Which OS to use?

most studios i know use XP pro. whether that's the "best" or not boils down to a religious war. the better question is perhaps "what apps do all my people want to use for development, and which OS best supports those apps".

-me

WinXP of some sort is preferable. You might want to have a couple other windows OSes lying around just to make sure nothing goes horribly wrong. Also, keep a couple distros of Linux around if you're planning on running on Linux.

It is very dependant on the programs you want to use as Palidine said. I have heard that the best graphics and music software will work on macs, although I know of some good graphics software which would run under linux.

My personal recommendation is to have dual-boot machines with Win-XP and Linux.

I've only used Suse 9.1 Linux and various windows flavors for programming in C++ and they seem equally capable. I also prefer the free Dev C++ to the Microsoft Visual Studio programs if you are going to use Windows. I should note that I'm no expert programmer, so take that in to consideration when making a choice. If price is a factor, and it always is, you should definitely look into Linux. Can't beat free as far as prices are concerned.

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Can't beat free as far as prices are concerned.

If you're a student, the latest [non-commercial license] edition of Visual Studio can sometimes be had for free through your school's computer science department / club.

- carb

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Original post by carb Quote: Can't beat free as far as prices are concerned. If you're a student, the latest [non-commercial license] edition of Visual Studio can sometimes be had for free through your school's computer science department / club. - carb

he was talking about the price of linux(nothing, for most distros at least) vs. the price of Windows

Well, I've heard many of ways people decide. One person I know set up three OS-es. Mac, Linux, and Windows, just so he could test out his Multi-platform API.


[EDIT]

Heh, just realized that I only mentioned one person. Another one I know has a partner on Mac while he's on Windows.

Most people here use Windows XP Professional, there are a few who use home, and a few who use Windows 2000.
If you're feeling ambitious, you could try running Linux. (Slackware, Debian) I, personally, use Windows XP Professional.

Most everything can be found on windows. Linux is getting there, but still doesn't nearly have as much as windows. I would love for linux to take over, because to me it is superior. But, the best help you'll get with linux from people online are their favorite Distro. Most people can't get past arguing that. In linux, there are "windows emulators" that can use a lot of programs for windows. But linux alone of course has a wide variety of it's own programs.

If you think you can work succesfully with linux, then I think it's an excellent choice. But since windows is accepted and used more often, it's your best bet to use windows. With some minor tweaking, windows is far from "all that bad".

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Original post by Roboguy Quote: Original post by carb Quote: Can't beat free as far as prices are concerned. If you're a student, the latest [non-commercial license] edition of Visual Studio can sometimes be had for free through your school's computer science department / club. - carb he was talking about the price of linux(nothing, for most distros at least) vs. the price of Windows

The Academic pricing applies also to XP Pro (and possibly Home).

If you're pretty serious about game programming, or even development in general, I'd recommend dual booting just for the sake of experience. Linux isn't the end-all it's hyped up to be, but you may find it quite useful at times.

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If price is a factor, and it always is, you should definitely look into Linux. Can't beat free as far as prices are concerned.

It's only free if your time is worth nothing. [grin]

If you are a noob, Linux can be very discouraging when your first use it.
So, If you are under Windows I see no real reason to complicate your life installing Linux. When you gain more experience you could try the penguin to test your code portability.

(Note: I'm a die-hard Linux user, but I have not a zealot mentality about it.)

It's worth while installing Linux anyway since Linux and Unix skills are very useful to have.

People are making like Linux is hard to use, that just isn't the case, maybe it was at one point but it isn't now. Some Linux Distros install just like Windows, Suse 9.1 installed easy, and on first boot it went to a Windows like environment, KDE. It detected all of my Hardware fine, including my Voodoo 3 3500 AGP with TV In/Out, that nothing seems to like. I have heard that other Linux Distros are even easier. As far as software is concerned, Linux has everything a beginning programmer needs. I don't know of any Milkshape like program for Linux, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. You should definitely boot at least a Live CD version of Linux to give it a try, all you have to do is burn a CD and turn your computer on with it in the drive, and you're using Linux. Knoppix works pretty well for that purpose.

Linux can still be hard to use, and it requires more time to maintain (i.e. installing new software packages, figuring out why they don't work). All other considerations aside, Windows will require less maintenance, hence, more time to do real work. The tools you need are available for both Windows and Linux. It all boils down to the cost.

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Original post by ZedFx My personal recommendation is to have dual-boot machines with Win-XP and Linux.

Actually, I'd recommend against dual-booting. It's not an efficient use of resources.

Instead, I'd recommend having virtually all of your machines as dedicated Windows boxes (assuming we're speaking of PCs here; Macs should run OS X, obviously), with maybe 1% to 5% or one machine, whichever is greater, as a multiuser Linux server. If you're releasing for Linux, add another dedicated Linux machine (workstation) for testing. The Linux server will support multiple concurrent logins by various users, and will allow for queueing and batching of useful processes. You'll find that you'll have a higher ROI on that machine this way.

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Original post by smr Linux can still be hard to use, and it requires more time to maintain (i.e. installing new software packages, figuring out why they don't work). All other considerations aside, Windows will require less maintenance, hence, more time to do real work. The tools you need are available for both Windows and Linux. It all boils down to the cost.

UberJim, that's what I was trying to say. It took me near to 2 days to compile SDL succesfuly. The RPM method didn't work because I couldn't find some dependencies.

Wow... What Linux distro were you using?!!

SDL should be pretty much a standard part of Linux these days so it should have come with the ISOs or your download...

Personally Id go with Linux and XP dual booted.

As far as the distro to use Id have to say Debian is the best, Mandrake pisses me off(well 9.0 did), Redhat 9, had a sh***y user interface that took too much work to fix with themes. As I prefer Gnome over KDE any day, its debian for me!

XP Pro is very stable anyway, and most developers choose to use it as there preferred OS of choice.