What was your worst OS?

[beartard]

My worst:

1. FreeBSD since they dropped support for /dev/sequencer
2. Windows 3.1 (my last-used version of Windows)
3. VM/CMS on the university mainframe.
4. Gentoo

I went from MS-DOS to Macintosh System 7. Followed it through to MacOS 9. Then came to Linux. I don't care what anyone says, the classic Macintosh System is still my favorite. GNOME still keeps trying to improve on it today. :)

[Pokeh]

Windows ME's the worst i've used. Also I wasn't too fond of Windows 98 either.

[deadguy73]

windows98

[ImpressMe]

Linux

[vexorian]

Linux
Troll alert. (Check his other posts, for example)

[Tsukino Kyuuketsuki]

Linux
Wow, that's like saying the whole windows since 1.01 sucks... and even with all the bad microsoft stuff, they still have some decent OS I would still use (XP Pro, for instance).
If I had to say what's the worst Linux distribution I used I'd say red Hat... but it's not because is bad, it's just I didn't know what in the world I was doing. The truth is I didn't have the patience nor the common sense to learn a whole different thing from windows. Nowadays is way easier to learn how to use it, there's a lot of resources. But yeah... back in the day, Linux gave me lots of headaches and still get me dizzy sometimes, lol

[Sotamato]

I think that's Windows ME. Horrible OS. It kept crashing and crashing. When we installed XP in that computer, everything got fine. And now I'm using Ubuntu 8.04 in that computer. It works great.

[ImpressMe]

Wow, that's like saying the whole windows since 1.01 sucks... and even with all the bad microsoft stuff, they still have some decent OS I would still use (XP Pro, for instance).
If I had to say what's the worst Linux distribution I used I'd say red Hat... but it's not because is bad, it's just I didn't know what in the world I was doing. The truth is I didn't have the patience nor the common sense to learn a whole different thing from windows. Nowadays is way easier to learn how to use it, there's a lot of resources. But yeah... back in the day, Linux gave me lots of headaches and still get me dizzy sometimes, lol

Every version of Linux I tried. Measured in agony, hours of trying to get it working, upgrades that went wrong, problems installing software and what not... Linux is the worst OS so far. The Hardy upgrade was no exception.

[Thundera]

Windows Vista EWWW I Cannot stand it but it is what came on my core duo comp so....Yeah I am torching it.

[doorknob60]

Well, over the years, I've used (on my own computers), MS-DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95b, Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista, MAC OS 8.5, MAC OS 7.6, and of course Linux. Out of all of those, I actually found Windows Vista to be the least stable (no suprise there). BUT, I'ts hard to decide if it's the worst because those old versions of MAC OS were pretty useless in 2002 :P I'd say it's a tie between those old MAC versions and Vista. And DOS and 3.1 are pretty useless now too but they were great when I used them.

http://i26.tinypic.com/jjblom.png

[Thundera]

I love mac OS 10.1 and on, they are the only good ones.

[Fatec]

Ubuntu unfortunetly

It's the slowest distro i've ever tried, running gnome on ubuntu makes me feel like im trying to run vista on a 486.

It's rather, well, pathetic.

Other than that, windows ME was pretty bad...oh and windows 3.1..boy that was a POS

[yaztromo]

Ubuntu unfortunetly

It's the slowest distro i've ever tried, running gnome on ubuntu makes me feel like im trying to run vista on a 486.

I think you are running up against the slowness of GTK2. Try Kubuntu Hardy, I think you'd be impressed with the turn of speed.

I did originally say Windows Me, but I'm making a U-turn and saying SCO Unix Openserver 5. Very few of the lovely command line utils we enjoy in linux ship with it by default, simple things like top and nano. SCO has released version 6 now, my company has just upgraded to it and the experience is no better.

[Fatec]

I think you are running up against the slowness of GTK2. Try Kubuntu Hardy, I think you'd be impressed with the turn of speed.

I did originally say Windows Me, but I'm making a U-turn and saying SCO Unix Openserver 5. Very few of the lovely command line utils we enjoy in linux ship with it by default, simple things like top and nano. SCO has released version 6 now, my company has just upgraded to it and the experience is no better.

Not sure if i should bother, gnome is nowhere near this slow under opensuse, arch or gentoo, so its deffinately an ubuntu problem which i've seen in every release.

KDE/Kubuntu has always just been...terrible imo.

[Frak]

Not sure if i should bother, gnome is nowhere near this slow under opensuse, arch or gentoo, so its deffinately an ubuntu problem which i've seen in every release.

KDE/Kubuntu has always just been...terrible imo.
Try Xubuntu. I'm not saying its going to be the holy grail, but I've found it pretty zippy so far.

[ImpressMe]

Troll alert. (Check his other posts, for example)

Not troll. You must just accept that not everyone is enjoying Linux like yourself.

[Thundera]

Basically, he sucks at Linux, and your being mean because of it?
Vex ever heard of STR Scape?

[yaztromo]

Not sure if i should bother, gnome is nowhere near this slow under opensuse, arch or gentoo, so its deffinately an ubuntu problem which i've seen in every release.

KDE/Kubuntu has always just been...terrible imo.

Well I assumed you meant the gui drawing speed, which has always been slow for me and I know is down to GTK2 being crap. So what do you find slow about Gnome?

I installed preload a few months ago and that has made loading times much closer to WinXP. Not quite there, but not far off.

[Fatec]

Well I assumed you meant the gui drawing speed, which has always been slow for me and I know is down to GTK2 being crap. So what do you find slow about Gnome?

I installed preload a few months ago and that has made loading times much closer to WinXP. Not quite there, but not far off.

The gui drawing speed is only a very minor/slight issue which has never bothered me, the time the desktop takes to load under ubuntu is stupidly slow....and everything just feels "sluggish"...never been a problem with any other distros one has tried...

I can get XP booted and to the desktop fully ready in 9 seconds, 20 odd for vista...and 40-1minute odd for ubuntu...

[joe.turion64x2]

Not sure if i should bother, gnome is nowhere near this slow under opensuse, arch or gentoo, so its deffinately an ubuntu problem which i've seen in every release.

KDE/Kubuntu has always just been...terrible imo.
I couldn't state for sure why, but when Edgy Eft was the latest Ubuntu available (and I had it installed on my laptop), out of the sudden (perhaps after a set of updates) it started behaving QUITE slow.

After that I removed it from there and installed Fedora Core 6, which truth be said, ran very well by comparison to Edgy. 6 months later the HDD failed from a sector near to where Linux's partition was.

Be careful with your data because this problem you experience could be an early sign of drive failure.

Joe.

[TheMemphisExperience]

I'd love to take my turn bashing Windblows... but I'm tired of that. It sucks.

Gentoo - that was a Linux distro I hated. Especially back the dial up days.
Yes, Gentoo.

I installed Sabayon and then everything went to hell. Fortunately, I didn't install it on my laptop, but my expendable trash compy.

At least Vista works. I'd love to wear trendy glasses and drink the latest coffee blends, but I guess I'm just not "with it" enough to hate an OS that works just fine.

That's not directed at anyone, mind you. Except that nice gentleman that couldn't open VLC player because "I'm(he) a Mac guy".

[Thundera]

VLC works on mac wtf you talking about?

[Frak]

Not troll. You must just accept that not everyone is enjoying Linux like yourself.

Well, most people don't join a Windows forum to insult it; likewise with Linux, BSD, ReactOS, Sun, etc.

Yes, Gentoo.

I installed Sabayon and then everything went to hell. Fortunately, I didn't install it on my laptop, but my expendable trash compy.

At least Vista works. I'd love to wear trendy glasses and drink the latest coffee blends, but I guess I'm just not "with it" enough to hate an OS that works just fine.

That's not directed at anyone, mind you. Except that nice gentleman that couldn't open VLC player because "I'm(he) a Mac guy".

I also didn't like Gentoo. Me it was because of application masking, which, by the way, made absolutely no sense for Gentoo to tell its users that they put absolute trust in them, then make them take the long way to do such a simple process. It doesn't compute in my sluggish brain.

Also, I agree that Vista isn't as bad as people put it. It has its flaws (mostly because its an incomplete longhorn), but overall its completely usable and functional.

VLC works on mac wtf you talking about?

Hmm... I don't know if its just me, but VLC is really sluggish in on Mac. Am I the only one that notices?

[heikaman]

[A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\\]_`{|}~]*win[A-Za-z0-9!"#$%&'()*+,-./:;<=>?@[\\\]_`{|}~]*

[shinkaide]

Windows ME. Vista is a very, very close second.

Both gave me about 5 crashes a week on the minimum, and both were bare bones installations as well (in terms of software, that is)!

[OldGaf]

Winblows ME - what a peice of crap!

[andrewjoy]

Hmm... I don't know if its just me, but VLC is really sluggish in on Mac. Am I the only one that notices?


its fine for me in fact its runs smoother than on windows / linux imo but that could be down to the spec of my mac over my pc. I also like the cool OSD that you get with OSX VLC :)

[keykero]

The gui drawing speed is only a very minor/slight issue which has never bothered me, the time the desktop takes to load under ubuntu is stupidly slow....and everything just feels "sluggish"...never been a problem with any other distros one has tried...

I can get XP booted and to the desktop fully ready in 9 seconds, 20 odd for vista...and 40-1minute odd for ubuntu...

Have to agree here, HH is very sluggish compared to Win XP on the same machine. Particularly opening local and network folders. These things all happen instantly in Win.

[martyssweb07]

AIX, for desktops winme

[gameryoshi600]

windows any version hands down

[jmore9]

Hands down the most annoying and hardest one to get working was VISTA Business. Ubuntu is far far easier to install and setup and use then VISTA Business as far a i am concerned.

[Fenris_rising]

win 2000 was awful i had to change to it from 98 to get the usb support for my mp3 player.Also winME my day had it on his PC, guess who had to keep going over and fixing it!!!!!! I installed XP 3 months ago while he was on holiday. touch wood not many problems since. which is great as i live 188 miles away from him now :lolflag:

Fenris

[minibeardeath]

surprisingly i am gonna hafta say that xp is the worst os that i can remember using (the ones i remember are win2k, win xp, and ubuntu) my reasoning is that on my personal computer (which is the only non-OEM built comp i have great experience with) i had over 30 bsod's in 6 months, i had constant driver conflicts and other issues, and i even had 2 RAID array's fail. i used 2000 for several years and had like 3 bsods total (all because i was over taxing the psu) other than my personal comp, xp has been great so i guess one could say that i have a limited experience in this area

[freduardo]

Like so many others: Windows ME without a doubt.

The worst thing is probably that I managed to run it for almost 3 years straight. You have no idea how ignorant I was back then ...

[oyvindaa]

I once tried Lindows, it was complete rubbish.

Windows ME runs close too, though.

[HangukMiguk]

I almost say FreeBSD after my debacle this weekend with it, but considering that was most likely my hardware that was the problem, and also that I only messed with it 24-hours, I refuse to answer that.

Windows ME was the biggest pile of crap I've ever worked with. I had to keep a DOS boot disk within arms reach at all times to go in and repair Windows on the days ME would have its period.

I had a friend tell me that the best version of Windows he ran was ME. I told him to lay off the acid and hash.

Also pretty high on the list: Red Hat 7.

[shakabra]

Vista definitely takes the cake on this one. It's resource hungry ,completely locked down as far as customization, and when I installed SP1 Windows wouldn't even work anymore. That is the day that i quit dual booting and switched completely to Ubuntu. Thanks Vista!

[ofb]

The worst thing is probably that I managed to run it for almost 3 years straight.

Did you stick it out because you didn't know it was any worse than other Windows? I'm thinking back then everyone complained about Win, so you might have thought your experience was normal. Kinda like owning a Lada - takes a while to realize yours is worse than average.

Bonus general question: Did /anyone/ ever figure out how to make Me behave? I know it was possible with 98. Could it be done for Me?

Extra weirdness: My Dad emailed me once to ask about a "blue screen" warning he'd got. It took a few replies before I realized it was the first one he'd seen. He had been running the Win95a upgrade over 3.1 for years -- so I just presumed that blue screens were normal for him, and was trying to figure out why he was concerned about this one.

[RealG187]

I once tried Lindows, it was complete rubbish.

Windows ME runs close too, though.

Is there such as OS? I thought it was just a made up word for a made up OS thats Linux and Windows.

[Istonian]

I thought Lindows is what Linspire was called.

[scragar]

I thought Lindows is what Linspire was called.

it is, they changed it after a legal battle(to avoid dragging it out, even though they were in the right they got the name bought off them by windows, so not too bad).

[Frak]

it is, they changed it after a legal battle(to avoid dragging it out, even though they were in the right they got the name bought off them by windows, so not too bad).
I know it probably wouldn't go to court, but I wonder about LinuXP in this way sometimes.

[the8thstar]

My worse OSes were:

1. Windows Me

I've never had so many problems, sluggishness, viruses and spyware plotting to bring the system down at one time.

2. AmigaOS 1.3

It's also one of my all-time favorites. The worse about it was the lack of compatibility with everything else.

[the8thstar]

I thought Lindows is what Linspire was called.

Winutuxu was another fine example of a Morroccan pirated version of XP blended with open-source software made to look like Ubuntu.

[bilboe]

I must say, Windows Vista. Its clunky, slow, insecure, and the worst version of Windows since 3.1

THank god for *nix

[freduardo]

Did you stick it out because you didn't know it was any worse than other Windows? I'm thinking back then everyone complained about Win, so you might have thought your experience was normal. Kinda like owning a Lada - takes a while to realize yours is worse than average.

Yep, out of pure ignorance :oops:
After a while, I knew XP was out there, and that it was supposed to be better/more stable, but it still took me quite some time to actually switch to it.

[PseudoOne]

Would have to say the ugliness of every Windows distribution and the annoying "critical" errors that did not signify anything caused me to move to Linux distributions, where I first chose Freespire. I didn't like it, so I tried Ubuntu instead. (Now I use Kubuntu Hardy Heron // KDE 4)

[ofb]

2. AmigaOS 1.3

It's also one of my all-time favorites. The worse about it was the lack of compatibility with everything else.

Wow. Definitely still my favorite -- how about some details? I'm thinking maybe you had no access to other amiHeads or bbs with fred collections? The only thing that dragged me away from ami was lack of an economical upgrade path, so I'm surprised.

[the8thstar]

Wow. Definitely still my favorite -- how about some details? I'm thinking maybe you had no access to other amiHeads or bbs with fred collections? The only thing that dragged me away from ami was lack of an economical upgrade path, so I'm surprised.

Well, the Amiga 500 with 1Mb of RAM, one floppy and no hard disk was *QUITE* the limiting factor by itself, don't you think? Plus, I never was able to put my hands on a version of CrossDos, so I was just confined to that machine with its proprietary software and hardware. Eventually, the floppy drive died, so the only thing I could do to read disks was by spinning the disk rotor myself, with my HANDS. Crazy, but it worked. Then the scart port died, so that was the end of everything.

[TheMemphisExperience]

VLC works on mac wtf you talking about?

The fact that he excused his inability to open a program and select a file from a browse list because he was a "Mac Guy" was what I was expressing a dislike for. Asking him to "right-click" might have killed the poor boy.

[ofb]

Well, the Amiga 500 with 1Mb of RAM, one floppy and no hard disk was *QUITE* the limiting factor by itself, don't you think?

Aha, hardware limitations. Yeah I can see that souring the experience. I had 2.5MB and two drives.

by spinning the disk rotor myself, with my HANDS. Crazy, but it worked.

Wow. Now I want to try that just to see if it's possible.

[the8thstar]

The trick is to align the magnets correctly! Start spinning it with your fingers, it will do the rest :D

[other guy]

The worst for me was NT 3 and 4. 5.1 SP2 smoothed out after a few years.

I really did not do the consumer MS products after a certain point. Though I had some machines that had to run it.

[nick09]

The worst experience I had was XP.

I had to get into safe mode with networking to get ubuntu 8.04.

After the installation its been going better since then.

PS: I did use windows 98 before but I don't have many problems using it.

[pofigster]

I'll be honest, there hasn't been a single OS that I've installed and used on a daily basis that I just couldn't stand. I used the Windows 3.x series at my grandparents growing up - it had cool games. What more could a kid ask for?

I was raised on the Mac OS 7 series - it did all my typing, had AOL for Internet and played games (MacSyndicate anyone?)

First computer I bought for myself had Windows 98 installed, again, it ran and played all my games. Then I pirated Windows ME - ironically, I didn't have any problems. Bought Windows XP and loved it for years.

First linux experience was Red Hat 7 (I think) freshman year of college. It was cool. What was uncool was when I simply deleted the partition that had Red Hat on it not knowing I was deleting GRUB and jacking up my computer. All this just before getting a plane and expecting to watch movies.

Finally, Ubuntu. I installed Fedora Core (uninstalled it within a week because of flash problems and not liking RPM) but since I haven't used it on a day-to-day basis it's hard to judge.

Hardware though ... Dell! ugh! I will never buy anything from them again. Everything I've bought from them has turned out to be crap.

[GFC2]

Windows 98. Buggy, slow, unstable, insecure. "XYZ has performed an illegal operation......" It was the reason my next computer was an Apple. I think Microsoft dug themselves a huge hole with the 9x series and with porting 9x APIs into the NT series, that they just now are getting out of. XP is the first somewhat decent OS from them. No problem here with Vista.

7.04 was buggy enough to be frustrating for me, and 7.10 was worse. 8.04 seems to work well out of the box, with the exception that one of its best features, multiple desktops, is unusable on its default settings with wheel/touchpad scrolling enabled. All in all, the progress from 7.04 to 8.04 is encouraging.

[ikt]

I hate most oses, they all seam to have issues that annoy me.

[Gauvenator]

I hate most oses, they all seam to have issues that annoy me.

hehe that's very optimistic

[RJARRRPCGP]

Although I never owned it, it has to be Windows ME. I've never seen a system crash so many times and randomly shut itself off. What a piece of junk that OS was.


LOL that actually sounds like the PC hardware was the one that's a piece of junk.

Will be more common now, because many people won't clean the heatsink and many people don't know Jack about PC hardware. LOL.

[ikt]

hehe that's very optimistic

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2514730680283477734

It's old but I think it's quite true :popcorn:

[MasterNetra]

Windows 95 Period :p Win98 wasn't too bad but its lack of secuirty was something to worry about >.< Haven't Tried vista and probably never will :p

[lunchbox910]

In my 26 years of life, I have used 3.x, Win 95, 98, and OSX Tiger, and Vista. They all served their purpose with their own little irritations. The one I can single out though is Vista. Even though I was a kid who did things to my older computers that seem quite destructive now in retrospect, I managed to crash Vista twice within six months (one might have been the hard-drive, six months and it died somehow). I didn't feel like installing Vista, Office, Photoshop CS3, Dreamweaver, iTunes, etc, etc, etc, again, and my friend gave me an Ubuntu disc instead. I have been using it since January without any major problems, just relearning how to use a computer, haha. I did really like iTunes, but oh well. I have bluefish and gimp figured out and thats all I really need. :)

[UNaruto1990]

Although I am still 17, I've used Dos, win95, win98, win2000, winXP, Ubuntu, I used to run games on Dos when I was a kid, my brother went to C: and typed "del *.*" by mistake and since then no one ever could fix it, win95 is ****, win98 not bad, win2000 used it for 1 hour and got more errors than the seconds in this hour, winXP is the best of those, but sometimes I had to reformat my HDD every 2 weeks because of it's ****, I certainly can't can say which of those is the worst, it could be win95 or win2000, but I can tell you that all Windows OSs are ****

Edit: in Ubuntu I had 0 bugs, I've used it several times, this time I've been using it for 1 week, still no bugs...

[sp0nge]

Windows ME was a horrible experience.

Actually, this terrible excuse for an OS is what led me to begin my quest for Linux.

[Mandor]

I started with Windows 98 and I suppose that was the worst one. I have not really used Vista (just looked at it in a virtual machine), so I can not point it out. Possibly I would, if I have used it, judging from the horrible laptop experience of one my colleague. The best MS OS I have used was Windows 2003 Server, btw. Oops, I have to mention that I have never used Windows ME, of course :)

[rickh57]

Windows ME is the worst that I've had to interact with. I never actually had it installed on any of my systems, but having to support it for friends was painful!

[neelpartymar]

Windows 95 1st ed. because i had the version that came on 3.5" disks. Imagine going through the windows installation with 13 disks or so it's bad enough already. Not to mention that win95a crashed all the time. Reformat and reinstallation has never been so long and painful.

[sixdrift]

Windows 3.x

Words fail me to describe its incredible mediocrity and its ability to suck out your will to live while using it. May it never feel the pulse of CPU cycles again.

[squidmaster]

I would have to say ME or Hardy.
>_>

<_<

[Nxion]

Vista (all versions), Win ME, Mac OS 8 and Win NT.
:popcorn:

[jesusfreak107]

Windows 98 would have to be tied with Vista. both incredibly unstable, and crash randomly. our Vista machine can't shutdown properly, yet reboots randomly, and NEVER recognizes itself as having been booted up correctly. I just trashed Win 98 on an old lappy, for Puppy Linux. It was one of my worst experiences EVER.

Also, I highly dislike (http://imwithgenius.wordpress.com/2008/05/07/ubuntu-804-hardy-heron-review/) Hardy Heron, but it is not as bad as the other two.

[soleille]

I don't know exactly what it was, but some DOS thing - it doesn't help that when I started "computer science" at school and had to use this, it was A.D. 1997- you kinda expected Windows to be on a computer... (and I'm still scared of command lines,LOL) but hey, at the time, if we wanted to write to foreign schools from the computer, we'd print it out and fax it :oP

Then, in terms of hatedness comes Windows 2000, but that actually was my own fault, although I didn't know it at the time- I let some "computer guru" convince me that I needed it on a machine with a whopping 1,6GB hard drive (and lots of napster-ing, at least I got a used CD burner to have SOME space left on that disk) and upgraded to a sensational 64MB RAM... NOT a good idea as far as usability is concerned, but my dual boot now has a Win2000 partition.

THE worst OS (and then still not knowing anything about computers,just using them) definitely is ME - it came with my parents' new computer and I used it maybe 10 or 20 times, enough to absolutely loathe it.

Also, when it came out, I hated XP- when my laptop in 2003 came with it, I asked if I could downgrade it to 98 as that was the OS that had worked best for me so far, but was told there would be a slight problem with hardware support :oP
When I found out I can use the look and feel of older versions, I was ok with XP (except for the stupid license key problems *every time* I had to reinstall my *legal* version.
I still cringe at the teletubby look of the "original XP" every time I see one (at work in an internet café, too)

[oyvindaa]

Is there such as OS? I thought it was just a made up word for a made up OS thats Linux and Windows.

Yeah, it's called Linspire now..

[SIXAXIS]

I guess my least favourite OS is Windows ME. I never had it, but my cousin did and it was annoying.

[y-lee]

Windows 95 - when it first released

Buggy, insecure, trying to be a fancy coat for DOS

No joke on that one. Terribly unstable for me, made me do my coding in MS-dos it was so bad :lolflag:

[DreamcastJack]

Worse OS, thats tough. I couldnt stand 95 and ME.

[Club17]

One vote for WinME, other to MAC 10.4.8 and other to Sabayon 3.0.

[Jiraya]

Windows Me, for sure!

[crhylove]

Windows ME was pretty horrid. I also had a TRS-180 back in the day, and it ran TRS-DOS which we all lovingly called "trash dos". That was a pretty bad OS. But the ultimate bad OS had to be the Sinclair, where you had to reload anything you were working on by playing an audio cassette that sounded like modem noise. I was actually happy to move on to the trs-dos and it's much better 7.5 inch floppies.... :)

But Windows ME was such an incredible downgrade from 98se that it was shocking. Kind of like how much worse Vista is than XP.

LOL

[game_plan]

I'll have to go with Vista as well, they removed almost all the manual ways of doing things forcing you to use the wizards thats aren't that bright.

[Jiraya]

But Windows ME was such an incredible downgrade from 98se that it was shocking. Kind of like how much worse Vista is than XP.

LOL

Great! That's indeed sure, LOL!

[MaxIBoy]

Windows 98 is associated with traumatic early memories. 'Course, could be because my dad held on to his old computer for about seven years, when it started failing on a hardware level. At one point, it would crash if you moved the mouse too fast.

Windows Vista shipped with my laptop. It actually ran decently (not fast, just decently,) but gaming was out of the question. Also, it acted like a controlling girlfriend, with constant popups to confirm things. (Yes, I want to install Open Office. *click* Yes, I'm sure. *click* No, I would not like to consider all the wonderful features that Microsoft Office has to offer. *click* No, I haven't really thought about "commitment" lately. *click* Yes, as a matter of fact, I have been thinking about switching to a different OS. *click* What has "she" got that you don't have? What kind of question is that! *reformats hard drive*)

[Incense]

Mac OS 9.x. ](*,)Glad I never used Win ME, sounds like that was really bad.

[cosborn72]

Windows ME - Worst....System.....Ever!

I've tried and hated just about every PPC linux distro* out there- but I don't blame the OS, I blame the platform.


*Ubuntu was, by far and away, the best of the PPC distros- but still painful.

[cmay]

plan 9
i cant install it.
minix is more usefull but the codepage for an danish keyboard layout i have not found yet.

[gforster]

CP/M - I had a kaypro as a kid. That thing gave us more trouble than I think it was worth. Of course, that could have just been the 30-pound "portable" computer. I don't remember too much of it.

Seriously, in modern operating system terms, windows ME was horrific.

[dizzie]

Hardware side, Windows NT was the worst, SP 5-6 or how many did they end at? You needed SP6 or something for getting a AGP card to work.

Software side, Win 95/98 (i lost count on how many BSOD's i had pr. day)

On the Linux side, RedHat 2.0 (RPM hell extraordinaire) Dependencies my butt! The xxx.rpm needs 7 other RPMs for being installed, and back when i was using RH2 in '95 (i think it was) i was on 28k8 dialup (go figure!)

Worst OS after Y2K, Well... Vista smells, and a OS that needs 512mb mem (just for being installed!), can't be taken serios by me.

Less flawed Windows OS i liked was Windows XP (Not the mediacenter version or whatever crap they came up with. Just plain XP (good for gaming hehe)

[starcannon]

ME was the beginning of the end for MS imo.

[Jon Monreal]

My personal vote goes out for Windows 95. Years ago I had it on a machine that eventually would refuse to boot because of random problems loading the OS to memory, which definitely didn't have anything to do with the hardware as I found out after installing Windows 2000.

Windows ME comes a close second for me. My brief experience with it was utterly disgusting, 98 was definitely better despite its shortcomings.

[Exsecrabilus]

Windows XP 2003.

I switched to Linux after I experienced the horrible legacy of which Microsoft called "eXPerience."

[CrazyArcher]

ME was the worst **** by far. I used it for 2 days and stuff started to feel funny. Shifted to Win2K in an instant then.

[oioi]

Gotta be Win95

It takes about 100 years to finish anything
And if you try to use more than 3 applications at the same time, Win95 crashes faster than you can say "MY WORKS AREN'T SAVED YET!!"

[chinchilla2392]

a korean version of winxp,
solaris.
and.. well.. pretty much every version of windows ive ever came across...

[dizzie]

Remember the dull piccy showing a cement block?

As in Windows CE ME NT.

CE, is a joke (using it atm (my excuse: i'm at work)
ME, I don't have to point out what, you already did that.
NT, SP hell! And slow as f***

Dont talk bad about MS-DOS, it (almost) never crashed, unless (i repeat!) unless, you was a fool using stacker, doublespace (or whatever lame name they called it)

Best OS's i've used and some i still use is:

AmigaOS (any from 2.0+ and up) Any BSD flavour, and Ubuntu (I was a Debian user, until i saw the light in 2004 with Ubuntu :p)

[cids.dk]

Windows Me

[tetrafuran]

Thank God I never used win 2000 or ME. However I did use 95 and 98 on the same computer. 95 was as unstable as a pencil standing on its tip. When it ran it worded just fine... for 30 minutes or so. 98 was A LOT heavier. It was as stable as a pencil pushed into sand, but it was as heavy as pulling an anvil in thick tar.

So I had the choice between a very crash sensitive OS or a bit more stable and a lot slower one. Therefore I just upgraded hardware and use xp. Now I realize I might have just switched over to Linux at the time, since it probably would have solved all the issues at once. Today I have a laptop that might run (i.e. crawl) 98. Fortunately I have ubuntu with fluxbox and it is significantly faster and more stable than 95. What's wrong with this market. Every version of windows just keeps on consuming more and more ram.

[MaxIBoy]

What's wrong with this market. Every version of windows just keeps on consuming more and more ram.

It has to do with PC manufacturers wanting to present expensive, overpowered computers as the bare minimum. Microsoft makes an OS that uses up an insane amount of RAM, PC manufacturers have an excuse to sell more expensive PCs. PC manufacturers make more money by charging more, Microsoft sells more units, and everyone is happy except the customer (who spends way more money than is really needed.)

Just take a moment to consider how much computational horsepower computers have these days. I think that even a cheap Sempron could run Crysis if the OS was actually well designed or wasn't forced to use a Windows Runtime. If, say, DSL had a Crysis port written for it, you'd be able to watch the system requirements go through the floor, basement, AND foundations.

The end result, though, is that computers never run fast enough to handle the flagship OS fully. In other words, the people who use Linux benefit from having it run insanely fast, even on older computers.

[djdarrin91]

That would be Vista for me!So Slooooooooooooow :)

[hellion0]

For me, it was XP Home. Never let someone get their hands on that if they're inexperienced with Windows and the Internet...

I ditched it twice for RHEL before finally getting a copy of 2K, and getting turned on to Debian.

[rage-against-windows]

Some boxed version of redhat linux I "bought" at best buy while there buying windows 98 LMAO. I was pretty stupid back in them days, and bought 2 total pieces of crap. I actually liked windows 3.1, for some reason I liked hunting for the drivers, and tweaking it up. Ima get slammed for this bad but I liked windows ME, and think as far as windows goes it was there best. My wife bought a new Dell that had vista, and she used it 10 minutes, and said get that crap off there! But im gonna have to say that redhat linux what ever version it was I cant remember was the most horrible crap Ive ever used.

[ultralame]

my system was running gutsy, but would have occasional hang ups with FF, Tbird, Grip, amarok...

so I wiped clean and installed 8.04.

Wow. It sucks. FF crashes constantly. Tbird locks up all the time. Amarok is about 50% usable.

I'm not a guru. I'm a chemical engineer that likes to dabble. Good luck getting laymen to use this,

This **** is the WORST OS I have ever used.

[digitalvectorz]

I'd have to say Windoze Millenium

[Seventh Reign]

Red Hat ... nothing ever worked

[wumpus]

Remember the dull piccy showing a cement block?
[deletia]
Dont talk bad about MS-DOS, it (almost) never crashed, unless (i repeat!) unless, you was a fool using stacker, doublespace (or whatever lame name they called it)
[deletia]


I'll talk bad about MS-DOS day and night. I started with home computers made by Atari (400/800), then jumped straight to SunOS (which showed me what a proper computer was), then I learned about MS-DOS.

To make things worse, my first computer of my own was a 386 running DOS. DOS was a reasonable excuse for an 8088, and the 80286 didn't deserve a real system, but running MS-DOS on the 386 (and 486 and to some degree pentiums) was a complete waste. These machines were 32-bit beasts with an honest to God MMU, and they were loaded with a non-reentrant interupt handler instead of an OS.

I don't think there was anything especially bad about 98se, but I know that it plus all the pain I'd gotten from MS over the years pushed me to full time linux. I will point out to the "linux wasn't ready for the desktop in 2000" skeptics that my prefered method of connecting windows (dual boot, of course) to DSL involved using an old linux (mandrake) machine as a router. The windows DSL drivers were always to flakey.

I'm not sure where SLS linux goes. All I could do with it and relax that after an eternal download, my computer finally had a real OS on it. I never expected to do anything with it, but was glad it was there.

Red hat deserves mention on this list, insisting on a proprietary MBR isn't going to ever get the thing loaded on any machine I own. I am not buying a new hard drive just for red hat.

</rant>

[luckymoonboy1]

Ubuntu 8.04 and windows 98. windows 98 locks up and crashes constantly and when i installed 8.04(on a different computer, both a flat-out install and an upgrade of 7.10) it acted mostly the same way. i'm not going back to windows, I'm sticking with 7.10 till intrepid comes out and then I'll see if it is time to go back to windows. Go Gusty Gibbon!

[bgreenaway]

After working in IT for over 25 years I would have to say that without fear of contradiction, Vista is the biggest steaming pile of cack I have ever encountered. I am constantly having to sort out problems/crashes/BSoDs/GSoDs on the GLW's brand new Dell XPS M1330. The first version of Windows 95 was a barrel of laughs compared to Vista. Unstable to the point of being a bunny boiler - Vista that is. I am trying to persuade her to let me install either Gutsy or Hardy on it.

[angelsguitar]

I'm having a hard time deciding which is the worst: Windows ME or Vista? :confused: I'm inclined to give the winning vote to Vista...

[Hyper Tails]

I don't have a worst os because I liked them all

But my dad has one.
That was windows 3.1(For me my best and win 95 and.....
God I love computers of windows and Linux I loved them all:lolflag:)
he's happy with xp and i'm happy with vista predium and ubuntu 8.04

[led3234]

Well, I started using computers a little later. My first experience was with Windows 95. But the one I hated the most was Windows ME.

Exactly the same as this guy.

My 2nd most hated is Vista.

[wolfen69]

to me, there is no worst. there is only the best. ubuntu.

[heiowge]

Choices Choices...

Either Vista or WinME.

The jury's still out on this 1.

[Arthur Archnix]

Slackware 9. Couldn't even get the thing to boot. :confused:

[lisati]

You people don't go back far enough. You should have seen OS/360 on an IBM 360 model 30. Now that was bad. I had to wait all day just for turn around on a compile just to find out I missed a comma or something.

Darryl Keller

I don't go back quite as far as OS/360 - the nearest I can manage is MVS on an IBM 370/165 - or possibly VS1.

[manoy]

for me it's a photo finish between Windows ME and Vista :)

[Roberticus]

Ubuntu 6.04, like nothing worked back then :/
I don't get it why people complain about Vista nowadays... Have you tried SP1 with the latest drivers from NVIDIA (both graphics and mobo)? On my computer (Acer laptop) it Outperforms XP in almost* every way, even with Aero on. Gonna ditch XP and use Vista / Ubuntu.
Nope, I'm not a fanboy, I used to hate Vista too, but the recent improvements have got me to enjoy Vista more than XP.

*Shutdown time could use some work though.

*Edit*
I've used Dos 6.0, Win 3.1, Win 95, Win 98SE, Win2k pro, Win XP, Vista, Ubuntu 6.04 - 8.04
I was like 5-6 years old when I started using Dos... so yeah, very advanced indeed. I got my way around and knew how to start games. :)
I must say I was kind of "wow'ed" when I saw what games my friends could play on win 95 (Red Alert comes to mind, better graphics). Upgraded to 98SE because of lots of 95's shortcomings (such as restart to change resolution).
Installed Win2k when apps didn't work for win98 (Vue comes to mind). Using it with bblean was really nice, crashed only once (bad drivers from ATI). At that point I heard of Ubuntu and wanted to try it. Installed Ubuntu 6.04 and noticed I couldn't use my other harddrive (formated to NTFS) and didn't have rights to use my own USB Drives... :S
Removed Ubuntu and was about to put win2k back, but then Dad came home with XP Pro, so it was XP. Was using XP for years until military service kicked in. After three months in service I bought an Acer Aspire 5520 which came preloaded with Vista. First month Vista was super fast, but after installing more apps it got kind of slow, so I dualbooted Linux Mint.
Got fed up with Vista gaming performance and removed Mint and installed XP. Nice for gaming.
The rest you can read above before the edit. Seriously thinking about removing all other OSes than Vista, works like a charm. I might actually get Vista 64 once the prices get abit lower.

[Exsecrabilus]

Ubuntu 8.04 and windows 98. windows 98 locks up and crashes constantly and when i installed 8.04(on a different computer, both a flat-out install and an upgrade of 7.10) it acted mostly the same way. i'm not going back to windows, I'm sticking with 7.10 till intrepid comes out and then I'll see if it is time to go back to windows. Go Gusty Gibbon!
I agree, my Gutsy Gibbon experience was far less buggy, but I am staying with Hardy for the latest feature updates and the new things introduced.

And umm, you do know that Intrepid Ibex is a release that will "step into new territory" and in fact have far more bugs than Hardy and Gutsy combined? (Just my theory.)

[cardinals_fan]

Ubuntu 6.04, like nothing worked back then :/

Do you mean 6.06?

[Xianath]

NT4 by far, followed by OS/2. Ironically, both were installed to keep important data away from Windows 98 and 3.11 respectively, and both managed to destroy said data irrecoverably. NT4 committed suicide the evening before I had to hand in all of my semester's work (lab reports, term projects and so on), costing me 80+ continuous hours of no sleep to rewrite them. OS/2 merely destroyed my old archives which had sentimental, but not largely practical value, hence it's a mere runner-up.

Cheers,
Peter

[whitefang5412]

Ubuntu 7.10. Worst thing I ever tried to install on my laptop. Good thing PclinuxOS came to the rescue for a while there.

[MachineBucket]

My worst experience with an OS was Ubuntu 5.10. Ubuntu has come a LONG way since then. I don't care for Vista since it's a resource hog. Luckily, I've never had to touch ME.

Favorite OSes at the moment:
Arch 64 bit 2008-04rc
Ubuntu 7.10 (Still getting used to Hardy)
Win XP

[ShokTHX]

Whatever the TRS-80 Model 3 ran. Never figured out what the machine was for.
Next worst for me was DOS 5 something. At least I could get games to play.
I tried several Mandrake versions, Red Hat, and Fedora and never got them to work.

Surprisingly, I never had a problem with my computer and ME. I was also never able to get it to run on any other computer.

I have yet to even use Vista.

Best so far for me is XP Pro and Media. I have been using Ubuntu for a couple weeks now and really like it. First time Linux has worked for me.


ShokTHX

[OpposingForce]

Probably Windows 98 or ME, constant blue screens of death.

[Mr.Glenmore]

The Worst?
Windows ME

[Derviansoul]

The worst?
VISTA SP1, i never got before bluescreens for plugging a new harddrive, or for plugging a usb flash drive!, with vista i got a whole day of bluescreens just because of that hd!now i'm using that hd in ubuntu!
Windows ME, was the OS that i used for less ammount of time, it sucked all the resources for no apparent reason, and kept crashing all the time!!
regards

[hendoc]

It had to be WinME on an old Pentium 2. I got the old Bluescreen several times a day.

[decoherence]

System 7.5.5 @#$ @#% Type 11 $!%! @#

much better with MacsBug installed. You could even occasionally recover from some crashes.

[jonallport]

The best and the worst:

OS/2 Warp: Ah, the heady days of the 486. Great OS, very resiliant and could run DOS and Win3.x apps too. Problem: 4MB of RAM and no graphics driver; My upgrade to 8MB cost me £117.50 (I was 16 at the time and probably earned about £30 for a weekend's work) and nothing looks great in 8-bit colour!!!

[isecore]

The best and the worst:

OS/2 Warp: Ah, the heady days of the 486. Great OS, very resiliant and could run DOS and Win3.x apps too. Problem: 4MB of RAM and no graphics driver; My upgrade to 8MB cost me £117.50 (I was 16 at the time and probably earned about £30 for a weekend's work) and nothing looks great in 8-bit colour!!!

I agree. Although I had a whopping 16 megs when I ran it, as well as managing to get a functioning graphics driver. Great OS that just never broke through.

Still have my cd's collecting dust in a drawer somewhere.

[PatrickMoore]

windows 95 i distinctly remember my day playing with our old ibm desktop and managing to screw up the sound and cdrom drivers. how i do not know but then 95 crashed and we tried for a month to reinstall and ended up having to downgrade to 3.1 not a fun experience. other than we use windows nt2000 at work well used to prior to switching to thin clients and i havent seen so many fang.exe errors in my life. i mean 2 a day is a tad ridiculous

[noneofthem]

Worst: Windows ME
Best: Ubuntu

[Dedoimedo]

Worst: DOS 4.0
Best: DOS 5.0 :)

Gaming like mad and not a worry in the world!

Cheers,
Dedoimedo

[ryaxnb]

As usual I will list several categorized :)
Overall Worst, but not really an OS: Windows 1.0
Overall Worst, was an OS System 7.5.2 (this was a particularly bad version of generally awful system 7, very buggy and incompatible with some software)
Worst Windows that was an OS: Windows 3.0 (I'd argue since it takes control of the CPU and RAM, it's an OS)
Worst Linux: Red Hat 7.
Worst Linux that I never used: Red Hat 5,
Other worst: SkyOS.

[ryaxnb]

Windows ME probably wasn't Microsoft's greatest operating system, but it was certainly better than any Linux distribution at the time (for desktop use). Of course, this is just my opinion. But with Ubuntu 5.04 (this is the second Linux distribution I used, the first was Debian) looking and feeling like it was released 10 years before it came out, I can only imagine what desktop Linux in 2000 must have been like. Thinking of Mandrake 8.1, hard but very powerful and reasonably stable. Really smooth. Pretty nice, but very limited in scope.

[metro2005]

worst OS ever? not a very difficult question i think: windows Vista offcourse. What a load of crap that is. Bloated to the bone. XP was ok but never liked the look of it and hated the DRM and WGA **** in it.

Windows ME was not so bad , win98 and 95 were also pretty nice OS'es but bit unstable but pretty fast.

Linux was horrible a couple of years ago with very limited hardware support (i started with Redhat in 1999 , don't know which version). And even worse, just while microsoft began to sort out there DLL hell , linux just started the dependencie hell.

Today i use linux as my main operating system on 2 laptops, 1 has Ubuntu hardy and the other one has Mandriva 2008.1 running nicely. My desktop still runs windows XP since I sometimes like to play GTA san andreas (didn't get that to work in Wine properly yet :( ) and it has my mediacenter running (TVout doesn't work in linux)

[CLomax]

Vista hands down. Working on replacing it completely.

[oldschoolrockstar]

I hated Mac for the longest time. Mac OS X is nice, but I also disliked Windows 95 and Me. Vista is a waist. I say if you buy a new computer preinstalled with Vista in it. Read your Policies closely and find out how to get a $200 refund for installing Ubuntu right away.

[C!oud]

Worst linux that I've tried without a doubt in my mind would be Freespire
Worst windows for me would be Vista since I thought XP was better, never tried ME or 98, and can barely remember 95.

[YaroMan86]

Worst: Windows Vista, with Windows ME a close second.
Best: Ubuntu
Sentimental Favorite: CP/M

[tel93]

Best: Debian Lenny
Worst: Windows 98. It slowed my old laptop down to a crawl.

[koji042]

My worst OS experience was probably with Windows Vista. It was usable but the bloatedness slowed my computer to a crawl... and occasionally crashed my system. It made XP seem new again.

My best experience was definitely with Ubuntu, no need for drivers (for the most part). Just install and you're good.

[jonelnz]

@the8thstar

Well, the Amiga 500 with 1Mb of RAM, one floppy and no hard disk was *QUITE* the limiting factor by itself, don't you think?

Try an IBM JX with 256Kb of RAM...:lolflag:

Windows Vista without a doubt has been the worst OS for me. Thank you MS for showing me "NIX. One of my favorite OS'es was OS/2 Warp 3 & 4.

[sirdilznik]

Windows ME was by far the worst piece of junk I ever had the misfortune of running.

Best: Slackware (My first successful Linux experience), Gentoo, Ubuntu Hardy, and of course DOS (How I miss you)

[lynlow]

i really hate windows me, the blue screen of death grrr i still have bald spots from pulling out my hair.

[kunixos]

Mint Linux. It has never worked. Not once.

[chestnut1969]

VISTA all versions!!!! Hate it with a passion, only use it on my HTPC as it is still the best solution available with the dual digital cards that I use (a'la Windows Media Center)

[Gatemaze]

windows ME was kind of a joke...

[ivoanathema]

Tilix Linux

[jnw222]

every windows exept dos and xp
plus apple

[estyles]

Windows 3.1, for sure. I hated Windows for years, not because of *nix, which I didn't know existed, but because 3.1 was just a crappy overlay on top of DOS. I also felt you could easily do with the commandline anything that Windows could do. Eventually, I warmed up to Windows 95, 2000, and XP. They're actually decent operating systems. They had their warts, but what OS, or computer program in general for that matter, doesn't. I've now "moved on" to Linux, which is better for all the right reasons. =)

[RealG187]

and of course DOS (How I miss you)

They never should have removed it in XP. That was one of the reasons why XP was a big disappointment when I first seen it.

I remember if I wanted to do something simple like edit text, I would just nor book windows, and in DOS quickly type:

cd\
cd whateverdit
edit file.ext

then go, instead of waiting forever for windows to load things I didn't need!

[alarclin]

Win95 I suppose, mainly because I got really shafted by having one of the early versions --
If the question were broadened however to include "desktop environment" or "user interface" as opposed to operating system (my Archlinux installation on a laptop, with no gui, is still the same "operating system" as the mint linux I'm using right now, though the experience is vastly different, after all) then I would have to say Apple's Os X is hands down the worst, because of a window manager that makes metacity seem brilliant in comparison. (and I detest metacity!) On the other hand, that horrendous apple gui is laid over a wonderful os, freebsd. What a waste.

[rzrgenesys187]

I would have to say vista. I've used all the windows since 3.1 but I barely did anything with them since I was quite young

[tille]

The absolute worst OS i've ever used? Windows Vista ofcourse ^^

[BrokenKingpin]

- Windows ME... would blue screen sitting there doing nothing
- SuSE (9 at the time I think)... could not even configure my mouse properly and YAST is terrible.

[ali999]

Windows ME by far...that thing had too many bugs

[klange]

I never used Windows ME, so honestly, I have to say openSUSE 11.0, but it's just because of lack of support for my hardware. Touchpad didn't work after restart, it wouldn't sleep, had the same soft lockup and wireless problems I was trying to escape from Hardy... Just plain not good. I've had better times with windows.

[maumaufck]

Linux Insigne

[nerd0795]

worst version of windows I owned: Windows ME (Ugghhh... 7 years of Blue screens. Maybe that's why I like Vista and I never owned XP, 98 or 95)

worst Version of mac os (I used in my old school): System 6 my school was still using it in the year 2000 >.< they finally got mac os x 10.0 in 2003

worst version of linux that I tried: puppy linux. Installing it using virtual box with 100mb of ram for the virtual os. Wow, first of all it's too like window. The icon system is weird. I couldn't even tell what was the browser. so I go fire up he browser using the livecd 7 minutes it took. Then to install it I had to put in like an half hour worth of terminal codes. then I closed it and deleted it. Then laughed. It's totally inferior compared to ubuntu. I've only used ubuntu, xubuntu and puppy linux.

[worx101]

....
Since some people consider it an OS, for sure Win3.1
Followed closely by Vista...

Favorite? MS-DOS :) even now... I miss it :(

For note... I never had a problem with Windows ME... always wonder what people are talking about when they complain about it.

[Orlsend]

Prov Windows 2000 and all Mac OS

Along with the Windows Mobile (But those are not deserve to even been called OS,Those are just user interfaces....)

[nachomania]

For me, it's a tie between Windows ME and OpenSuse. Me would crash every third day, and OpenSuse (surprisingly) didn't detect my hardware well.

[Eredeath]

i'm going to be the odd one out and say XP, I liked Vista better (but not much)...

[Son of William]

I have used every version of Windows since Windows 386 and I have to say Windows ME is by far the worst OS I ever "used" (Microsoft Bob was so ludicrous it was actually fun to use it and see how stupid the interface was).

I tried Red Hat 6.1 several years ago and couldn't get it to install to a functional level, so I never got to actually use it for anything. Is a failure to even install alone grounds for declaring an OS bad?

[Kernel Sanders]

For those that say Vista. What makes it worse than Windows ME in your eyes? I'm sat here struggling to think of a reason that Vista is worse than ME :-k

Or is it that those that say Vista haven't used ME?

[lapcat66]

XP was the worst, once they introduced the windows genuine advantage (wga) spyware that kept trying to silently call home.

That cured me of windows, so I haven't had the Vista experience.

[Steve413z]

PC-DOS 4.01 (installed on ROM) was pretty damn bad, that was a long time ago

I'm not a fan of Apple OS's either

[Richard9795]

How About Windows 95? it's very unsecure, and definetly not stable...
i like Ubuntu the best!!

[tel93]

For those that say Vista. What makes it worse than Windows ME in your eyes? I'm sat here struggling to think of a reason that Vista is worse than ME :-k

Or is it that those that say Vista haven't used ME?
I've used both, and can safely say that Vista is worse than ME. At least you can run Windows programs on ME, as opposed to Vista.

[Thisislaw]

For me, it's a tie between Windows ME and OpenSuse.
I have to agree with you on openSUSE there. A little while into running openSUSE, I had a headache. I have never found any Linux distribution to cause that and I have used many others. For me it is a openSUSE and then Windows Vista. Currently I have this computer triple booted with Ubuntu 8.04, Fedora 8, and the one I hate Windows Vista (need Windows for Guild Wars still. I have an ATI card which doesn't want to work well for Guild Wars I suppose). When I get a nVIDIA card, I hope to ditch Windows Vista. My other computer runs Linux Mint 5 Elyssa and I love it as well. In total, I have had computers with three different Windows versions (Windows 2000 Pro, Windows Xp (my favourite Windows OS), and Windows Vista. I have also used Windows 98 a lot at school and have used Windows 95 before as well, Windows 95 was a pain but I didn't hate it but I also did not like it. I have used to many Linux distributions to count and liked many of them but openSUSE, never again please.

[gjoellee]

windows1.0-xp
I liked widnows Longhorn: http://youtube.com/watch?v=b9ifQvQCO7Y i feel that it is better then Vista (it is the alpha version of Vista if I am not wrong)
and I hate

Viruses
Intruders
Spyware
Trojan
Adware

[MisfitI38]

1. OpenSUSE
1. Xandros
1. Freespire
1. Lunar

[blueamcat]

Well, I started using computers a little later. My first experience was with Windows 95. But the one I hated the most was Windows ME.

I agree, Window$ ME was horrible. Seemed like all it did was crash. :-p

[Randybob]

Windows 3.1. By far the most crash-happy OS I have ever had the displeasure to use.

[TorqueyPete]

This is a light-hearted thread for the OS you hated.

It's for people who've used at least three OS on a daily basis over the years. It's not a technical discussion of Pros & Cons, it's just for what you remember the least fondly.

----

I started in the seventies, and while Win 3.1 was definitely a low point I think I have to make a surprise choice of Apple OS 8.5.

Apologies to all the Mac fans! I tried to like it, I really tried to understand the attraction, but it was just ghastly for me on a PowerMac 7600/120. It's definitely the OS I never, ever want to boot again.

XP right after I allowed Int Exp to update to issue 7! There was no jam in my donut after that!

[karellen]

for me it was Windows 98 (countless BSOD); I've skipped Me, XP was stable and fast and now Vista is almost as fast as XP with some tweaking, and stable too (never crashed in 6 months)

[silkstone]

I wasn't that keen on the Dragon 32 - I should have bought the BBC Model B. :)

Slightly more recently... I got on with DOS 6 but had loads of problems with all versions of Windows I tried (3.1, 3.11, 95, 98 ) up to XP which seems to work quite well (although I don't like the 'Genuine Advantage' rubbish).

Ubuntu is the only Linux flavour I've tried (Edgy, Feisty and Hardy), and I use it 95% of the time these days.

[epiphonygirl]

Oh yes, the many fond memories of Windows Me on my parents computer...they have Xp now and will never get Vista. So yeah, my list 95 For sound issues by PackardBell, Me for pointless bluescreens and empty device manager lists (for real!) by Compaq, and finally Vista for being installed on machines with too little memory, processing power, and easily corrupted user profiles (I work 10hrs/week at a campus IT helpdesk and in one semester I saw 10 people with that problem.

[joshdudeha]

Mandriva 2008.1

Ugh, sooooo many crashes and bugs. It was worse than windows, and I hate to say that.
But I'm so glad i got my ubuntu back ^_^

[Jim_in_Omaha]

My Sinclair ZX-81's OS. I still have that thing in a box somewhere.....

[mikjp]

Probably Win95. Before that I had only MS-DOS something.

After Win95 I've used almost exclusively different flavours of Linux and BSD.

Oh, I forgot to mention Commodore 64's OS, actually a BASIC interpreter. But it booted almost instantly :-)

Greetings,

mikko

[mordak13]

I have never used Vista thankfully so the worst for me had to be Windows ME followed my Windows 3.1.

[Liviu-Theodor]

When I saw the first time Windows Vista, I thought it will be only the second worst after Windows ME, but after the so-called ”Service Pack 1”, I changed my mind: it is the worst OS I ever seen (even CP/M was much better on it's time, with the hardware available then). If only I could replace it with something stable and free of all that bloatware on all the network I administer :( ... At least the servers run Fedora (which is much better than Windows nonetheless, but I am more confortable with Ubuntu).

[Nitrolinken]

I have to go for Windows ME. I could've bought myself a blue lamp with a electrical connection that is really unstable and gotten the same effect.

[xoger]

kubuntu - i hate kde with a passion

[em3raldxiii]

Oh, I forgot to mention Commodore 64's OS, actually a BASIC interpreter. But it booted almost instantly :-)

Greetings,

mikko

You're crazy! Commodore 64's OS totally rocked. It was fast, and direct ... somewhat like command line interfaces ;). And you could get GEOS for it which made it uber cool haha.

My least fav ... Windows XP Home (no service pack). I didn't use it very long, it came preinstalled on a system before SP1 was released. It was horrid (Blue screens, strange artifacts on my screen, applications hanging ALL the time ....) then after SP1 it got even worse. At the time I was desperate, so I found a VLK version of 2000 Pro and used it for years. It was relatively stable and "just worked" with all my hardware.

Of course, then my eyes were opened to GNU/Linux. Yeah. No brainer. :D

[notyetroot]

<That I've used>
Windows XP (ME and Vista are probably worse). Windows XP fatally crashes every ~5 minutes or so (literally, sometimes less). Ubuntu fatally crashes around ~2-3 hours, and that's with fglrx enabled.

[palomar]

I think it's too easy to say win 9x/ME is crap, comparing it with XP or recent Ubuntu's. For it's time, win9x was quite a good and usable OS. It made computers accessible to the Joe Sixpack people... Remember popularity of the internet was still growing, so it was not designed to be a 100% safe networking OS... It also crashed sometimes, but most of the time it was caused by 3rd party apps. So if you just watch out what software you are installing it won't crash that much..

The only thing I hated on win ME was it didn't support real DOS mode for some marketing reasons... (but using a hack fixed that :wink:).

XP is quite a good and stable OS. No complaints about that. It's still my favorite Windows (and perhaps favorite OS...). Vista is OK as well, but a bit bloated. IMO it's XP with some extra apps (defender, indexer, fancy GUI) which I will never install myself. So I switched back to XP after a few months.

Let's talk about Linux now... for desktop usage, the early distro's (pre 2003) were terrible. You had to create partitions yourself, installing software was a hell, dependencies, no consistent GUI (every program has it's own fonts and colors #-o), most of my hardware was not recognized, very slow et cetera..... So everytime after a few days I got very frustrated and quit playing with it. More recent distro's were better at these points, but still you had to do a lot of console work to make things work. I hated that. Finally, since Ubuntu 8.04 almost everything works out of the box and it's the first Linux which I consider ready for the desktop :) I like it very much.

So, my worst OS experiences (for desktop usage) were the early Linux distro's. They were definitely not ready for end users.

[Helios1276]

Has to be ME so far

[epiphonygirl]

Vista is worse than Me simply because it was installed on machines with hardware that could barely handle the OS 1GB RAM and no Dual Core? Honestly, Microsoft should have known better than to allow that to occur...I mean I have seen perfectly find computers, no viruses and very little if any adware on them take time to LOAD Windows Media Player with maybe like 500MB of music in its library. That OS is loaded with bloatware as well. Also, they turned around and changed the lables of many administrative tools as well as how they function...it seems Macesque to me in some cases. Also, I've seen way too many corrupt user profiles...too many little things i guess.

[imagecko]

Win XP was terrible.
It was giving "blue-screen-of-death" so often that they even made the standard theme blue. :(

[powerpleb]

Worst OS for me was the old, old Macintosh Plus OS. It was slow as hell, couldn't do much with it, and I seem to remember lots of error messages. (We had them at school and kids used to 'play' with them)

I remember clearly; coming home from school and being relieved to be able to use MSDOS. Ah the command line, and no greasy, clattering one button mouse.

EDIT: This followed by, in close second, Vista. For much the same reasons outlined by other posters. Bought a laptop with Vista on it. Booted it up, it did some stuff, had to reboot it, it did some more stuff, had to reboot it, finally got a chance to try and use it. Loaded IE up to download Firefox which took about 5mins because computer has an apparently prehistoric 1gb of RAM. Finally got Firefox downloaded, installed and running (this took another eon, RAM usage at a constant 90% and I had almost nothing open) and it wanted me to reboot again. Not happy.

[achmafooma]

Windows ME was, by far, the worst OS I ever used. Windows Vista is my very-close #2. The whole series of 3.11 - ME on the consumer side was pretty terrible.

Thankfully neither ME or Vista were ever my 'daily' operating systems, but I've had the displeasure of having to troubleshoot them.

Since 2001 I've been primarily Mac OS X but with Ubuntu machines mixed in (server, secondary machines, etc.) since Hoary in 2005. I've almost forgotten what a 'reboot' is ;-).

[robotman5]

i say Windows ME and Vista

Dont you think they are smillar?


not Stable, Combatabitlly issues etc...:popcorn:

[LittleLORDevil]

Re: What was your worst OS?
i say Windows ME and Vista

Dont you think they are smillar?


not Stable, Combatabitlly issues etc...

Similar in the sense that they are both transitional OS's.

[Canis familiaris]

BeOS.
It was the first non-Windows operating system I used. I had good looks as well as easy to use in my opinion.
But it did not detect my KEYBOARD which was unacceptable.

[favadi]

Windows Vista.
No comment.

[Animeniac]

The only operating systems I've ever used in my life were:
Windows 95
Windows 98
Mac OS
Windows ME
Windows xp
Windows Vista
Ubuntu (Linux)

Out of all of them, Windows ME was my worst OS.

[eliseu_carvalho]

I had lots of operating systems: Windows 95, 98, 98SE 2000, XP; various kinds of Linux (Conectiva, Mandriva and Corel) and BeOS. The worst one was Windows 98.
I'm on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy now and I don't want to back to Windows again :-)

[mauud777]

freespire is the worst distro ever

[Freiburg05]

Lucky me, never tried Windows ME. Windows 98 was no so bad as win95. I don't have any vista computer myself, but I have to use it quite often. I think it is in the way of becoming the worst OS ever, or maybe it has already achieved the goal.

Respecting to linux, some Red hat old versions gave me some trouble, and, ok I am very happy with ubuntu (using it since 5.04), but have to say that some upgrades were not as clean as others

[RavUn]

My least favorite is Mac OSX. I don't really use it much so maybe that's why I hate it... I don't know how to use it.

I can't remember if it was windows 98 or windows ME that I always had issues with. It was one of those; I'm going to assume ME and it (whichever of the two) was my worst.

[Melsion]

Well, the first OS that comes to my mind is Windows 95 with it's self destruct system (couldn't uninstall it and I just had to format the drive once or twice every month :S ).
Windows 98 was much better, once I learned to deal with it (after 20 or 30 formats) I managed to make it last for three months!!! (only once thought). I must thank Win 98 for being the reason I found linux, so I can't hate it like the others...
But for me, the worst OS ever is Winblows ME, sometimes it crashed right after installing it and I never managed to actually use it for more than an hour without pulling my hair off.
On the linux side of the world, maybe RedHat 5 was the one with more configuration problems I have ever tried but, even so, it worked fairly well.

[renault9ice]

all versions of vista. recommended word: svista (in Greek language is mean delete it.) ha ha ha.

[RealG187]

I had lots of operating systems: Windows 95, 98, 98SE 2000, XP; various kinds of Linux (Conectiva, Mandriva and Corel) and BeOS. The worst one was Windows 98.
I'm on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy now and I don't want to back to Windows again :-)

Windows 98 was the best Windows ever.

Only thing is it had lots of BSOD and you had to install a driver for every USB Drive (and I have lots of USB drives...)

[xen-uno]

Worst for me was OSX 10, probably because I knew how to make any Windows version light, fast, clean, and trouble free. OSX 10 and the awful mouse on the i-mac was something I couldn't get used to despite spending several days trying to get 3 machines (belonging to my brother's kids) talking to each other and to the Airport. The damn settings just wouldn't stick.

I went from DOS 5 to Windows for Workgroups 3.11, briefly to W95, then straight into NT as a beta tester. W2K was my favorite but with XP modded to behave and look the same, I would have to say XP (x64) is my favorite and it is the workhorse here. I'm diggin Ubuntu seriously though and it is my XP replacement when that time comes.

Most admirable OS I've seen to date was the Amiga OS ... it could do so much with so little resources. None of the knock-offs compare to the original Lemmings and Crystal Hammer on the Amiga.

[init1]

freespire is the worst distro ever
Agreed, didn't recognize my NIC.

[fuzzyk.k]

windows 95a and vista , no offense but gentoo was probably my worst Linux, takes ages to compile

[COLiNx86]

Vista hands down.

[Sprax]

Definately Vista.

I won't even get into all the issues... everything from pretending Firefox is incompatible in order to force you to set IE as your default browser, to the little news ticker with microsoft news to the constant popups and the fact that there seem to be no error messages so you might know what's wrong when something doesn't work (which is all of the time)... etc etc... Vista = PAIN

As far as I can tell vista was designed purely with the marketing department in mind. The idea seems to be to control users as much as possible. Thank the IPU for Linux.

[jcway212]

IN ORDER OF EXPERIENCE.

Win95 was my first.....It was OK

Win98.........OK

Win98se.......really had a good experience with that.

WinME.........this ties for my worst.

Win2000.......better then 98se

WinXp.........initially buggy, but came to work fine.

RedHat v?.....many years back my friend tried to get me into this and it scared me half to death! Uninstalled it and stayed away from Linux all together.

Ubuntu Gutsy....My friend told me to try Linux again and I agreed worked with it for awhile and got a bit frustrated, didn't understand the point of going Linux, when my games didn't work :/

Vista....................yay........it sucked, IT WAS THE WORST!!!!!!!

Ubuntu Hardy....Looked at Linux from a development and learning perspective....also looked at open source through a different lens......and I am now addicted.....like cocaine addicted :)

I am now dual booting on my main system with XP and Ubuntu, I will eventually port everything, but there are a few things that I need XP for, for now. My laptop that had Vista on it only has Ubuntu right now. I am thinking about loading Kubuntu on to try that out. Don't know for sure though.

[EnGorDiaz]

dont hate on me for this i love ubuntu now but my worst experience with an os was ubuntu ultimate 1.3 gamers edition i had set local errors althrough it and i tryed getting 3d support on a VIA motherboard ....errrr i dont want to go there again no thank case closed okthnx bye:lolflag:

[EnGorDiaz]

Linspire/Freespire (Filled with junk)
Windows 95 (Too resource heavy)
System 8 (Great job setting IE as the default browser, Apple)

linspire is one of the worst kde enviroments ever it has so many exploits available for it and so many viruses can be coded that its disgusting to put the linux tag on it

[zebulon M]

Windows ME for me. I managed to keep my installation alive for 4 years. After that it started to crash hourly and I bought another computer. That computer runs gutsy now and serves my dad well. Ubuntu is definitely my best OS, it made it fun to use the computer again :) .

[iamBevan]

Windows ME:guitar:

[crtlbreak]

Windows ME:guitar:

I have to agree - windoze ME was the king of shite¬

](*,)](*,)](*,)

8-[8-[:shock:8-[

[vickynike23]

vista,xp,98 me, all in diffrent ways!!

[tel93]

Worst for me was OSX 10, probably because I knew how to make any Windows version light, fast, clean, and trouble free. OSX 10 and the awful mouse on the i-mac was something I couldn't get used to despite spending several days trying to get 3 machines (belonging to my brother's kids) talking to each other and to the Airport. The damn settings just wouldn't stick.
Yeah I hate how OS X does that.

[BLTicklemonster]

Because I'm not one to care to be blind sided with "you need to know this stuff before you do this", my worst OS was an inclusive group of all versions of LInux prior to when I finally found Ubuntu 3 years ago.

Red Hat, Slackware, Mandrake, to name a few.

I'd get to ... sometimes a desktop, sometimes a black screen with a blinking dash, and wonder wtf. With Slackware, I thought I'd finally get it because I actually bought it in a store and it came with TFM that I could R. Well, I RTFM, and still was lost when I got to a desktop looking place.

I swore off my fixation with running linux until one day I was in the CBGB forums, and someone suggested Ubuntu, saying it was years beyond what I'd tried before.

Since then I have been hooked.

[antiloop]

Windows Vista.

[Jordanwb]

MAC OS whatever. I've had more crashes with it then I have Blue Screens or kernel panics combined.

Also Vista, I nicknamed it BSOD edition.

[milesinnz]

for those long in the tooth, try Burroughs B700/B800 using their propriety CMS OS of the late 70's early 80's. Just crashed all the time....

[terry123b99]

Gotta say Windows Me was my all time most hated. Followed Closely by Windows 3.1

[tarps87]

For me it would have to be vista, especially when IE would crash and it would ask me if I wanted to search the internet for a solution, which would try to open IE again and crash the os. I never realy got on with windows so at home carried on using a risc pc until switching to linux

[JillSwift]

RSTS/E
I mean really, yikes!

[Theosa]

Suse 9.1.. Not sure about the version number. It was certainly dependency hell.

[emperortux]

mac OS 8, definetely. if i had a dollar for every time it crashed..... :lolflag:

[spintriae]

Ubuntu. If I had a dollar for every time it crashed this weekend alone, I'd have about $40. Of course, I didn't count each crash, but the forced disk check that runs after 40 reboots has booted twice, so...

Since running fsck on my freshly corrupted disk this morning, however, it's only crashed about 2 or 3 times, so I must be getting the hang out it!

[NWAdawg]

Haven't played with Vista yet, So I got to say Win95 & WinME were my worst OS's. WinME lasted all of 30min,

[mach-schnell]

Windows ME is forever seared in my mind as the worst joke on computer users...ever!

[Dremora]

Windows, from most to least:

Vista
Me
98
(95, 2000, and XP were good)

UNIX or UNIX-like:

Solaris
Fedora Linux (It's nice when it works, every other patch breaks something)