Computers and OS's - What do you have?

First, let's get this straight... Windows is the dark side, not Linux! 😉

I use Linux at home and have since 1994. Before that, I used Coherent Unix from the Mark Williams Co. I am currently on a Xeon workstation (they are cheap used) 6 core/12 threads and 32gb of ram. It runs Linux Mint with XFCE. I have an old dell laptop with an i7 (I forget the number) with 8g of ram running Mint and KDE. I have other retired laptops that run various Linux's from the time I used them. This ranges from Slackware, Redhat (5.0) and Debian, but also a FreeBSD 6 as well. Now, I do have one Windows 10 that I keep just in case I need Windows for something.

Scott

ive got 4 computers where im at right now got many more in my storage back in oregon most vintage.

but here i have 2 laptops and 2 desktop my main i use mint and 2 of the others run windows 10 (witch im going to format and test out a few other distro of linux. i like and dislike mint) and the other is a windows 7 but i havent booted it up in months 

i like how windows can do so much but i hate that it in its self is a huge virus plus all the other virus wrote for windows 

not sire where im going with any of this but thats what im running not counting SBC's

Posted by: @etinkerer

So what is your setup like?

I currently have four notebook computers.   They were all Windows 8 originally, but have all been upgraded to Windows 10.    Two of them are Compaq Presario (a Q56 and Q57)   The other two are Hewlett Packard.  They are fairly old. 

Instead of putting both systems on the same drive I have chosen to use separate hard drives for the Linux systems.   So I have Windows 10 on the Internal Hard drives of all my computers and Linux on portable drives that can be plugged in via USB connections and booted up from there.  This way if I lose one of the systems I'll have the other ready to go.  

I forget the version of Linux I'm running.  I think it is Mint.  I got a lightweight version.  It does everything I need to do.   Unfortunately Linux won't run Visual Studio, or SharpDevelop, or Fusion 360.   So I can't use Linux for any of those.   There are things I like better about Linux.   But since I spend a lot of time running SharpDevelop I'm stuck using Windows for that.

Posted by: @pakabol

i like how windows can do so much but i hate that it in its self is a huge virus

Truly.  Who needs viruses when you already have Windows? ? 

Not that it crashes or anything like that, but it's so filled with bloatware that it just bogs itself down.

When I was working, Excel, Word and Access were a necessity, so I had  windows PCs and laptops.  For a particular contract I had to get an Apple Mac laptop and liked it a lot.   

When I retired I decided to get an Apple iMac 27inch 5k apple iMac computer mainly for the very wonderful display for old eyes.  My wife also got herself a new iMac.  A big driver was the way the Apple Calendar and address book gets seamlessly updated over our computers,  laptops, ipads and iphones.   Using Macs has certainly diminished the number of times I have been summoned to deal with a computer 'issue' from SWMBO.

I find I sometimes need a Windows machine as some software only runs on windows but I don't use it much. My main Desktop is the Apple Mac.  I sometimes miss Word and Excel, but I find the Apple Pages and Numbers serves for my now limited requirements.  My old Apple laptop serves well as the main hub for electronics tinkering (running the home automation system).  Linux has proved great at re-using some older Windows computers I had lying around and they now have a good new lease of life running SQL databases and being of use for backup storage and storage of the many photos my wife takes.  And of course my RPi's run Linux.  And Windows software will run very well on Apple Mac either with dual boot or via a virtual machine.  I find that a virtual machine runs all the windows software I have put on it but as I have an old PC that seems to run Windows10 very well I usually use that when required (not often).

So thats my story, but it was not a particularly reasoned strategy, it just happened so.   If I was starting afresh then I would certainly reuse older PC hardware by running Linux.   I would not be satisfied without a decent spreadsheet and word-processor and for that a Mac or Windows would be a requirement.  In saying this I have not recently checked out any Linux offerings for this, but when I check a few years back I found the Linux offerings not to my taste.   I don't have a particular issue with either Windows or Mac software so that decision would be hardware based.  I see you can get much more bang for buck from Windows hardware so I would probably go for a Windows  10 PC.

I run almost everything with a MacMini and MacOS, although I also have Virtual Box with Ubuntu and if I need more computers I have a 6-year-old and a 12-year-old MacBook Pro.

My last Windows-powered computer ended up in pieces after being thrown violently at the wall of my office, after a dozen BSODs while using Win98SE.

I was forced to use Microsoft Office for Mac because Word and Excel were being used by my clients, and all report templates were provided in MS Office formats. The Aqua interface was a pleasure to use and according to some MS employees, actually superior to the original for Windows. But as MS is MS, when the rest of the Office packet world changed to Open Document Format, MS had to go off at a tangent and restrict users to their own XML format.

I really have a passionate hatred for the MSOS.

Mac OS X (main workhorse), CentOS Linux (web site and general Linux programming), Raspbian on a Pi 3+(takes pictures for web site), a Pi 4 still in the box and a turned-off Win-10 system for the occasional thing that will only run on Windows.

So for most of what I've been reading on other forums it seams that some version of Windows is used for those occasions when it's the only venue to use for a specific application or maybe as a backup. The main PC is either running a distro of Linux or Mac of sometype. Pretty close to the same response here. 

So I'm leaning towards this:

Main PC - Linux.

Backup - either Windows 7 or 10. 

Decision is whether to use 2 separate PC'S or some form of dual boot. Buy new PC for Linux use older computer for Windows 7. Buy new PC dual boot using Windows 10 and Linux. Plenty of options. VM for dual boot. I kind of like the idea of using removable hardrives. Anyone see a problem going this route? Other than loosing both systems if a problem arrises other than HD failure.

The main problem I've had with Windows and my notebook computers is that I can't seem to make a working backup hard drive.

I've tried cloning the drive.  I have a docking station that will clone a drive.  The problem is that when I put the cloned drive into a notebook computer it won't recognize it as a valid boot drive for Windows.  For some reason it doesn't recognize the clone.   Even though it was cloned from the drive on that very same notebook.

Somehow Windows can tell that the physical drive itself has been swapped out and for this reason it won't book up on the cloned drive.

That's disappointing because this prevents me from making a system back-up that I can simply restore should the hard drive fail.   I end up having to reinstall all my programs and that's no fun.