I took this poll to see what other peoples opinions were and also to help a friend decide what to get becouse he wanted a second opinion. So I said i'll give you more than that and here we are.
Depends on what you want... if you're worried about stability, get Win2k. If compatibility with games or old apps is important and you're willing to sacrifice a little stability for that, get XP. If you have a Pentium 90, get Win95. Don't forget the server versions either.
I am offended by the "The last two are just for those who really don't know." statement. Those 2 are by far the most stable OS available. Now if you specifically want a stable windows os...modify XP and yer golden.
There are two big advantages in Win2k and later:
1) they don't require for restarting a machine in most cases when Win9x does. Sometimes it is enough to relogin, sometimes WDM helps very much...
2) their internationalization support is MUCH better... but there are still some bugs in Win2k, that has been fixed (or avoided :) ) in WinXP, so XP forever! ;)
I have to agree with Devilboi here. *nix OS's totally out perform Windows in almost all areas. In fact if it wasn't for *nix, we'd not have this wonderfull Windows shell we've all grown to love.
If you have to run Windows (For games etc.) WinXP or 2K is the way to go. You better run litestep on them though. :p
Sorry DeViLbOi, I should have clerified alot better.
I have used both of the "other" OS's and love them both. I have another system that runs both Mandrake and Red Hat. But for the purposes of the poll that line ment for those who haven't tried or don't know much about windows. It was sort of a safty to keep noobs from voting without any real knowlage of the software. So I appologize to all those who were offended.
I just can't believe someone actually voted for WinME...
I use Win ME at home and XP at work and I don't know why someone voted for WinME. XP and 2k are zillion times better, I guess it's a matter of taste, maybe?
The last two options of the poll have nothing to do with it's title, 'cause you're asking about Windows OS
dev, can you find out who voted for WinME so that we can publicly humiliate him? I mean, he deserves it. he DID vote for it of his own free (though obviously demented) will.
deuce: I did it.
I am sorry for trolling.
I was tempted by there being no prior votes.
I only wanted to introduce bias for counter-votes.
I apologize for my idiotic behavior and any suffering I may have induced as a result.
Post mortem Addendum:
XP > 2K > 98SE > 98 > 95 > ME
98SE would be best if your target computer hasn't enough ram for NT.
/me stares contemptuously at tnl
ok, tnl now officially loses his geek ID card. and gets a *smack* on the head.
don't you hate when irc carries over to the forums?
I should remove ME, it's not only the worst windows but now people are doing stupid things ie. voting for it. Just haveing it there is a shame so I too am sorry. Oh im sure you are wondering why no NT. This is becouse we aren't talking about networks only personall OS's. Like I said before this is for a friend. So I thank you all who have posted and or voted.
I had less problems with Win98SE, at the time that I was using it. It was stable, rarely ever crashed. And if it did it was becuase I overloaded it. I don't particularly like WinXP, however, with it's _xp_Patch_ glory it is getting better. But seriously, at it's base. It's a POS, do you remember MSBlaster - an OS that can let such things occur on extremely important pieces of the OS, is junky. There are so many other examples that cause crashes... Have you ever read through the knowlegde base on mircosoft.com. There is over 2000+ articles on WinXP alone. The restarts, the messed up system restore, and the annoyance of having forced users add up to make it a NO GO OS.
"an OS that can let such things occur on extremely important pieces of the OS, is junky." well, all Win OS's were affected except for win9x. and hey, when you develop an os as huge as windows is, it's gonna have holes. I mean, *nix has holes too, the only difference is that 99.9% of virus authors are going after the big bad M$, so *nix is relatively safe.
"The restarts" huh? what restarts? my pc never restarts unless if I tell it to.
" the annoyance of having forced users" no clue what you're talking about there...
Forced users: the profile system with xp, and the extra navigating that one has to do ie,
C:/Documents and Settings/Users/User_Name is annoying.
*nix is infinitely more difficult to mess with than XP. Firstly, you require root access to change anything major on the computer. So unless you have the password, you can't do shiite without the user of the comp doing it for you. Meaning that, if you want to break a *nix computer the user has to assist you in doing so, wether they know it or not.
The restarts are annoying, wether you wait until later to do them or not, I like leaving my computer at the ready all the time. Unfortunately, with XP, if you want major software changes to take place - you HAVE to restart.
Some articles of interest with respect to the security issue ( There was one that I really wanted to copy here but I can't find it! )
AGAINST *nix
http://www.linuxsucks.org/read.html?postid=5595&replies=47
FOR *nix
http://search.linuxsecurity.com/feature_stories/interview-avi-2.html
Although, of course, one must remember where information is coming from. Both sites would show bias in opposing directions.
Peace!
You are not required to have any users on a nix box. You can setup a system to automagically log you in as root and batta bing batta boom yer done. I have never had to restart a Linux box after a software install...application failure..blah blah blah. You only really need to do it when the system dies. There are security holes in every OS...things just happen to get fixed quicker in *nix.
Hey now, don't go sayin bad things about *nix. It just takes time to learn what you have to do in order to work with it smoothly. Remember it took time to learn windows.
Who said something bad about it? I was saying good stuff... maybe my tone was off, but I was saying it from a security and stability standpoint...Being that *nix, is much more secure and stable. I've read a million arguements for both sides... but there are some things about *nix that make it so much more appealing. It's to bad that the learning curve is disgusting, and that most windows programs can't be hacked over to *nix ( without paying a couple $$$$'s for cygwin, or spend the TIME TIME TIME to figure out STUPID wine ). Otherwise I would use it all the time.
Peace!
OK I understand. But it sounded like you were saying that possibly the best OS ,being *nix, ever made wasn't woth having. But now I know thats not what you were saying you were trying to make a point and I can respect that. So I am sorry that I got upset.