If you have installed Vista, what is your primary OS?

I'm curious to see what people who *have* tried Vista on their computers currently use as their primary operating system. Please only vote if you've actually used Vista on your main machine.

 

Vista has been the only OS on my desktop, and my laptop has XP. My laptop actually started with XP and has dual booted with Vista and Ubuntu in the past. For the only computer to see the RTM version, my desktop, it hasn't looked back.

 

First installed Vista via Boot Camp on a MacBook Pro. I really didn't like Vista so I replaced it with XP Pro. My primary OS is OSX and secondary is XP.

 

Installed Vista 64 on my Desktop, and it would not run Creative Suite CS3 very well. So I had to down grade to XP.

My Laptop will be primarily Vista for awhile when I mess with Ubuntu and get everything running fine, and learn the ins and outs of Vista. Then Ubuntu primary, and Vista secondary.

 

as of right now vista is my primary, but im trying to get ubuntu on here, but since my graphics card is too new, the current stable release of ubuntu wont work so i am going to try version 7.10 and see if i can live with that one.

 

I have Vista, XP, and Ubuntu on my laptop.

XP is my main OS to get things done. I also boot up Ubuntu a lot for Surfing, experimenting, and Fun(and VMWare XP).

I get excited about Vista every time I use it, but between XP and Ubuntu I find it hard to have a reason to boot Vista.

 

I'm back using XP since Vista decided to de-activate itself twice in the past week during driver installs. I had to call and activate which I did the first time and uninstalled it after it de-activated again yesterday.

The real pirates get away while me with a legit key have to call in and tell them why I reinstalled and prove that I am not a thief just to use Vista. Bleh, back to my legit OEM Xp which doesnt need any activation.

 

That's what ticks me off too. Pirates just used cracked versions or steal keys from the web. So they never have to call India and dick around with activation whenever Windows takes a dump.

There must be a better way.

 

Not really a problem with Vista since non-OEM/corporate versions of XP requires the same activation. I agree it's doing nothing to prevent piracy though, and that their honest customers suffer from it.

As for Vista, I decided to give it a try when it was made aviable on MSDN-AA in April, have been using it since then without any problems.

Didn't exactly expect that of a new OS running on ~4 year old hardware with no drivers supplied by the motherboard manufacturer (NVidia, you suck!). Only thing that Vista didn't install by itself on my NForce 3 was the "MIDI-device", which I honestly haven't missed

I've been doing some gaming as well, haven't encountered any problems there either, old and new games run just fine. ATi has provided GPU drivers that works, and works well, for me since I began using Vista.

To sum it up, I think 80% of the people who think Vista sucks haven't tried it themselves, or have no idea which problems are caused by a "crappy OS", low-quality/faulty hardware or user error. I do think NVidia should fire the person in charge of driver developement for Vista though. Not having final driver versions for a major new OS when you had 6+ months to develop them is just weak.

 

Vista is the only OS on my notebook. Stability-wise, application-wise, driver-wise, no hiccups.

Agreed. As for that 80%, the jabs are never going to stop. That's never going to change, the little pups are gonna try to bring the big dog down, it's a part of life.

 

Linux as primary, Vista as secondary for me, until I can find my lost XP disk, of course. I just use Windows for gaming, can't stand the default UI and speed reductions in Windows to use it for general work.

 

You should all just apply for statehood in the USA too. Just give in... you little pups will never bring the big dog down.

What's that you say? It's different? No, it's not. I dislike Vista because the company that makes it doesn't respect me as a person. I'm a dollar sign, I'm a potential pirate, I'm a consumer, but I'm not a customer or a person. Forget that. I've got better ways to spend my money, on a company that doesn't use my resources to prevent me from using my software and media as I see fit, and believes that I'm a potential criminal, rather than a customer to be wooed into buying more of their services and products.

 

Couldn't have said it better myself.

That, and Aero is just plain a nuisance, it kills productivity. That said, I use it for gaming, home basic though, there's really no need for anything more.

 

I am not a M$ fanboy or anything, but what does Aero do that decreases productivity? When using it I did not find any features that greatly helped me work faster, but I nothing slowed me down either.

 

I'm happy using Vista HP x64 on it's own at the moment but waiting for my Ubuntu 64bit disk to arrive then it will be dual boot with Vista as primary and Ubuntu (ATI graphics card permitting) as secondary.
I thought about leaving XP Pro on when I installed Vista with Vista as primary still but thought what the heck nothing ventured etc... and wiped my harddrives. No regrets so far!

 

You might have trouble with ATI and 64bit. A lot of the non-opensource stuff causes problems when moving to 64bit. Hopefully it is a little better now than when I tried last year.

 

hmm I had problems with openSuse 64bit and an ATI card in my previous setup that's why I thought I'd give Ubuntu a go with the new one .. well I'll give it a go and see what happens! no doubt I'll be trawling this forum and others for tips when it arrives

 

The problem is with all closed source stuff you have to rely on the owner of the software to compile it for you processor and OS. And I do not think ATI has made 64bit drivers (atleast not release ones?)

Wait I just looked it up the have 64 bit drivers on their site.

Let us know how it turns out...

http://ati.amd.com/support/driver.html

 

nice one CodeMonkeyX thanks for that .. I'll post a note on the Linux section when I get the disks and give it a go.

 

Out of interest, why did you not download the Ubuntu CD. Much quicker.

 

It's visually distracting, and all the effects take extra time to complete. About the only thing that could actually improve usability, that diagonal window view thing-a-majig was crippled by making it linked in the quick launch. It should have been the default alt-tab behavior.

At least Compiz Fusion has some usability improvements, for example the panoramic desktop view, and alt-tab showing realtime thumbnails with a couple style options.

 

Well I guess that's preference. I never found the shiny things distracting, and opening/moving Windows is only slightly slower than XP. I still say that Aero does not make anything easier, or work better but personally it does not slow me down either.

I really love the way you can group windows together, and then flip them around.

 

I do have to admit, without the various stupidities the GUI might not have bothered me so much. But having to run around in circles just to get to a useful networking control panel, for example, drastically lowers your frustration threshold.

I could definitely use some more (or at least some) stability in Compiz Fusion. That and a version without all the useless crap.

 

I know I love Compiz, but it still feels like they are just playing around and making proof of concepts "LOOK WHAT I CAN DO MOMMY!" . I want a version of Compiz that is stripped down to the cool helpful features, runs fast and stable, and makes my life easier with just a little bit of flashy stuff.

 

I love Vista. Is the most stable and working OS in my machine. I haven't seen any BSOD in my life, even with XP.

 

Wow, how old are you?

Even just a tiered configuration, like Azureus or Gxine only with a usable configuration panel. Hell, I've been saying Gnome should do that for ages, I love the simplicity of the interface, until I want to do something I can't. They're totally squandering the opportunity gconf offers them, there's hardly anything there that's not present in the GUI.

 

I've hammered my broadband connection a lot lately and was avoiding downloading another few Gbs lol.. so I figured I could wait til next month or just order the disk.. the disk will hopefully get here sooner!

 

um actually all you need to do is use windows key and tab instead of alt tab!

 

I have Vista. And only Vista.

I have regrets. And only regrets using Vista.

Microsoft, I'm not an alpha tester!

 

Takes me 2 clicks to get to the networking control panel, less than 2" away on my 24" widescreen. It's amazing how Linux users come here and get frustrated with the simpliest of problems with Window's, yet will spend hours researching to get Linux problems fixed.

As for Compiz Fusion, if it's not stable what good is it? I haven't used Fusion, but I assume it is based on or similar to Beryl? Well I have used Beryl and altough the cube desktop and other visual effects are kinda neat for about 10 minutes, I have yet to see any real use for it other than eye-candy. Vista's interface is far better looking, far more stable, and overall works great.

 

Fusion is the merged projects of Beryl and Compiz. It is still in development so it's not finished.

There are several useful features in Fusion now. Expo, where you see all four desktops at once and can arrange your windows across all 4 desktops.

First, the cube is very useful. Virtual Desktops are one of the most useful things you can get, and Windows still does not have it. Apple is just started to work on it. And the Cube gives you visual cues as to which desktop you are moving too. Instead of the screen just flashing and you jump to a new desktop.

Grouping, you can now select multiple windows on the screen and group them together. They will take up the screen space of one screen, you can then flip the top window over to revel the underlying window.

Window preview, like the one in Vista where you mouse over the taskbar and see a preview of the window.

App Helper, this one fades the desktop to black and just shows the top window on the screen. This is really great when you are reading a long document, writing, watching a video, etc.

Those are just a few off the top of my head. Yes Compiz has a lot of plugins that are just candy to show off, but it also has some very useful features.