I consider this a sad reality, being a huge FOSS fan and systems admin with several deployed/mantained linux servers, but, for most power users: -> Right now,

I consider this a sad reality, being a huge FOSS fan and systems admin with several deployed/mantained linux servers, but, for most power users: -> Right now, if you can, have all three operating systems available, according to your needs and each system's software coverage strengths and weaknesses. Expanding (and this is where it might get controversial): If you game (for real), make music (for real) or produce video (for real), you are stuck with Windows... -> Mac OS X comes really close for video and graphics, BUT, for rendering shit out you are still going to want a fully loaded multi-gpu rig, and you can't legally install OS X on that. -> For music production, Mac OS X is already used in lots of shops, but if you like experimenting, you are still going to miss a bunch of audio plugins that are free and readily available for the Win32 ecosystem. Also, setting up low latency audio and plugins on Windows is a breeze. -> If you build a gaming rig, you're stuck with Windows as well for the same performance reasons. Here's what I am doing right now: [On the go] I have a good-ish Macbook. The reason I chose a mac was because at the time I bought it (4 years ago), they were the only ones offering real 6h+ battery life. I'm usually on the move so I like to always have a box with me to squeeze some study/code in between the daily downtime. If I install Ubuntu or Windows on this laptop, battery is used 30% quicker, so no can do. [At the home office] I produce music and game on a pretty beefy Windows rig. I need to boot to Windows because of the low latency/realtime requirements of gaming and live audio. When I need to code I just fire up a fullscreen Ubuntu VM (with like, 8gb of dedicated ram) and code away. This VM even finds and uses all my displays so I'm fully immersed, and performance for development is quite good (C and Python dev, mostly Eclipse CDT and Pycharm). This setup is more complex than the usual, but I'm always fiddling with lots of stuff and this is how I keep myself happy and productive. I don't want to spend all day long configuring and compromising, trying to fit all my needs in one OS, it's just not going to happen. I think I'm better off actually doing real work ;)