access my desktop and array of open windows with Exposé. A flick of my wrist and a returning click gets me from any window of any app to any other window. Snow Leopard's Exposé is even better, with better window scaling and displaying of minimized windows (which is great, because minimizing and hiding are better differentiated now).

Windows 7 is really mixing up the task-based nature of the old Windows system with the application-based nature of OS X and it's a usability nightmare. I don't see the point in changing everything if they're not going to have a total overhaul that makes sense.

[Ex-Cyber]

Count me as another vote for "the Windows 7 taskbar sucks". It's not a dealbreaker, but if I was going to move to Windows 7 I'd seriously consider looking into an alternative desktop shell. One thing not mentioned so far is that window titles are hidden without clicking on the icon. It's a somewhat common practice among Windows apps to display status/progress information in the window title so that you can glance at an app in the taskbar and see how it's doing without bringing up its window (and in fact without even touching the mouse or keyboard). I guess MS had to put an end to such an abusive practice.

[Zealous zerotype]

for all of you complaining about having to click through windows n such you should just upgrade to multimonitors my current setup consist of 4 screens and I find it hard to go back to less. Althgouh when using my ibook it is very hard, but again I find expose to do a great job at handeling that sooo expose clone for vista/win7.

edit: It does sadden me that multimonitors is far superior in windows than osx, I'm still trying to find a program that does what ultramon does for osx (double taskbar, send this windows to next monitor, etc...)

[Ex-Cyber]

for all of you complaining about having to click through windows n such you should just upgrade to multimonitors

My usage style is to have one window maximized most of the time. It's not that I couldn't find room for other windows, it's that I have no desire to look at them.

[Zealous zerotype]

Again, the beauty of multimonitors. You think I look at all 4 of my monitors at once? One screen is strictly irc, the next is web browsing (this is my largest screen and gets use for watching videos/playing games as usual, but I can only make use of that screen at that time anyhow), then I have a screen that I keep my im convos on and the other screen is used for email and various other things that get used as needed. Obviously this can change depending on what I'm doing (photoshop uses 2 monitors, but i can still browse the web on other monitors and Im while needed).
It does make me wish even more so that multimonitor suport in osx was even better (such as using maxivista to link multi computers together and making their displays work together as one desktop enviroment which despite my love of osx does make me want to use windows for that).
Sometime in the future I can hopefully have 4 matching monitors in a grid with 2 different "aux" monitors, but untill I get the funds/capable computers/ software that would make this not horrible on osx I shall refrain for now.

[gamedudex2]

both the new mac osx and windows 7 via bootcamp

[Specially Cork]

Again, the beauty of multimonitors. You think I look at all 4 of my monitors at once? One screen is strictly irc, the next is web browsing (this is my largest screen and gets use for watching videos/playing games as usual, but I can only make use of that screen at that time anyhow), then I have a screen that I keep my im convos on and the other screen is used for email and various other things that get used as needed. Obviously this can change depending on what I'm doing (photoshop uses 2 monitors, but i can still browse the web on other monitors and Im while needed).
It does make me wish even more so that multimonitor suport in osx was even better (such as using maxivista to link multi computers together and making their displays work together as one desktop enviroment which despite my love of osx does make me want to use windows for that).
Sometime in the future I can hopefully have 4 matching monitors in a grid with 2 different "aux" monitors, but untill I get the funds/capable computers/ software that would make this not horrible on osx I shall refrain for now.

I use a laptop on the coffee table. We're 2 very different guys.