Another one of those "Windows/Mac/Linux" comparison threads

Reviving this...let's see if people still prefer the same OS or if anyone has any different opinions about it. :P

Simple questions, really. Which Operating System do you prefer? Why do you prefer it & what is it that you like about it? Which OS do you like the least?

I don't want to start a rivalry or anything, just a discussion regarding everyone's opinions towards their preferred OS. Discuss away!

I've always used Windows as my main OS, but after giving OS X around a week of non-stop use, thanks to not having the installation media for Windows 7 ready when I wiped my MacBook Air, I find OS X to be just as good as Windows.

Windows still has an edge when it comes to running applications and games, especially when you consider that games generally run faster in Windows.

I have only really used Windows just because that is what i'm most comfortable with, and it runs games a bit faster than other OS's. Linux is nice but not for me. Now, I have only really used Mac's OS when I was borrowing my brother's Mac, so I don't know too much about it, but from I could see, it was the most user friendly OS. Linux and Mac are nice, yet Windows has just a bit more...err....STUFF'...yeah...

Hybrid Trainer said:

I've still yet to fully try out OSX so I'll be leaving that out of my comparison, but I prefer Linux. It just seems to work so much better with my computer than Windows does. Admittedly my computer right now is a netbook so that could be swaying my opinion, but Linux has allowed my computer to do things that I couldn't do with Windows. For example, I often play minecraft and on my Windows partition I run at about 9fps on a good day but when I switch over to my Linux partition I can get a comfortable 20fps out of it.
There's also the whole open sourced and free thing. I honestly doubt I would've tried out Linux if it weren't free. The same would apply to windows had I not been brought up on it.

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Ever tried out running Windows 7 for a change? Despite what you might think of it, it actually runs on netbooks pretty well.

Hybrid Trainer said:

Windows 7 was the original OS for this netbook. I tried both the starter edition it came with and upgraded it to premium and both of those lagged compared to the Linux distro I'm using now.

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Since the laptop shipped with it preinstalled, why not try starting it over from a blank slate? Chances are it's OEM crapware.

I actually managed to give new life to an anemic 2007 laptop by replacing Vista with 7 and not XP.

Netbooks usually have anemic CPUs, so I would strongly recommend you not to use Google Chrome when browsing the web with a netbook. Use IE9 or FF instead for the chance that Direct2D works on the GPU.

ShinySearcher01 said:

Windows 7 runs okay on netbooks with a little more beef in their CPU. You know, those 1.9 - 2.1 GHz ones that have just started to spring up. Other than that David is right, Windows 7 is pretty pathetic (trust me, I've seen it) on a netbook. As for myself, I'll go right ahead and say Linux - I enjoy the feeling of freedom, and there's just so much more you can do with it. Windows 7, for the first time since Windows XP, is usable, but I don't like it. As for OS X it seems really good, but I haven't really seen enough of it to make a fair decision.

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I've always wondered how the app compatiblity situation is in Linux. Although Linux is pretty light in general, it isn't the most efficient kernel around. When your computer is multithreaded, the NT kernel has an edge - it was designed for multi-processor processing since the beginning.

Going with Linux on a netbook is fine, but you might find the overhead of using a virtualization layer to run Windows apps a chore. I prefer native solutions for the most part, and to be frank, I could never see using a Linux machine for any reasonable amount of time as long as the apps aren't there. There's a reason why I find OS X to be fine...

Mac OS X please! But anything pre-Leopard, I'll have to go with Windows.

I don't like Linux all that much.

I haven't used Linux much. I've mostly just VM'd it in Windows while programming for assignments for schools and messed up somewhere so I couldn't change the resolution of it so that did not go very well and tarnished my opinion of it. My brother tosses linux on my netbook while he was borrowing it recently, though, and I've been meaning to give it a try more natively since then. Just haven't gotten around to it. I think now that I've been using UNIX more actively I'll come around no problem.

So the debate for me is between OSX and Windows and I have to say that I prefer Windows by a landslide. I probably use OSX more because it's on the MBP I inherited from my roommate and I tend to use the laptop more because it lets me actually socialize with my roommates (my desktop is in my room in the basement :P). The only thing I really like about it is the gestures and everything else frustrates me to no end. I just can't really get the hang of it, I never know where anything is, and I find it hangs or freezes on me a lot more than any other OS I've used except Windows ME. I don't find the OS intuitive at all and so many things just bother me about it. A lot of things are smaller issues like my dislike for the way the Japanese IME parses things in OSX and other things still are issues with Macs themselves than OSX (though I think it's still kind of a fair issue because it's technically illegal to install OSX on anything that isn't a Mac...).

My favourite OS is Windows 7. I love everything about it and find it much easier to be (generally) productive in it. Everything is very intuitive for me and I've never had a problem with it. It even ran really well on my netbook when I still used it. :P Better than XP did, to be honest. (And my netbook was not very impressive specs-wise, iirc.)

Wow, I can't believe I am the first, to say this but my favorite is Windows Vista. I have XP Professional, XP Home, vista home premium, vista 8, and 7, installed on a variety of my computers. My favorite by far is vista, though I might be a lone wolf.

Personally I've used Windows XP, Vista, 7,Linux Ubuntu and Isadora and Mac OS X. Windows 7 has been my favourite so far since it's been able to do what I need my computer to do. Gaming !
WINE is quite nice on Linux for running windows applications but it never seemed to work for me when it came to installing games.
I like the look and feel of OS X since I've tried it out and some of the mac only software is pretty neat such as Iphoto.
Windows 7 is my main O/S strictly for gaming and it does what I need my computer to do. It's a big step up from Windows XP which was my usuall O/S since I didn't want Vista.
I'm surprised that NarutoActor said her favourite O/S is Vista since I've never really liked it myself. I always felt it was too heavy on the RAM usage, with clunky start ups and such. Also the benefit of DirectX 10 from 9 didn't seem like a massive improvement (which vista offered).

Depending on the Netbook I wouldn't exactly advise using Windows 7 and I'd just stick with Windows XP.

Well, for me, I'd say Windows. Kinda because I've used it for many years and it's never let me down. And...many people just use Windows anyway, so I'd follow. For Mac OS X, I can't say a thing. I've almost never used it. And it's really expensive (it must be in an iMac, MacBook, MacBook Pro or a MacBook Air) Plus, you can't install it into a regular PC. For Linux, I've tried Ubuntu once. It was pretty great. It's light and it came bundled with lots of stuff...It already has the stuff that you'd actually have to download/buy yourself. And it's free as well. But still, not many software support it. If I get a notebook, I may as well install Ubuntu...I have no money to buy another Windows 7 OS. But if it came bundled with it (Windows), I'll just go with it. But I guess I'll always try to find the cheapest notebook.