What OS do you use, and why?

[msknight]

Someone at Linus Media Group, decided to start an argument over on Twitter by asking -

Congrats guys. The bloodshed in the comments was predictable.

I thought I'd take this post to go through the three operating systems and offer my opinions on why I like/hate them.

I'll get MacOS out of the way first.

I put my money where my mouth was and got a Macbook Air a few years back. I had already had a company iPhone and hated it. To cut a long story short, the white background hurt my eyes after too much use with text... as it was primarily for works e-mails. I used it for some pictures and as my laptop was Linux at the time, I couldn't get the phone to talk with the laptop. I tried to get bluetooth working and went through a shop load of free bluetooth apps, but none of them worked... as it looked like the phone didn't have any native bluetooth file transfer on board. I also wanted to find my way out of an unfamiliar steam rally, but the phone didn't have a GPS navigation system on board. And that was the second iPhone as the first was faulty out of the box... the phone wouldn't ring. No audio. Speaker dead. - These things were available to me out of the box with Android, but I left even Android for Sailfish in 2012/13 when I became one of the first backers to Jolla. I've been using Sailfish ever since. Ok, so the phone doesn't game well, but hey ho. It's backed by the Russians and Chinese (they called it Aurora) so I expect Sailfish to grow into a respectable competitor as the years continue to roll on.

iOS didn't allow me the fine control I was used to. I did a vblog on the built in camera and tried to compress it for upload, but it didn't give me options for fine control of the compression; just some overall generic options, so I couldn't fine choose a bitrate. I also wanted to install some software that required compiling, and the Air took about half an hour, with the processor running full pelt and eventually I gave up looking at the progress on the command line, before finally giving up on iOS and loading Linux Mint on the thing.

Windows I use for work. Linux Mint and OpenIndiana I use at home.

I started with DOS, so I've had experience of Windows from the start. It got to the stage where a rebuild of Windows XP would take all day. It wasn't only installing the operating system itself, but all the applications. Licence codes had to be found, then patches, drivers... removing all the user data and then putting it all back on at the end of it. The applications would also need to be reconfigured as the settings had gone.

At home I had a Netware server with ZEN installed, so I had put some effort into packaging my software. Build the OS, install the Netware client, log on and things would come down automatically with the appropriate registry keys and configuration files... and the "deny priority" active directory never did measure up to the superb operation of Novel Directory Services... however Novell eventually went to the wall and it was back to struggling with Windows manually.

I also had a number of friends who were having their systems toasted with updates. They were utterly fed up to the point that when I suggested teaching them Linux, they didn't exactly want to leave the familiarity of Windows, but they took me at my word and I converted their systems to Linux Mint and spent a day teaching them how to use the GUI. I used my Linux knowledge to configure the systems so that the pain was taken out for them.
They now love Linux as it's stable for them. They're not power users by any stretch of the imagination. 

It took them a while to learn things like The Gimp rather than Photoshop, but Libre Office and Firefox were no brainers. Also, with the preset folders for Videos, Music, Documents, Downloads, etc. it was easy for them. I also have a NAS set up for some of them, so that the Linux script auto-maps a share and they've got redundant storage available without having to mess around, and if they want to check the health, they just need to glance at the LED's to know all is well.

Yesterday I heard from another friend who had ordered himself a nice PC. It's coming to me to put Linux Mint on it, as he's had enough of Windows... and like me, he's a little bit of a gamer as well. He also cited hating the push to cloud services and subscription licenses as well as the telemetry. This is something I'm hearing more of, and I'm installing Libre Office for people on Windows now.

Software costs are something that featured also. Windows of that era didn't come with CD/DVD writing software and there were other small things like this, that you had to pay for... and in some cases keep paying if you lost the e-mail with the license code in a hard disk crash, with no backup.

For me... I configure things with a server at home, so there's redundancy but also sharing. My pictures, movies and files are available to all machines. Things are only on the local machines for processing. Once done, they're put to the server where I have everything sorted in folders. The PC's themselves have smaller SSD's on board and the important ones RSYNC themselves to the server twice a week... so if the SSD dies, I've got a backup of the whole, "home" directory.

As they've got SSD's, I install good amounts of RAM so that I don't have to use a swap file. I give a 20gig partition for \ (maybe 25 for some Linux variants) and the rest is given to \home ... so that if I have to rebuild the OS, I don't have to trash the home directory and all my files. I can just erase the \ partition and reinstall. Even change distro if I want.

I have an sh file which runs an apt-get install to go grab all my programs for me, so I can reinstall the OS and bring it up to date in less than an hour, and install all the apps in about another hour. Much of that is unattended. The configuration files in the home directory already contain my configurations.

Where Linux drags me down is drivers and manufacturer. These days graphics drivers are much easier than they used to be, and the effort put into games by Steam is superb. I still have UT 2004 which came with a Linux installer out of the box... sadly it doesn't play any more because of the change of audio driver ALSA/PULSE and while I could mess around... I don't really want to. RGB lighting doesn't work readily, if my Ducky keyboard flakes out on me, I've got to use a Windows system to re-flash the firmware, the configuration software for my Logitech G402 is also Windows only, just as my AverMedia Portable recorder. One of my friends bought a printer, but I had to wait for him to come back from France before I could install the Canon driver for him. It was too messy over the phone in his poor internet area.

Linux has, for a good number of years now, been much better than Windows for stability and free software that just makes things happen. I have bought licenses for some software on Linux as well as supported games. Yes, Steam is full of games that just won't run on Linux, but I'm happy enough with what I've got. I also support Mint on Patreon... and Mint sometimes use the funds on there to support other developers further upstream. Yes... that means that I'd have paid more in a year, than I'd have paid for a Windows pro licence.... roughly. And there is a fair chunk of indie games on Linux as well... no Wine or VirtualBox required. That's my kind of game.

Windows has the larger compatibility base for software and drivers, but the hassle with licenses, activation, upgrading and losing a day to reinstall a borked system... I just use it at work where we have things like SCCM to automate the build process.

OpenIndiana/Solaris/Unix... well, that's another story.

[NinJake]

W10 at home on desktop, W10+Linux Mint on laptop (Dual boot).

W10 at work with Linux Mint as my current VM.

 

I also have been setting up a frankenstein server running Ubuntu server and punishing myself by doing it all through terminal. (No GUI)

My raspberry pi is running Raspbian.

[msknight]

1 minute ago, NinJake said:

punishing myself by doing it all through terminal. (No GUI)

Love it  

[LukeSavenije]

arch cinnamon+windows on laptop

arch cinnamon+windows on desktop

windows on gaming desktop

windows on server

[Akira Shimazu]

WIN 10 at laptop.

probably going with Linux with my old Atom laptop

[tikker]

Windows 10 on my general home rig, because gaming and whatnot and I personally think it's a good daily driver OS.

 

Fedora on my laptop. I prefer a Linux or Unix environment for productivity and I do everything on my laptop. I never used a mac, but I am considering one as my next machine.

[Guest]

Win 10 Pro for my Main Desktop and Laptop

Vmware vSphere ESXI 6.5 (Running Ubuntu server, Windows Server 2016 2 CPU, and windows XP home vm - no reason why i have it - )

[Oshino Shinobu]

Windows 10 on clients and Windows Server 2016 and 2012 R2.

 

This is just my home network, but I have the majority of my storage for my computers on a file server and shared user documents and appdata using redirected folders. 

 

Windows because really, Group Policy is too useful to pass up. Even if I preferred MacOS or Linux from a client side, I'd still choose Windows due to how much you can do through Group Policy. 

[FlappyBoobs]

windows 10 at home and at work. At work I develop software using the Microsoft tech stack and deploy to Azure...so I use windows.

 

At home I haven't got the time or inclination to be fiddling about with shit, I just want to sit down and play games, so I have windows 10 installed and nothing else (no "helper apps", no 3rd party drivers, in fact all default drivers apart from the GPU) it works perfectly, boots in 5 seconds from cold and I can play every decent game made for PC. MacOS and Linux can't do that without a lot of setup and constant fiddling and updating, and for me at home anything more than clicking on an installation file is too much effort.

[Mihle]

Windows 10 because gaming and Linux is still not close to windows on how easy it is for a day to day OS.

 

"But it's just copy paste from internet" Doesn't matter.

 

My NAS is running Unraid tho.

[TrainFan475]

Windows 10 of course! How could you not love windows?

[spartaman64]

i use windows because of compatibility with the apps i use. If they ever get all ported to linux i would switch to linux in a heartbeat.

[TempestCatto]

Windows 10 LTSB (which is what I think Windows 10 in general should be...) on my custom built pc.

 

Various distros of Linus Linux on a little Asus Zenbook I have; mostly just for funsies.

 

I also have a Galaxy Tab A running Android 6.0.1 and may end up buying an iPad to replace it (mostly so I can control my digital mixing consoles remotely).

 

I may also eventually do a hackentosh, mostly for fun.

[karsnoordhuis]

windows 10 on both my laptop and pc because solidworks only runs on windows. i have lubuntu installed on my trial machine. just for messing around with linux without taking up resources on my pc.

[jiyeon]

Windows 10 on my PC, I use Windows on PC because I'm pretty dependent on .exe applications that I can only (to my knowledge) use on Windows.

I'm also just used to Windows 10 as my family is all on Windows and it's more comfortable for me to know the OS inside and out just in case anybody in my family has troubles with Windows.

Windows is also simple and easy to navigate around for me personally, and I feel I get the most out of my gaming PC if I use Windows.

 

I use Manjaro Linux on my laptop mainly just because I like the user interface of Manjaro, and also because I find Window scaling on my 14" 1920x1080p laptop display to be quite off.

I also find Manjaro takes up less resources so that's always a bonus when my laptop only has a dual-core Kaby Lake i3, 12GB RAM, and integrated graphics.

[BuckGup]

I use them all. They all have their pros and cons and there is no perfect OS

[DevBlox]

Haven't used Windows for a daily in over 4 years, only for testing software I spin up a Windows Server VM occasionally.  Use a Macbook Pro for work, people are not allowed to use Linux for some reason I'm not sure of, so every single person in IT departament opted for Mac's instead of Windows devices, would use Linux if I could.

 

Windows is a pain to set up with proper tooling (I don't mean IDE's, the terminal used to suck A LOT, the Linux one might work for me, but I'm not switching back). Building cross-platform native code is a massive pain, because libraries are not as easy to set up as in Linux, where you just install them and pkg-config get them for you immediately. You need workarounds.

 

Macbook is ok, not satisfied with cooling and hardware, screen is amazing though. But on-topic for OS: It's better than Windows by a long shot (tooling), has some annoying things, Vagrant and nfs broke at certain updates for me, fixed now though. Docker has to run on a VM which is annoying as hell. And no Vulkan support, only MoltenVK, but validation layers are not supported. I have a pet project with Vulkan, and can't work on the renderer properly because of that. Good thing there's homebrew.

 

Now for distro's, I used to use Debian when I was new, worked for me, all that I needed. Switched to Linux mostly out of curiosity, but there was some annoyance involved too (something about the laptop I had, it did not want to accept Windows 8 properly or smth, don't remember, drivers etc). Now I use Fedora, picked it mostly because where I worked at the time used CentOS for servers, and I needed some system that used RPM packages, so I could test them (you could install packages from CentOS and vice-versa). Stayed on it to this day because I'm really satisfied with all the relatively recent versions of software available for it.

 

I used Gnome since the Debian days, yesterday I switched to Plasma to try it out, might do the same with Cinnamon if it doesn't stick.

[Euchre]

I was thinking about this today, but not in the narrow sense of "What OS do you use on your computer?", but "What OSes do you use every day?", considering all devices you use of any kind. In my case, I started adding up things, and it got interesting.

 

On computers, on an every day basis, I use Windows 10 Home (my 2 laptops), Windows XP and Vista (at work, embedded and kiosks), ChromeOS (demos at work), and Android (tablets at home and work, old repurposed phone to media player, handheld scanner at work). On a 'some days' basis, I use Windows 7 on my lady's laptop and her work computer. Maybe once a month, I use Ubuntu (forget which build, it is older on an old laptop), Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, and Windows 95, 98, 98SE, and 2000.

 

Where it gets really interesting, though is the 'not exactly a computer' devices. My cell phone isn't considered a smartphone, but it isn't just super barebones firmware either - it runs BrewOS. The Amazon ecosystem devices we have are basically all FireOS, which is based on Android. My Vizio TV (pre-'Chromecast built in') I'm not totally sure of, although it appears to be Android based, but at very least uses a Linux kernel. I don't exactly know what runs the DVRs, or my LG 4K Bluray player, or my old Sylvania Bluray player, but I know that Bluray players at least started out using Java heavily for their functionality.

 

We have a lot more software running our lives than we often realize, from many disparate sources.

[lloose]

Work desktop - Windows 10 Professional. We are a Windows house and almost of our custom software is Windows only.

Work servers - Various versions of Windows server, RHEL, Oracle Linux, and Ubuntu Server. Oracle 12c main database is on Oracle Linux. SQL Server on Server 2016.

Home desktop - Windows 10 Professional. 

Home laptop - Pop OS 19.04

[PROGamer_199]

Windows 10 Pro - I use it at home and work for the ease of use and familiarity (and from fear that my software won't work properly on Linux).

[wasab]

Linux cuz windows sucks(especially the updates, jesus the christ. what the fck with them failing all the time and hogging up the system resources).

MaacOS is overpriced and i have no idea how to use and i am pretty sure it will suck as well. 

Any other operating system is just not consumer grade(sorry bsd but you are not good enough for consumer market).

 

[Barnack]

Windows 10 Pro for free (ty Microsoft Imagine for students), WSL for testing programs when compiling for Linux. Planning to replace Windows 10 on my laptop with msDOS to reduce power consumption and make it easier to focus on taking notes instead of playing tetris during lesson. (Might be joking but i might have been seriously thinking about that)

[turgsh01]

Windows 7 for me on all 3 of my computers. I have a dedicated gaming / video editing rig, dedicated game server hosting rig and a media consumption laptop. DirectX12 isn't a good enough reason for me to downgrade to Win10. When the day comes that I lose Win7, I might try out a version of Linux... I just hope it'll be decent enough for my needs.

[Dat Guy]

• OpenBSD on one of my servers because of its built-in httpd+slowcgi+acme-client combination which is just fine for one of the web services I developed and deployed there.
• OmniOS on one of my servers because I was curious about it (and I still am).
• FreeBSD on my other servers because it was an acceptable replacement for the horribly broken Debian software when I started having servers - and I got used to it, eventually.
• Windows 10 on my main development/mail/web/music laptop because I have been using Windows for more than two decades now and I
  • know it very well by now,
  • like most of it,
  • know exactly which software is the best choice for which task,
  • use some software which has no good replacement on non-Windows systems (unless I own a Mac one day),
  • have some Windows-only software in my development projects.
• Gentoo Linux on my travel/conference laptop because the hardware is too weak for Windows 10 and its WiFi driver is Windows-and-Linux-only, but I really can't stand distributions which try to assume what I need. They're always wrong.
• NetBSD (broken) and 9front (mostly working) on said Gentoo Linux laptop's predecessor. Just for the lolz.
• iOS because it sucks less than open source smartphone systems.

[regex]

Laptop

Slackware Linux.  VMs setup with CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu in order to test or remain familiarized.  My laptop is my productivity machine.  I come from a sysadmin background (now a DevOps engineer) and only use the GUI as a last resort.  This machine is used for anything between programming to photo editing.

 

HTPC

Windows 10 Pro.  Not necessary to use this OS, simply setup this way for familiarity since my gf also uses it.  But I am considering a Linux distro installation in the near future.

 

Gaming PC

Windows 10 Pro.  Unfortunate, but gaming requires it still.