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Poll: What OS do you use on your primary computer?
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- chris_mahan 12y ago"my" primary computer is my android phone, nowadays. At work, windows box. At home, I have a windows computer, which I use maybe 2 hours a week. Then I have an android smart phone, which I use 2-4 hours per day. Which one is my primary computer?
- oneeyedpigeon 12y ago"Which one is my primary computer?" The one you use most. I hope, for the sake of your employer, that's the work windows box.
- riquito 12y agoMy primary computer is mine computer, not the one my boss wants me to use. With your interpretation the poll would mean "What OS your company forces you to use" since arguably most HNers work.
- oneeyedpigeon 12y agoFair enough, maybe "primary" should be interpreted however you want it to be, but the original comment asked what that interpretation should be. I guess a sizeable proportion of HNers either use their own laptop at work, work freelance or on their own startup, actually use a computer at home more than at work (e.g. are managers).
- sdfjkl 12y agoI use what's best suited to the task at hand. For me that's currently OS X for the UI, FreeBSD for servers and Windows for gaming.
- danford 12y agoI really like FreeBSD, but the one chance I had to run it in a moderate scale production environment as a server I was unable to because it used 30% more power than Linux. I started following the optimization guide in the handbook but after about two days and only about 15% reduction in power, I realized that these FreeBSD servers might be more trouble than they were worth. Not to mention I could have spent the same time optimizing Linux power consumption too. I like to run FreeBSD as a headless VM through Linux and SSH in and tinker around from time to time and for a while I was building a small personal 'cloud' on a home FreeBSD server in my spare time. It's a really fun OS to use. In my experience, it's just a little more trouble than Linux though.
- panic 12y agoThere should be a space between "OS" and "X" in "Mac OS X".
- lupinglade 12y agoTechnically, it should just be OS X. As its no longer called Mac OS X.
- abrowne 12y agoSame with "ChromeOS" → "Chrome OS".
- sexmonad 12y agoI use Linux basically everywhere - Arch Linux on development machines, Ubuntu or Debian on servers. I use Windows for gaming maybe 5-10 hours a week.
- Lockyy 12y agoMy experience with traffic coming from Hacker News has been that the majority comes from OS X.
- aeberbach 12y agoI'm surprised, thought Linux of some kind would have been most popular.
- robzyb 12y agoI just bought a new laptop. A Macbook Air. Part of the reason was OS X over Linux. This is for two distinct reasons: a) Battery life. For the most part, shoehorning Linux onto a PC is going to negatively affect battery life. b) Despite being a bit of a "hacker", I have a day job and don't want to spend too much time tinkering with my OS. OS X is more polished than Linux and is less likely to go wrong. I'm guessing that while most HN'ers aren't in exactly the same situation as me, they have more important things to do (i.e. working on their ideas) rather than wrangle with Linux.
- mbillie1 12y ago"Linux is only free if your time has no value"
- dkulchenko 12y ago@robzyb hit the nail on the head - a great many of us just want something that works, every day. At some point in my life I loved tinkering with my OS, jumping between distros weekly, etc. now I just want to get things done. I used desktop Linux for 10 years before jumping to OS X in 2011. I'm sure people will immediately chime in and say that Thinkpads work well with Ubuntu or that System76 does the job, and I'm sure it does, but the experience of running OS X on Apple hardware is simply unmatched.
- seba_dos1 12y agoWhen I don't want to tinker with my Debian anymore, I just stop doing it and things work the way I left them. That's the main beauty of good Linux distros that keeps me so attached to them - I always can play with stuff, but I don't have to. And when I want to, it's much better choice than OS X for that.
- akurilin 12y agoBeen doing a Ubuntu-only at work and home experiment for a couple of years now, having spent all of my life on Windows. You get used to it, and it's definitely a good learning experience.
- pan69 12y agoI did a similar thing many years ago. I was a heavy Windows user and in 2004 I decided that I wanted to know more about Linux. There was new distro around at the time called "Ubuntu" and people at work were raving about it. So I switched my desktop from Windows to Ubuntu and never looked back. I have tried other Linux based desktop distros over the years but Ubuntu seems to be the best if you just want to get work done. I never had issues with drivers etc. Currently I run XUbuntu as my main development work station.
- ozcoder 12y agoSadly, Unfortunately Windows :( I run ubuntu 12.04 in virtual box
- perishabledave 12y agoNothing unfortunate about that.
- ozcoder 12y agoI just wish my primary work was on Linux. I started with .net then kind of stuck with it. Not that it's bad but I just wish I had more choices.
- tinza123 12y agoI do it by choice. Win is a solid platform with many ways to get the perks available under *nix.
- ozcoder 12y agoI like the GUI experience of windows. Nothing can beat it. But Linux gives me control. I just feel at home with Linux whereas in Windows there is some kind of uneasy feeling.
- xtrumanx 12y agoHow was your experience with running Ubuntu on Virtual Box? I got tired of Windows screwing up GRUB everytime I update it that I tried running Linux virtually and found the display to be the weakest link even with 3D acceleration turned on.
- ozcoder 12y agoYeah, it was really a Pain in the back. It took some time for me to fix the grub and the resolution stuffs. I used vmWare earlier and tried Manjaro on it but in my experience virtual box with ubuntu has been a charm to work on.
- devNoise 12y agoMy primary computer is OS X, but my work tends to target Linux servers.
- mbel 12y agoIt might be a detail, but it really bugs me: I think it would be much more fortunate to change "Linux" to "GNU/Linux". Even if you ignore the whole "GNU OS" thing, it still looks weird to have "Linux" and Android with ChromeOS as separate entries since both Android and ChromeOS use Linux as the kernel.
- oneeyedpigeon 12y agoTrue, but we all know exactly what that means.
- mbel 12y agoYes, obviously, that's why I call it a detail :)
- ars 12y agoWhy GNU/Linux? Why not KDE/Linux? I'm not trying to diss or dismiss GNU, but I think it's possible to have a functional linux desktop without any GNU software. (Busybox, plus μClibc for example.)
- adrianbordinc 12y agoYou probably don't know what GNU means. Have a look. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU
- kelnos 12y agoIt's certainly possible, but does anyone[1] actually do that? Modern-day "Linux" desktop systems are pretty useless without GNU on top. I'm certainly not going to go all RMSy and insist on "GNU/Linux" on idealogical grounds, but it is more correct than simply "Linux". [1] Stop being pedantic. By "anyone", I mean, "a minority large enough to be more than a rounding error".
- pvnick 12y agoChromeOS with crouton to run ubuntu in chroot. It really is pretty neat (and cheap!!!)
- api 12y agoI have for years been a naysayer on "Mobile will replace the primary computer." It's not because the hardware will never be up to it. In many cases it is already. I think it's the OSes. In my opinion it's because the feudal security model and closed app store model does not scale out to professional applications, developers, or complex usage scenarios. A computer that I can't do whatever I want with can never be my primary computer, nor can one where somebody has to whitelist what applications I can run or what capabilities I can extend it to have. MS could disrupt here but won't. They're slavishly imitating the app store feudal model.
- oneeyedpigeon 12y agoFor many consumers, mobile has already replaced the primary computer. If you count tablets as mobile, they do almost all consumption at least as well as, and often better than, desktops. For creators, nothing beats a great big screen coupled with a keyboard, and (mouse|trackpad|graphics tablet). Plus, as you say, for a certain type of creator, the kind of freedom that a walled garden just doesn't offer.
- api 12y agoI'm not arguing against mobile, just... well... exactly what you say. It will never enter the pro market unless changes are made to the app and security models that allow a user to admin their own device. It won't matter how powerful mobile devices get, or if they gain the ability to attach to external monitors, mice, keyboards, etc. Nothing technical prevents that.
- Foxboron 12y agoHard to say really. My setup is currently two screen. One with Windows (desktop) and one with Linux (Laptop). They are both bound with synergy to give an almost seamless integration. I do however consider Linux my main OS as i usually wind up using my laptop for most of the things i do.
- fuzzywalrus 12y agoA week ago there was a pretty good similar thread: Ask HN: Most productive OS for web developers? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731996 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7731996
- chimeracoder 12y agoI'm curious which distributions the Linux users use. Me: After about four years of splitting my time between Arch (desktop) and Ubuntu (laptop), I've switched to Debian (Wheezy) on my new laptop. So far so good - I haven't missed anything from Ubuntu, and if anything it's a bit easier to manage overall.
- lrvick 12y agoArch / Gentoo here
- joveian 12y agoI'm using Arch at the moment and intend to go back to NetBSD when the Intel video support stabilizes. I've used Ubuntu also and find Arch mostly an improvent. One thing I miss from Ubuntu is the installation of (most) games under /usr/games, so when I want to play a game I can just ls /usr/games to see what is available, although I prefer that games go in a games directory in my home directory (I should just symlink stuff there, which is what I do for anything installed under wine). I've also just kept a text file of applications that I've installed and am likely to forget about since I tend to install stuff that sounds cool to try it out from some casual mention on the web somewhere. I prefer that my OS be as simple and understandable as possible and Arch makes that much easier (other than systemd, which is the source of most of the problems I've had with Arch). More important to me than the OS is the details of my desktop setup, which is the same under any of the above: I run GNU screen in urxvt and ratpoison from screen. That way, any output from applications launched from ratpoison goes to screen 0. I make various aliases for things I use regularly, so e.g. e starts an editor in a new screen window. I can use screen or ratpoison window splitting if I need to see multiple windows at once. This is by far the least annoyance setup I have found on any OS. There are menu apps that work with ratpoison, but I find the text file + command line + aliases method to be much less annoying than any app launcher I've used on any OS.
- kelnos 12y agoI cut my teeth on Red Hat 5/6 (pre-Fedora), but switched to Gentoo in 2002 or so. I finally bit the bullet last year and went to Debian (unstable), after getting tired of fiddling with Gentoo and waiting for things to compile (MacBook Air here, not super fast).
- binarycrusader 12y agoI use multiple; depends on what I'm doing. Solaris for most Dev work; Linux for a little, Windows for the rest.
- kevin818 12y agoQuestion: for those of you who said Windows, is it by choice? And if so, why?
- userbinator 12y agoFor me, yes. I've used Windows, OS X, and Linux, but prefer Windows the most because of the huge amount of software available for it, and it's the most familiar (I've been using Windows since 3.11) - I've done a lot on Win32 API applications. My environment has been setup with everything the way I like. It'd be perfect if the default command line shell was more *nix-like.
- kelnos 12y agoGiven the time interval you're talking about (man, over 20 years now!), that's more than enough time to get up to expert level on any OS. I started on the Microsoft train back at DOS 5.something, and started using Windows at v3.0 (and wrote my share of shitty VB and MFC apps on 3.11, 95, 98, and 2000), but I left the MS world around '00/'01 and will never go back. (Oh god, remember Win32s?)
- renaudg 12y agoIs it about the huge amount of crap shareware options you can download for Windows, or about getting a job done ? It's been years since I've ever been unable to do any task on OS X, and do it with the best tools available. There's so much useful, quality, well picked stuff built into OS X that the "quantity" of software available is irrelevant.
- dpcan 12y agoYes, by choice. Because I know it well and it just works.
- elwell 12y ago- by choice (win 7) - I simply prefer the experience. I feel like I can navigate around the environment more quickly. Also: not being tied down to mac hardware is freeing. I've found the HP ProBook to be a decent windows laptop. It shamelessly mimics a lot of the MacBook Pro form. In fact, the chiclet keyboard can use MBP silicone keyboard cover.
- suyash 12y agoThe person who voted for iOS, care to explain? Not sure any device except for iPhone, iPad, iPod running iOS.
- elithrar 12y agoOS X, ever since I switched "cold turkey" when the first Intel Macs hit. Despite the niggles with the Finder and all that, it's hard to go past the Unix/BSD underpinnings and the open source software available because of it. There's also a ton of fantastic, polished GUI applications that I'd miss far too much if I were to swap to Windows or Linux.
- gmuslera 12y agoThere are so many ways to define primary... but my home desktop, my work desktop, my work servers, my ebook reader and my smartphone (N9), depending on the day i pass a lot of time with some of them, and all runs more or less pure linux. What is not primary is my tablet, that runs Android.
- elwell 12y agoOSX for app dev. Otherwise, I prefer windows (7).
- cperciva 12y agoI've been running FreeBSD on my primary desktop since 2004.
- barsonme 12y agoUsed to use Win7, but upgraded to Crunchbang Linux :) I'd dual boot if I could, but my primary computer is a laptop and it's too much effort.
- fataliss 12y agoMac OSX, made the change 3 years and 2 laptops ago.
- lbraasch 12y agoIt would have been easier to select which OS's are not a part of my computer ecosystem. Laptop is OS X(but dual-boot into Win7 as needed), work workstation is Win7, work servers are Linux, HTPC is a chomeOS (box), phone, tablet and 2nd HTPC are Android. I'm a workaholic with ADD. I'm using any number of the above devices at the same time whether at the office or on the couch.
- Rusky 12y agoI run Arch Linux as my main computer with a Windows virtual machine using VGA passthrough for gaming and Windows apps.
- vezzy-fnord 12y agoGNU/Linux, in particular Slackware. I always keep coming it back to it no matter how much I distro hop.
- p3lim 12y agocrunchbang.org
- mveety 12y agoI use FreeBSD. Runs on my desktop and my Macbook Air. I still have Windows on my desktop for video games, but it doesn't get used much.
- maxlibin 12y agoMac OSX
- atoponce 12y agoDebian GNU/Linux
- pohl 12y agoUNIX is the overwhelming winner here.
- koj 12y agoI wonder how readily people switch platforms? I've only switched once in 20+ years. I started using Windows, 3.1, then XP, loved 2000, but switched to OS X about the time of Vista. Got tired of the constant virus issues. Tried Linux, but I've used OS X exclusively for 10 years or more now. I'll admit that I still feel much more at home on Windows (when I have to fix the kids laptop), it is like putting on an old pair of slippers.
- apricot13 12y agoForced to use windows at work and barely have time to use my personal (mac) machine. Would switch to ubuntu but I need photoshop/illustrator and we only really get IT support for windows. I work on all sorts of linux virtual machines though so that makes up for it I suppose.
- LocalMan 12y agoLinux
- meira 12y agoAlthough I agree with most of comments about OSX easy of use, I switched back to Linux. Had some issues in the process using Ubuntu (which I used for more than 5 years before buy a macbook) but now with Fedora, everything is fine. The main reason is that I don't agree (anymore) with the payoff of a proprietary OS, in a privacy and philosophical way.
- Nizumzen 12y agoWindows 8.1 on my main computer but I use VMWare Workstation 10 to run virtual machines running Linux for development work. Windows 8.1 is really only their for day to day tasks such as web browsing, email and gaming. All serious work is done on virtual machines running a number of different Linux and BSD distributions. I have found that this works better in the long run than dual booting Linux and Windows.
- LukeB_UK 12y agoI run Linux Mint on my laptops at home and my work laptop. Considering switching to Debian on one of my home ones to try plain Debian.
- Spongeroberto 12y agoLinux mint Used to dual boot but I recently got rid of my Windows 7 on account of never really using it anymore