Operating System Reliability

[MizzouRah]

Per PC Magazine (my favorite magazine next to golf digest and men's health).

The Most stable to the least stable:

Mac OS X
Windows XP
Windows 2000
Windows NT
Windows 98
Windows ME


No surprise ME is the worst OS around, but I didn't think NT was more stable than 98. If you have a 300mhz or better pc running windows and don't have XP, now is a good time to upgrade. With SP 2 coming out soon, it'll be right up there with Mac's OS.

Aren't those new G5's intriguing?




Todd

[Draft Dodger]

seeems about right .

[Alan T]

Nice to see PC magazine left out real OS's. What a joke. Mac OSX is pretty cool though, but not including in Linux, BSD, etc is pretty sad.

[Alan T]

dola, NT is more stable than 98 because of how the kernel in 98 was built around the dos shell. NT was a fairly stable OS, but lacked great flexibility. That was 2000's selling point.. the stability of NT, and flexibility of 98

[MizzouRah]

Originally posted by Alan T
Nice to see PC magazine left out real OS's. What a joke. Mac OSX is pretty cool though, but not including in Linux, BSD, etc is pretty sad.


Take a poll and see just how many people use Linux, Unix, or BSD at home. Workstation users would kill you if you talked about Windows, but the general pop uses Windows or Mac OS. They should have included them though, but most people would say, "Honey, what in the heck is a Linux?" :)


Todd

[Alan T]

Have you checked the percentage of users running linux at home vs users of Mac OS X? Unfortunatly the world is heavily Windows populated at the home. But you are correct, magazines like that seek to appeal to the uneducated computer owner. I just get irritated at lists that are non-sensical... well that and I am in a bad mood tonight :)

[Draft Dodger]

in fairness, I don't think Linux users are a large part of the target market for PC Magazine

[Alan T]

I actually didn't think Mac users were either though.. I had always thought of PC magazine as a windows OS source..

[primelord]

Originally posted by Alan T
Nice to see PC magazine left out real OS's. What a joke. Mac OSX is pretty cool though, but not including in Linux, BSD, etc is pretty sad.

I do Unix system administration for a living so you're not going to get any argument from me that Linux and the other *nix flavors should have been on the list, but PC mag's target audience isn't generally Unix users. So it seems reasonable that they would leave it off the list. Putting Solaris and FreeBSD on the would probably just confuse your average home Windows user. They want to know of the products they are likely to use which is the most stable.

[primelord]

Dola,

It seems I was beaten to the punch. Need to learn to type faster. :)

[Alan T]

Ok, I will try to clarify my original thought/post since I think it is coming across like I am saying something else..

I guess my frustration is when infactual lists are put out as if they were the truth.. I think things like this help add to the lack of a great number of people demainding better quality from their OS than what Microsoft provides.

In my mind, if you never educate people that there are better options, then nothing will ever change.

[MizzouRah]

I do Unix system administration for a living

I envy you for knowing Unix, although one can never know enough. I may look you up when I get stuck on a call. ;)

They cover Mac's a tad, although 90% is Windows. I just wanted to let people know Windows XP has really been improved and closely matches Mac's outstanding OS.


Todd

[mckerney]

Mac OS X is the most stable? In my experience using that it has crashed more than any other and been far more difficult.

[MizzouRah]

Originally posted by Alan T
Ok, I will try to clarify my original thought/post since I think it is coming across like I am saying something else..

I guess my frustration is when infactual lists are put out as if they were the truth.. I think things like this help add to the lack of a great number of people demainding better quality from their OS than what Microsoft provides.

In my mind, if you never educate people that there are better options, then nothing will ever change.


What's the harm in putting out a general os list? I think Microsoft provides a damn good os with 2000 and XP. For today's users who want everything easy and pretty much fool proof, MS has done and outstanding job. Try explaining Unix to my Mom over Windows XP. I think you get the picture.


Todd

[Alan T]

Thats the confusion point though.. Stable and Easy are two totally different things :) There is no doubt that Windows runs circles around unix for ease of use. But this list was stability :)

[Franklinnoble]

Well, since we're nit-picking...


Isn't OS X based on UNIX anyway?

What's odd is that it's not a "PC" operating system, per se. Coming from "PC" Magazine, you'd think they'd focus on operating systems that run on i386 hardware.

So, the list should basically have about 20 flavors of Linux listed at the top. The most stable Windows OS's weren't even listed - specifically, Windows Server 2003 Datacenter and Windows Server 2000 Datacenter.

[daedalus]

Mac OS X is the most stable? In my experience using that it has crashed more than any other and been far more difficult.I've never used OS X but I've used NeXT a few times and I'm surprised that OS X would not be stable.

What's the harm in putting out a general os list? I think Microsoft provides a damn good os with 2000 and XP. For today's users who want everything easy and pretty much fool proof, MS has done and outstanding job. Try explaining Unix to my Mom over Windows XP. I think you get the picture.Not a thing. And I definitely agree that the *nix family is nowhere nearly as "user-friendly" or popular as the Windows family of OSes. Nor am I asking a Windows-oriented magazine to pimp a different OS.

But if you're going to put together a list then you* should do a halfway decent job at it. If you are making a list of "safest" cars that purports to be an informed list and excludes some, then as a reader I can only infer that those were not.

Alan's last point is also outstanding. The list is "Most Stable OS", not "Most Popular" or "Most Stable Microsoft OS". It doesn't matter if Granny doesn't know Unix from eunuchs, if they're to claim to review the "most stable". If an explanation of what it is would then be needed, it would not be the first time a magazine uses a sidebar for a brief explanation of terms.

*NOTE: I'm not saying "you" as if to imply that you personally made a list, just a general "you".

[daedalus]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
Well, since we're nit-picking...

Isn't OS X based on UNIX anyway?

What's odd is that it's not a "PC" operating system, per se. Coming from "PC" Magazine, you'd think they'd focus on operating systems that run on i386 hardware.

So, the list should basically have about 20 flavors of Linux listed at the top. The most stable Windows OS's weren't even listed - specifically, Windows Server 2003 Datacenter and Windows Server 2000 Datacenter.Well, Hell, let's play the nit-pick game, then . . .

Yes, OS X is based on a flavour of Unix.

And, why exactly should a "PC" Magazine concentrate only on i386 hardware? Which part of "personal computer" implies i386 or the x86 architecture?

Oh, since we're playing the great nit-pick game, there are not 20 flavours of Linux. There is one. There maybe 20 distributions but not 20 flavours.

And, no, they wouldn't need to list all 20 distributions and all 37 variants of Unix. It's still Unix at the core. A simple Unix/Linux entry would have been nice.

[Franklinnoble]

Originally posted by daedalus
Well, Hell, let's play the nit-pick game, then . . .

Yes, OS X is based on a flavour of Unix.

And, why exactly should a "PC" Magazine concentrate only on i386 hardware? Which part of "personal computer" implies i386 or the x86 architecture?

Oh, since we're playing the great nit-pick game, there are not 20 flavours of Linux. There is one. There maybe 20 distributions but not 20 flavours.

And, no, they wouldn't need to list all 20 distributions and all 37 variants of Unix. It's still Unix at the core. A simple Unix/Linux entry would have been nice.

Yeah... while we're at it, why wasn't the BE Box or Amiga mentioned? For that matter, DOS 6.22 was pretty solid, and I've never seen CP/M crash. And then there's the many robust versions of NetWare and OS/2 that never get any props these days... :rolleyes:

[daedalus]

Originally posted by Franklinnoble
Yeah... while we're at it, why wasn't the BE Box or Amiga mentioned? For that matter, DOS 6.22 was pretty solid, and I've never seen CP/M crash. And then there's the many robust versions of NetWare and OS/2 that never get any props these days... :rolleyes:Right. And how many of those are still out and being actively developed? Very good.

I actually thought BeOS had some good potential when I heard about it. Sadly, never saw or got to use it, though.

[Fritz]

*puts on superdork hat*

you all know that XP and 2000 and are pretty much same in terms of the internals? XP has some expanded (or collapsed) feature sets, but the nuts and bolts parts are..... extremely close.

[Alan T]

Right, both are built on the revamp kernel that they wanted in order to combine their NT and their dos based (98/95) kernels. XP just was their attempt to add new functions and to force everyone to lease their operating system instead of buy it. Ugh.. bleh...

[Karim]

Well, I'm definitely behind the times. I'm still running Windows 98. I never had the urge or need to upgrade to 2000 and I'm not about to spend over $300* for Windows XP when everything I'm running is working fine. When I can no longer do what I need to or can no longer purchase the software I want, then I will reluctantly consider it.

I took a look at the FreeBSD website upon recommendation and would give it a whirl if I had an extra computer to screw up. I just know if I tried it on my only machine, I'd end up in serious problems.

*It's actually $321 CDN. I haven't found a better price for the full upgrade (home edition). I'd need the full edition rather than just the upgrade because I don't have the Windows 98 CD that was used at the initial manufacturer's install.

[Marc Vaughan]

I'm surprised that Linux wasn't included because most PC users who would purchase a PC mag will have heard something about it (whether they're interested in using it or not).

The order of the list doesn't surprise me at all - I would note though that the reason OS-X is likely top is partially down to the following:

* Mac users have less games/software loaded on their system (especially weird software which does odd things).
* Mac users are much less likely to catch virus's because as a more 'niche' platform fewer viruses are targetted at them.
* There is less hardware available with which to screw up their systems with dodgy drivers

I use Macs and PC's at work and find that they're both very good systems. I'm more at 'home' on a PC because I use them more often, but I find the Mac's very aethestically pleasing and no worse* once you're familiar with their use.

*stability or productivity-wise

[WussGawd]

Originally posted by primelord
I do Unix system administration for a living so you're not going to get any argument from me that Linux and the other *nix flavors should have been on the list, but PC mag's target audience isn't generally Unix users. So it seems reasonable that they would leave it off the list. Putting Solaris and FreeBSD on the would probably just confuse your average home Windows user. They want to know of the products they are likely to use which is the most stable.

At a minimum, Linux should have been included.

The rest, as others have said, don't really touch home users at all...but a lot of geekier PC users are at least familiar with Linux as an OS.