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In Which OS Do You Feel More Productive?
HTMLChecker asks: "I found an article in which the author talks about how she is more productive using Mac OS X.
What about the people of Slashdot? Where do you feel more productive, in Linux? Windows? DOS? Mac OS X? Also, what is the best way to rate productivity in an OS?"
By the sheer number of FPS titles available native to the platform.
Inversely, of course.
M
trustedworlds.net - gaming, security, and the gunk that lives in between
To those of us that have either been on the platform for a while (or since the beginning), or have already switched from another platform to OS X, this article will not provide much that we do not already know. However, for those not familiar with OS X, it is a pretty good read. I have used many platforms in parallel for years from the early days of the PC revolution (Apple ][, Macintosh, TRS-80, Commodore, Amiga, Atari, Compaq, Windows) to the later workstations (Sun, SGI, NeXT) and have my likes and dislikes for all of them. Having said that however, my preference has fallen on OS X. It is sooo easy to use, is truly plug and play, is more stable, more secure, has most of the GUI and CLI integration a geek could want as well as a pretty good selection of software that makes things either 1) more enjoyable and/or 2) more productive.
For a long while, I had multiple systems on or under my desk, peaking at one time with an SGI Octane, PowerMac 9600, Windows NT, and a Linux box to perform my scientific work, serve a website, do graphics work and general productivity. All of that functionality now exists beautifully in one OS X machine freeing up considerable desktop space. Also, thank goodness for flat panel displays! I serve a couple of websites up on my workstation as well as use it for computational calculations, a front for distributed computing, writing papers, doing graphics for figures and illustrations, preparing presentations etc...etc...etc...
No other platform offers this degree of ease of use combined with flexibility and functionality.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
My productivity shoots up as soon as I see a Bash prompt.
that does not allow me to read slashdot all day.
I can open an average of 14 infected mails every minute, click on the atatchments and have them procreating in seconds, without having to save them, make them executable, then fiddle about trying to get them to run under Wine. Match that on any other OS.
No, really, Slashdot doesn't have enough rabid platform advocacy and name-calling. By all means let's put this on the front page and drum up some more.
Serious research is one thing, trolling for a flamewar is another.
-- the_Librarian
PalmOS 5. On my Treo 650 smartphone. The total integration, mobility, and preconfig'd apps for specific tasks - along with the dearth of options when things go wrong, except trying again, make it the perfect tool. It's practically invisible, while I'm communicating with people around the world, who don't need to have any equipment more special than a regular phone, or maybe any kind of email or web browser.
--
make install -not war
Personally it is not so much the operating system as the window manager. I use fluxbox becase I like being able to scoll between virtual desktops with my mouse scroll wheel. The advantage of Linux is that you have tons of window managers to choose from, as opposed to Windoze of OSX where you are limited to the one provided.
Because it has Visual Studio, which is the best IDE out there (in my opinion, of course).
I have achieved more accomplishments on a Nintendo then anywhere else. Including real life.
There is something to be said for the command line. I don't have a window manager on my Debian box and I always seem to get done what needs to be done. With Windows, I find myself up until 2am browsing the Internet for random shit. All because its available. I guess that makes me an Internet junkie.. I really should fix that. Anyway.. CLIs make me most productive 'cause of the lack of distraction.
What is your penile percentile?
Where do you feel more productive?
:)
Behind a firewall that blocks port 80
First it would depend on what a person does. I'd imagine someone working in prepress would be rather unproductive in Linux, given the lack of tools, but the same would not be true of a PERL developer.
However, generally, people are the most productive in the environment they are the most comfortable in. They know it, understand it, and thus can use it effectively. So Linux people will be the most productive in Linux, Mac people in OS-X, and so on. I'm also willing to bet that any of those people, properly retrained and acclimated to a new OS, would be basically equally productive, provided the new OS provided the same quality of tools.
For most jobs, a computer is just a tool that gets things done. When you get down to it, the OS holy-wars don't matter since most of what is talked about doesn't affect normal user productivity in a noticable way.
It's different than saying what OS is the best technical solution for a given problem. For example UNIX/Linux have a better text-mode remote access soltuion. An SSH terminal is nearly as good as being at the console. Not so with Windows, you need a graphical remote desktop session, there's a lot you can't do command line. Thus if text mode access is technicly better for a soltuion (perhaps bandwidth is extremely limited), then clearly a UNIX base is a better idea, for that factor at least.
But trying to ask which OS is generally more productive is just flamebait. All the zealots are going to say their OS is the fastest/easiest/most powerful and will probably have irrelivant personal anecdotes about how they can't deal with other OSes. In reality they are all different ways of doing thigns, with good points and bad points, and it's mostly just learning one and becomming proficient with it.
Riding a bike isn't a natural activity. You don't just sit down and do it. None the less, once learned and practised, it's literally second nature. Likewise no OS is so intuitive that all people can use it isntantly as though they'd been doing it their whole life, in part because what is intuitive vaires by person. However once you are used to the methods, you can get quite productive with all the majors.
I would define productivity as the ability to get your work done quickly with the least effort. For any given individual, this will be whatever system they are already familiar with. If that's Windows, Mac, or Linux for you, then that's what it is.
In absolute terms, I think the best productivity would be whatever OS or environment where the tools are forgotten about and your attention is solely focused on the task you are trying to accomplish. I think this might also be tempered by how long it takes to become an expert on the system (and how much effort is required to maintain that status).
Probably command line Unix type environments used by experts who really know the system are the have the highest level of productivity (most useful results for the least efforts). However, it takes a long time and lots of effort to become extremely proficient on the Unix command line.
Plus, comparing them like that is only valuable if you have no experience with computers or else want to maximize your efficiency in the long term at the cost of learning a new system.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
Who cares what OS you use?
It seems to me that most users choose their applications first and then find an OS that supports them, not the other way around.
Defecation occurs.
I think that Mac and Windows are both good enough now that the most important thing is which one you are used to. I use Mac at home and Windows at work. I am much faster at Office for Windows, because I use it all day and am used to the keyboard shortcuts in Windows. I can surf the internet faster [I almsot typed "more efficiently", but didn't think that made sense] at home because I am familiar with the Safari shortcuts and have a mouse with extra buttons that I configured for forward, backward and open in new window.
:) ]
Neither machine crashes very often. Neither has required maintenance voodoo. Each has certain OS features that I prefere over the other. [I hate window-in-window style of Windows applications. I prefer Windows Taskbar to the Dock.] The work machine has some weird remote access settings that IT occassionally tweaks when they modify our network.
I don't use Linux. [I know, what am I doing on Slashdot?
1)No popups from background windows poping up in the front, like in firefox or safari. If there is a popup in a different tab's page, it will not popup in front if im not focused on that page.
2) Faster bootup time.
3) when I shut down my computer, I can just click shut down and go away. In windows sometimes there would be a popup waiting for me to click. So I can't leave unless I the blue windows screen.
4) Expose..enough said
5) I have been using this for more than a month now and my Mini only got stuck once. Once! take that windows!
6) No need to install anti-virus software (yet)
7) No worries about the registry hell!
8) I donno why but all the programs (not just apples) works the way they are suppose to work! This is a very strange feeling. In windows world, I never expected programs to run the way they are suppose to.
9) this is just a small thing I noticed, but in real player ( sorry I have to use it), suppose I'm watching a video and shut it down in the middle. The next time i start that video I will see a mark where I left off the last time. This is a small thing but, if you are regular video watch like I, this is very very helpful.
I can keep going and going and going, but seriously, I can't imagine why I did not switched sooner . I'm planning on getting imac pretty soon (and give my mac mini to my dad or something)
"There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people."--Howard Zinn
First off, the main problem she cites with GNU/Linux is her constant urge to upgrade, and how upgrading in the particular distribution she chose breaks things. By the time we reach the OS X-fawning section of the article, her urge to constantly upgrade seems to have completely vanished. If she's ok with sitting still on a single version of her desktop manager, the problems she mentioned with KDE simply vanish.
Second, the majority of the issues she complains about with Windows are settings. That means, if you don't like the way it's set up, you can just change it. Since many people obviously don't share her (somewhat bizarre) preferences, this can only be a good thing.
Lastly, I think I'll simply mention the fact that she refers to GUI design choices (which happen to align with her own ideas) as "logical." What a joke.
It so happens that the very features she's so gleeful about annoy me to no end. I wouldn't give up GNU/Linux running XFCE 4 for anything, but I certainly wouldn't spew a load of crap onto the internet about how "logical" the design choices in XFCE are, because that is, in itself, illogical.
Really. I daily swap in and out between Solaris, WinXP, Linux and OS/2.
By far, OS/2 stays out of the way the most so I can focus on how to do the job within a particular application or task.
OS/2 is equally comfortable and useable either by pure command-line or pure GUI. Currently all the *NIX really suck if you wanted to go pure GUI.
(Go ahead, try one week without ever opening up a command-line prompt in *NIX and see how far you get).
WinXP, on the other hand, is a bitch when I go command-line, for whatever reason. Mostly because most of the tools, and Billy, don't expect the user to go there. Or something.
If I had to jump ship, I'd go OS X.
I hate my mac. I set the thing up, power it on and it just works. I don't need to install all kinds of software, upgrade drivers and put on millions of security updates? I mean, without those, what's the point?
Well, duh. Your slashes are going the wrong way for Windows. Jeez.
Warning: Apple/Nintendo fangirl. Likes her electronics cute & cuddly. May be rabid.
Let's see if they sneak up on you and get big while you're ignoring them.
:)
:)
I too thought that Apple was just niche market, nothing but. Graphics, publishing, edu. That was it. And really, before OS X, I pretty much considered they sucked.
Of course, now they make a product that fits my niche, that of a network guy with an open source leaning.
It's really the best of both worlds. It's the shiny interface that I'd buy for someone like my father or brother and it's got that raw powerful system behind it that I can open up into even in their version of Terminal.
This is half rhetorical and half serious, but please don't take it as a personal criticism, but "How many niches will they have to fit in before they become big enough?"
BTW, might want to get rid of that immediate link to the DVD copy crack on your site, http://brainglass.com/downloads.htm Them there RIAA, MPAA and SPA folks are monitoring this site, ya know.
-- There is no sig line, only Zuul.
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