Computer operating systems

Most users are forced by necessity to use several operating systems, as some programs are available only on certain systems (Tables 5 and 6). An amazingly large average of 3.4 operating systems are used per person! Some of this may be due to a variety of operating systems on data acquisition computers/ I asked for people to indicate their primary ``home'' operating system in the hopes that would indicate which single computer system people prefer to use. However, many people responded with more than one ``home'' system, indicating the necessity to use more than one platform. One person complained that he needed to borrow accounts on other people's computers. People are tending to settle into the two different camps of Windows (dominated by Windows 95/98) and Unix (dominated by Linux); see Table 7. This in sharp contrast to the case a decade ago that, at least in the facilities, VMS dominated. Porting of VMS based programs is problematic (particularly Jess Brewer's cfit), and is under great time pressure by the decommissioning of VMS at PSI and other facilities. There is a danger that new software with modern graphics might be difficult to port between Windows and Unix machines unless care is taken at the start to choose multiplatform tools. Multiplatform facility software, easily downloaded from an FTP site, would reduce the number of platforms individuals are forced to use.

Table 5: Which operating systems are used.

#	Which operating system(s)	do you use?		is your primary ``home'' computer?
		Number Yes	Percent Yes	Number Yes	Percent Yes
14	PC windows	46	71.9	21	32.8
16	NT	24	37.5	8	12.5
18	OS2	3	4.7	1	1.6
20	Linux	35	54.7	22	34.4
22	Unix	30	46.9	4	6.3
24	VMS Vax	29	45.3	10	15.6
26	VMS Alpha	35	54.7	7	10.9
28	Mac	12	18.8	6	9.4
30	other (IBIX)	1	1.6	0	0.0

Table 6: Number of respondents using 1, 2, 3, etc., different operating systems.

	# of operating systems
	0	1	2	3	4-7	mean
Total number of operating systems used per respondent	0	5	16	18	25	3.4 $\pm$ 1.5
Total number of ``home'' operating systems used per respondent	5	46	6	7	0	1.2 $\pm$ 0.8

Table 7: Which categories of operating systems are used and are the primary ``home'' computer system.

	Used		``Home''
	#	Percent	#	Percent
Windows, NT, OS2	50	78.1	28	43.7
Linux, Unix	46	71.9	25	39.1
VMS	43	67.2	16	25.0
Mac and other	13	20.3	6	9.4