Most Popular Platform ? Windows 10 or Mac OSX

[deanchalk]

Hi All

Im thinking of upgrading my kit. As a software developer I use both Mac and Windows every day, and have no preference.

My question is - what percentage of Pixinsight users are Mac, and what percentage are Windows ?

As a software developer, I know that the most popular hardware platforms often get the most love from the application developer, so I'd like to make a purchase in line with the most popular platform.

If most users use Windows, Ill buy Windows, if most users are Mac Ill buy a new Mac

Thanks

Dean

[John_Gill]

Hi,

PixInsight platform of choice is Linux (FreeBSD) but I think most users are on Windoze and a few on Mac.  I tried PixInsight on SuSE Linux but could find no noticeable performance improvement so I went back to Windoze10.  Hope this helps.

Look up
John

[Niall Saunders]

As PixInsight has developed over the years, there have been many instances where development has been more reliable on Windows and Linux platforms, in comparison to MacOS environments - leading to occasional 'work around kludges' having to be suggested for MacOS users.

In reality therefore, it is only the 'die-hard Mac user' (or those with no choice) that would choose a MacOS solution over the other two.

Also worth keeping in mind is that, although developed on a FreeBSD platform, the number of users who then go on to implement a Windows PI installation ensures that any bugs or issues under Windows are resolved first. Conversely, you can then see how MacOS issues take longer to come to the attention of the PI development team (and, due to the nature of MacOS itself, are ofter much harder - if not impossible - to resolve).

In summary therefore, if you have no specific preference, then it (logically) has to be FreeBSD or Windows 

[msmythers]

I would rethink the FreeBSD route for now. There is problems with QT ports. The last update for PI on FreeBSD was '2016 Mar 04 12:02:33 PixInsight for FreeBSD (64-bit) Core version 01.08.04.1198 (commercial)'.

Linux and Mac are on Core version 01.08.05.1352 while Windows is on Core version 01.08.05.1353.


Mike

[deanchalk]

OK, so it seems like Windows 10 is the better platform. My only concern is that I'm going to be doing this on a powefulll high-DPI laptop with a 15 inch screen.

Ive looked at the QT technology that underpins PI, and there are a lot of scaling issues and other UI problems related to how QT works on such laptops.

Has anyone else had these problems?

Thanks again everyone for the great help

Dean

[Niall Saunders]

Hi Dean,

I have been running PI on a triple-screen, high DPI, setup for quite some time now, and processing on an i7 running with a crazy number of 'real' cores and 64Gb of ultra high-speed RAM. It just 'works' - exactly as it has done on all the other Windows machines that I have ever had in the past.

As I said, if you have no preference, and can choose a machine environment that you want to work with,then go down the Windows route. You are then least likely to face issues, or, if you do have issues, you are most likely to see those issues resolved soonest.

[chris.bailey]

I love PI on my 27" Retina i7 iMac. Other than a couple of keyboard shortcuts, no issues whatsoever.

[pfile]

yeah i dont know why niall wants to diss osx, both windows and osx have issues with PI (which are all due to Qt, really...) and linux/bsd is no fun unless you understand the internals of the OS. theres lots of posts here with people saying that certain dylibs are missing on various flavors of linux... which they had to install by hand or go make symlinks to make the linker find the library files...

rob

[msmythers]

As someone who reads every posting that comes through this board I would like to sum up what I can remember of PI current issues with 1.8.5

FreeBSD--1.8.5 not available

Linux -- If not installing the recommended(by Juan) and tested distributions as per the System Requirements page from the main website then expect problems. Libraries not found seem to be the most prevalent.  Other issues of course can occur.

Mac-- Currently the most prevalent seems to be the keyboard shortcut issue but there are easy work arounds. There was some cursor/drag like issues earlier in 1.8.5 but I haven't seen that mentioned in a long time.

Windows-- There is the mysterious 'Access violation: invalid memory read operation at address 0000000000000' that still creeps up on various different brand computers at times. There seems no consensus on how this is happening.


These are the main issues as I see them currently. If you are a Linux person I'm sure the Linux issue is not an issue. A Mac person I would guess would not have reasons not to use PI just because of a keyboard shortcut problem. A Windows users, which I use both Windows 7 and Windows 10 and have not had the problem, might be a problem if this happens to your computer. There seems to be no clear path as to how to troubleshoot which is required to fix. That being said if Windows has the majority of PI installations then this 'Access violation' is probably happening to a very, very small percentage of PI users otherwise this board would be full of complaints.



Mike     

[jshortt]

I use both Windows and MacOS for my PI work and have never had a problem with either. Having said that, I think Juan has fewer test configurations for MacOS than for Windows and certainly fewer people seem to use Mac than Windows for PI. So if you believe, as I do, that there's risk in being on the least-used platform then you'll choose Windows. And you'll be happy with it.

I can't comment on Linux since I've never tried PI there but I think it's the platform that Juan uses. If I had issues with Windows I'd move to Linux

John

[pfile]

the linux problems would be problems for people that have no experience with linux but are encouraged to try linux becuase that's the 'native' platrform for pixinsight...

rob

[msmythers]

I agree rob but if they have no linux experience then they should start with the tested recommended distros to get a feel first.



Mike

[msmythers]

I would like to say one thing that might be helpful should someone who doesn't use PixInsight reads this thread. While we question issues about which OS to use PI with and that is a very personal question it has to be said the beauty of this software and it's license is we are not locked in to a single OS. We can explorer how PI works with other OS's at our choosing. And we can compare them side by side as we can run as many copies of the program as we have computers at the same time. That makes these discussions so interesting and informative.


Mike

[Niall Saunders]

yeah i dont know why niall wants to diss osx

Hi Rob,

I didn't 'diss' osx (unless you can show me where you believe that I did). Rather, as has also been mentioned by others, I suggested that the larger user-base of Windows systems would suggest that, all other things being equal (as is claimed), then Windows might be the best choice.

I use Windows, and only through necessity, not choice. That saif, I would still choose Windows over MacOS evry second of every day of every week - for exactly the reasons that have been put forward. It has, by far, the largest user-base, even though it is far from perfect.

The OP has a total freedom of choice, based om familiarity with all the available PI compilations, and I stand by me personal belief that, under those circumstances, Windows would offer the best solution, and its choice may even lead to hardware that is significantly cheaper than for the likes of a MacOS solution.

I certainly do not intend to offend other with my suggestions, and fully respect their freedom of choice. I am not a 'fan-boy' of any particular OS over any other. In fact I personally hate them all, as they have all now grown so big that they are totally unmanageable as a commercial, or even 'freeware', product, with code written in a totally disjointed, segmented, fashion by commitees of software nerds who have no idea, and could not care less, about what the user actually wants, and who race to get one disjointed code release out before starting all over again to try and rectify all the errors that the user base will now start to report, whilst hackers make the most of new security issues as soon as each release hits the market.

At least the development of PixInsight has a much smaller development team, whereby code can be brough to market with greater efficiency, less errors, and faster.

Choose whatever OS you want to use - it will probably be fine.