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What OS is everyone using?

This thread is meant to be a fun little thing where you can rant about what your main OS is and why you like it (or hate it!) whether it be Linux, windows, macOS, etc. I’m not trying to engage in arguments over what os is the best, I just thought it would be cool to see what os everyone is using. I’ll start, before I started coding I downloaded windows 11 to get away from Cortana and the ad-bar thing on the Win 10 taskbar, I also heard good things about it from my friends regarding the UI, however now I’m thinking of switching to something like kali Linux instead because I want to become more adept with the command line and I hear it has a lot of developer friendly tools.

Mainly using Manjaro.

  • Much faster than Windows.
  • Easier to install GPU drivers than Windows.
  • More reliable than Windows with crashes much less frequent.
  • Works better for classic Windows games no longer supported in new versions.
  • Can use the old USB devices that Windows deprecated drivers for.
  • Can learn the latest standard C++ features a decade before Windows has it. MinGW still crashes if including <filesystem> in a blank file, VisualC++ don't even try to keep up, and you don't want CLang being the only compiler available if something more breaks down.

Manjaro, the Xfce variant to be exact. No particular reasoning other than I tried it and so far haven't seen any reason for switching.

I briefly used QubesOS on my laptop some years back and I encourage people to give it a try. I switched back because I eventually wanted to screenshare

I've been thinking I should maybe try switching my work rig to Void Linux as it would make more sense for how I use that machine...

I use Arch Linux, btw

I use macOS for work and Windows 10 for everything else. No interest in upgrading to Windows 11; 10 works just fine. I used to use WSL for dev stuff too, but recently moved away from that. (I suppose I'll need to get it again for docker someday...)

I forget what version of macOS I'm on, but I don't think it's the latest. I think I'll continue with macOS even when I'm done with my job; I broadly like it.

Using windows 10. Like Ben said everything works fine (so far) and don't see a reason to upgrade. I also heard windows 11 requires a microsoft account which is a no go for me. Just the audacity of it. I really hope another OS comes along which successfully cuts into microsoft's monopoly, though that seems to be more of a pipe dream at the moment.

  • Arch Linux on my desktop and laptop for general personal computing and programming. I poured a lot of hours into customizing things when I was younger and had more time. At a certain point I got things set up in a way I liked and it's been mostly unchanging and low-maintenance since then. A recent exception was switching to Wayland+SwayWM, but that allowed me to simply delete a significant number of programs, scripts, and config files.
  • Windows 10 on a separate hard drive on my desktop for gaming and testing/debugging/reverse-engineering Windows software. I really miss the classic win32 UI! Sometimes I'm tempted to switch to LTSC since it appears to be designed with less contempt for the user.
  • Ubuntu running on a Raspberry Pi in the closet. It serves as a local server mostly for Syncthing, git, and an IRC client. Boring and low-maintenance, as it should be.
  • OpenBSD on a Linode VPS which hosts my website and git/fossil repositories. I'm not a huge fan of Unix, but OpenBSD is quite a neatly organized, internally consistent, and well documented implementation. I've found maintaining this server to be pretty straightforward. Almost every program I need comes with the base installation. Nearly every time I have a question it's clearly documented in an easy-to-find manual page.
  • Mac OS for work. It's fine. Managing windows in this OS is not fun.
  • And every now and then I check on Essence in qemu :)

I use macOS for most of my personal use and for work (iOS developer). I have a Windows 10 laptop mostly as a way to keep one foot in the Windows world, especially for development.

Though far from a great OS these days (OS X Snow Leopard was the last version of OS X that I felt was quite good), I find it more tolerable than others.

So after seeing the amount of people who use Linux on this forum I decided to give manjaro cinnamon a try. Best decision I made in a long time, after just two days I switched to it full time on my main pc and have no regrets. Proud to be a new member of the Linux community!

Just make sure to keep one installation of Windows somewhere, so that you can test build projects on it. Hard to reinstall Windows without wiping out the Linux installation.


Replying to MrCelsius88 (#26560)

Depends what you work on - the jobs that I've had that were doing software for Windows I was able to get by fine with running Windows in VM. Maybe you'd need a native installation if you are a game dev or something though


Replying to Dawoodoz (#26563)

Linux (Mint and MX) as the path of least resistance. I used to do some linux hacking and hobby osdev, but I've had my hands full with other projects for the last couple of decades, and I view Linux as a stepping stone to a better OS, so I'm not picky about it. Whatever works without too much fiddling.

I use artix linux with LARBS on both my desktop and laptop. It's basically arch but with a different init system. And LARBS(larbs.xyz) is a decent config that allows me to touch the mouse very little. I find it quite sad that linux is in many ways just as bad as windows. Windows is a monolithic irreplaceable piece of software. But so are so many things on linux as well. And also the fact that linux makes it so hard to make my software portable across distros. Big sad.

Arch with i3 and Windows 7.