Operating systems...my secret love.
 

I've been this way since I was a kid with a Commodore Amiga. I love operating systems. My wife considers it almost a sickness; she is perfectly happy running one and the same Windows on the computer year in year out - I am not. I switch to the latest Windows as soon as it is out, I always install updates and patches when available...latest DirectX, latest WM apps and shit... I try out Linux distros, various other free OSs. I LOVED OS/2 Warp back in the day.

I install a copy of Windows, and a few months later I find myself feeling like wiping the HD clean and installing something else on it again. Perhaps Linux and XP both? Or 2k Server instead of XP?

It's sick. I know.

Speaking of OSs...which would you rather run - Windows 2000 Server, or XP Pro?

I think I may have the same sickness - but I put each OS on a new box instead of wiping it. That's why I have 21 boxen now.

i;d rather run 2k server on a server, and xp pro on a desktop.

I'm the same way with OS's.. always have to change, try something new (or old) and different. About a year ago we installed OS/2 Warp 4 on a box here.. just to play with it.. that brought back some memories!

I agree w/ charliex in terms of what to use.

I guess I'm moving towards XP - it's quite pretty and has some nice extras. However, I still really like 2000 Pro ("really" in terms of "much better than 98 or 95"). Give me RISC OS any day - if anyone here has heard of it!

I would rather use neither of those listed. I think the reason becomes quite obvious when I give a basic list of the operating systems I can find around this house:

Linux (debian, mostly)
FreeBSD
NetBSD (sparc)
OpenBSD (sparc)
Solaris
SunOS (4.1.4, before it became solaris, the sysV derivative)
Ultrix (Yes, really, it's on a decstation 5000/150)
Irix
HPUX
OpenVMS (both VAX and Alpha)
OS/400 (running on an AS400 9404 F10)

I'm sure that I've missed something in there. But as can be seen, I'm a collector of obscure hardware and software.

Same here!

-Lasereth

We have RISC machines at work.

Personally I'm a gentoo linux whore. Desktop all the way. 2k for gaming.

Nothing but Debian for my server though.

RISCOS cool, i have been looking around for an archimedes or a riscos machine, i program in ARM daily, great OS back in the day

Personal I like WinXP running in classic mode...... just like the extra bits, and perfer the classic interface...

i wouldn't install windows 2003 server on a Desktop. Windows XP is cheaper and more suitable.

Re: Operating systems...my secret love.
 

Personally, I used to run Win2kServer, but when XP came out and it was stable, I started using that. I perfer it over 2k now with the exception of IIS only allowing 1 website and only 2 concurrent connections.

I've run pretty much every version of windows since 3.1, so seeing where windows is today is nice, but annoying with all the viruses/holes.

As for other distros, I usually have 1 or 2 linux distros installed at once for when I'm bored. Except for those times when I'm not paying attention, and reading the help docs to closely and I do a mke2fs /dev/hda1 which is what the manual said, but happened to be my XP partition :( That was a sad day.

21 boxes?!? That's definitely a sickness.