Windows 7

[Husar]

It's nothing new either though, they already released a free beta and free releasde candidate for Vista and they were also good for like 6 or 12 months IIRC.
I also had some beta of WinXP once that was good for 6 months and when it wouldn't automatically activate once long after XP had already been released, the lady on the phone gave me an activation number anyway.

[Lemur]

Here it is.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Some pretty heafty system requirements right there: 1GHz processor with 1GB RAM means what exactly to one-legged-hamster-powered netbooks?

Ah well, I think I'll opt for a taste of Leonidas' finest instead.

[Mouzafphaerre]

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Telle! Long time no hear from the Occultus.
.

[Lemur]

Pricing announced. Comparable to Vista, across the board.

Of course if your place of business has a "dual use" license, the cost is zero. That's always nice.

[Beskar]

I have to admit, I hate the upgrade editions. As you have to have the previous installed to install the newer, but I like to reformat my computer, etc, if I am swapping the Operating System, thus, you are unable to do that.

[caravel]

Ah well, I think I'll opt for a taste of Leonidas' finest instead.

I gave it a whirl a few days ago and I have to say I'm still not impressed with Fedora. Maybe I just miss the whole point of bloated and unstable alpha and beta software...? Personally I prefer Debian stable to anything else. There is a lot to be said for a distro that doesn't crap itself and break at the next kernel update...

[Tellos Athenaios]

Rawhide isn't for those who want a production system. Altough so far the Ubuntu and Kubuntu alphas have been good with me, and they are Debian Sid + some more [beta KDE 4.3, definitely worth it and Debian testing is still on 4.2.4 which is over 3 months old! ]. I tried Leonidas in Alpha too. On the upshot: palimpsest, plymouth and Anaconda (which combines the simplicity of the Ubuntu installer with similar flexibility as the Debian version when it comes to partitioning; and much more flexibility when it comes to selecting which apps to install). On the downside: packagekit's GNOME interface isn't really up to the task; and using yum from the command line is not a very pleasant experience either: for starters the package names are looooooong.

Running alpha software does have a major advantage w.r.t. the graphics drivers though. Doubt that Debian stable has KMS for intel cards or compositing support for ATI HD4870 in the ati driver yet.

[Husar]

look, and that's probably why most people ignore Linux, there are more versions than a normal person can remember and you have to try them all to find the one that suits you best, then tweak it for weeks, learn tons of written code to do that, then....
Or maybe that's just why I will prefer to use Win 7.

[Beskar]

I know that Ubuntu hates my computer (doesn't even load), I had to use Knoppix which looks rubbish and styled like Windows 95.

[caravel]

Running alpha software does have a major advantage w.r.t. the graphics drivers though. Doubt that Debian stable has KMS for intel cards or compositing support for ATI HD4870 in the ati driver yet.

I suppose it depends on what you want out of an OS and what you want to do with it. Personally I like Linux a lot but I want something that works and doesn't require me to dedicate days tinkering around. I've been through most major distros since 2002 when I started with Mandrake. Out of all of these I've dound Debian to be the most reliable and stable but even that has issues - yes it's out of date once it's stable, but what the hell Windows XP is out of date. The fglrx driver is a pain in the arse. I spent about 3 hours last night trying to get it running on Debian testing and failed. It's just not worth the hassle. Today I went and clean installed stable as that has always worked ok. The result was another disaster. Despite it fetching gnome from the repos during install, it wasn't installed and I've no idea why. Anyway the disc hit the wall and now I've reinstalled Windows XP. The result is that everything works. No more problems with wireless, no more glitches, crashes and general flakiness. I just don't have the time or patience to dedicate to Linux anymore - I must be getting old. I'm glad to hear it works for you though Tellos, stick with it.

[Tillan]

Some pretty heafty system requirements right there: 1GHz processor with 1GB RAM means what exactly to one-legged-hamster-powered netbooks?

Ah well, I think I'll opt for a taste of Leonidas' finest instead.

In actual fact, win 7 works surprisingly well on one-legged-hamster-powered netbooks, and I do mean surprisingly, I wasnt expecting it to install at all on mine (was expecting to run out of disk space) but it did, and it runs really well. Even without a page file.

[Lemur]

Sixty percent of businesses plan to skip Windows 7. Are they the same firms that took a pass on Vista? And what will gamers do, 'cause let's face it, we're the only ones who matter.

ScriptLogic Corp, which provides help to companies in managing their Microsoft Windows-based networks, sent out 20,000 surveys to information technology administrators to learn the state of the market.

Many companies have rejected Windows Vista as unstable. For example, the chip maker Intel Corp, Microsoft's long- time partner in producing personal computers, has stayed with the older XP system.

The survey found about 60 percent of those surveyed have no plans to deploy Windows 7, 34 percent will deploy it by the end of 2010 and only 5.4 percent will deploy by year's end.

[drone]

I would imagine that some of that 60% have already moved (or are in the painful process of moving) to Vista. Other factors may be the economy (why blow capital dollars on upgrading if stuff still works today and the future is uncertain), or the switch to open alternatives such as Linux or Solaris.

As for PC gamers, we don't actually matter any more. Microsoft essentially killed off that market niche with the XBox and the overall push towards console gaming.

[Lemur]

As for PC gamers, we don't actually matter any more.

The heck you say! I'm special!