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freedom is not decided, on playing video games. I play a game on ubuntu.

Cool. New hardware is always fun :)
I run Linux Mint on my PC. I also have a Mac Mini 2018 and a laptop running Windows but I really only use those for testing.

Personal preference but Mac. I like Linux too but all the companies I’ve worked for gave me Macs. At least for full stack web development. If you’re a game dev then definitely Windows.

Personally I use both Win and Mac, I have similar toolset on those (Pycharm and extras mostly).
My feelings: in general, I feel I'm way more productive with Windows, considering all the keyboard shortcuts and, well, years of developing my habits with it.
On the other hand, MacOS provides much more pleasant experience with much better look and the MacBook itself is just such a nice device and it's just a bit more enjoyable per se.
Both are great as long as it fits your personal workflow 🦾

My preference goes to Linux or MacOS. I despise Windows for programming and if I see one more error that I need admin permissions to delete my node_modules folder I'm going to scream.

WSL2 is better but still not for me.

For gaming Windows is still the best option for me so my gaming Rig runs Windows. My laptop runs Linux.

Still using linux because don't have enough money for buy windows license or buy mac devices

Linux or MacOS. Abandoned Windoze years ago - it's such a PITA in comparison

Work + games = Linux, if you don't mind using Steam. They literally have thousands of Linux games.

See, people say Linux even if you don’t add it as an option (:

• What kind of software are you developing? Run on remote server? Run on web browser? Run on mobile? Run on client's PC?
• Do you use Shell or Bash? Basically, I am not adept with Command Prompt and PowerShell. If you are well trained in Windows, you might be the opposite.

macOS is good for installing software, including proprietary ones, until your Mac become older than a few years.

• The OS keeps updating, until your Mac cannot install anything, nor compile anything; if you don't update. And, it will always bug you to update.
• Good thing is that, it is quite POSIX compliant. Bad thing is confusing keyboard layout; which will be prevent you from moving to other OSes.

WSL2 is not that good compared to real Linux desktop. Therefore, in the end, I use both Windows machine (which does have WSL2) and Linux machine (which has VirtualBox).

I'd say Unix, so basically any derivative of it.
BSD, Mac
Linux

I use windows only to game, never even try to run a dev environment on it.
I've got a macOS device for most of my programming.
A linux device that I run docker and tunnel onto for heavier loading in-terms of storage.

Windows is still the most popular OS for developers
Personally, I love Linux but it is convenient to move around with a Windows machine

insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/...

Windows < Mac < Linux

Windows is the worst OS for developers and should be avoided at all cost. It was simply not made with us in mind. Scripting capabilities are limited, PowerShell is badly designed and poorly documented, and WSL2 fails with cryptic errors at any task that is remotely low-level. Windows is a bloatware: there is a huge amount of pre-installed software you don't need which slow down your PC, take a lot of memory and disk space, and that you can't uninstall...

MacOS is already a far better choice but has too many protections, so you can't configure things you'd like to change, and Docker doesn't run properly because of OS permission issues.

Linux is the best dev+gaming option. You get an even better developer experience as with a Mac, a computer with the same specs costs half the price of a Mac and lasts twice as long, and also the OS doesn't spy on you and is built with free software. It was not the case a decade ago but now there are a ton of gaming-oriented distros to chose from (beware of SteamOS which is not that great tho).

If I were you I'd dual boot your Windows PC with 25% of disk space for Windows just for games that don't run elsewhere, and 75% of disk space for Linux that you'd use for everyday computing, developing, and gaming.

I use both linux (ParrotOS) and windows (win10) but most of the time I'm on linux. Windows is good for special programming tasks where tools to accomplish such tasks are only made for windows OS. For example in editing ECU map files(vehicle reprogramming) there are no reliable software packages for that task in linux but for windows you have many.

But for casual programming tasks like app development & web dev linux is the best to me coz I have amdroid studio on both OS's but Android studio on linux seems to perform better than the one on windows10 (with the same hardware and memory). Also Anaconda performs better on my linux than on windows with the same hardware and memory(NB I dualboot 'em)

Lastly I love linux coz you can easily tear it down when things go wrong. To me it's more flexible than windows

I just switched from bash to zsh. Just remembering that on windows this wasn't even a question (there was cmd and powershell, and that's it) feels kinda weird to me. Other than gaming, I don't see any reason whatsoever to prefer windows over linux.

For me it's definitely linux, because I honor extremely high customizability and freedom to design my own desktop environment.

Even though I use MAC. I would recommend you Linux :P

Wow, there's a lot of Linux users out there!

Just buy a $3000 macbook and you will not have any excues when you write bad code.

From what I see here a lot of developers have a bad outlook on Windows and as someone who has tried all OS's, some of these complaints seem misguided or driven by inexperience.

Linux is very free, developer friendly and allows for a large set of programing to be done with ease, that is until you run into some software you need that Linux doesn't support, also from just a user experience perspective Linux straight up sucks (it is improving rapidly but it's not there yet), do note user experience is separate from user interface there are many Linux variants with good UI but that doesn't necessarily mean a good user experience.

Mac OS is basically Linux with a good user experience and a steep learning curve. The problem with Mac OS is that it's very limited by design and you are at the mercy of Apples decisions (long term with the M1 switch Apple may force apps to need to use the app store, but that is the general problem with using Apple products, you just don't know what they will do).

Windows is sort of more user experience over developer experience. Windows Security used to be a nightmare when using basically any programing language they've improved this with recent windows updates, more memory is required than their counter parts, UWP Isn't the default app install type (UWP apps are smaller and use less system resources overall), you are under the rules set by Microsoft (even though it's often too a lesser extent than Apple it's still there) and etc... The list of problems are long but the problems aren't so bad that Windows is unusable for programing tasks, and a bunch of these problems are actively being fixed, project reunion is a plan to unify Windows UI and API's so Windows is as consistent as Mac OS and system resources are better used by apps. Powershell is very powerful but Powershell Core is a tier above that. A bunch of abilities once locked become available to you the more you actively try to learn about what you can do with Windows (there reason why IT pros like it).
For a summer internship in the IT department of a company a while back I was forced to really learn how to use Windows and Windows is quite powerful and even has its own learning curve but if you learn it, it can be an awesome experience.

Do note, I have used Mac OS for 3 years, Linux in a docker environment for 2 years (I also tried using just Linux for over a month, the experience was just not good enough), I have used Windows for 2 years, and I have used Chrome OS for 4 years (don't even bother with Chrome OS, programing requires such hacky solution, it's kinda off putting).

Are you trying to start a bloodbath here?? 😉

As always, "It depends." I am a staunch Linux user. I would not recommend Linux if you're trying to develop Windows desktop applications though... that wouldn't make sense..!

• What is your deployment target? Match the development environment to the target
• If it's for browsers, you have much more freedom to choose between the three, but in most cases you're choosing between Windows and Linux for server-based projects, depending on what the production system is using
• If you want to automate build and deployment, your ops colleagues may yet push for Linux on the server side - so your tools will need to either be cross-platform, or match that tooling's platform. They won't thank you for tying them to a full-GUI-based build toolchain (but those are thankly becoming rare)
• If you're also responsible for testing, and you are doing client-side stuff.... mind that you will likely end up with at least two computers, if not three, for full range testing (unless you can do it on a server farm/cloud account)

This question comes up time and time again though, and is very dependent on the use-case. You might want to refine your query.

So, 100 Continue

I'm not a Windows user but would recommend setting up the Windows Subsystem for Linux. Then you can Ubuntu and do Linux programming without a separate install + reboot.

I do find switching between mac and Linux command line generally easy. My first tech job also meant using Linux command line for the first time ever but programming on mac before that prepared me well.

The frustrating thing about mac is the price. Of the laptop and mouse, extras etc.
People who own mac's will probably say this cost is worth it for the brand performance.
People who use linux will probably say it is free and flexible.
Want to reinstall another flavor of linux on your machine? People do it all the time. There are tons of distros. There is only one mac OS and it increments.

Programming on linux and mac both mean security. By the design. And also because majority of the world uses windows so hackers write viruses for windows.

Linux programming also makes it easy for modern computing. Like running a container or a remote web server or kubernetes cluster. Free, open source and secure.

Linux is about collaboration to make and give away free software. Apple is a for-profit company so they will always do things like keep the closed so don't need know what they are doing with your data and they will have an agenda on how to sell more apple products and ship their OS. Apple has been a leader in some innovation so they are not bad. They will also just be different from open software orgs

I think if you choose a correct Linux like PopOS and Manjaro you don't need any other OS to think of because these are best for developers and for daily working people

According me:
If new to technology and Internet=> Windows
Done some coding and programming => Switch to Linux
Now you are earning good and want to show off => buy Mac

This debate goes on since the late 80's, trust me you won't figure out much but here it goes.
I've tried all 3 major platforms Win, Mac and Linux. I've sticked to Mac for the reason that it just won't crash*. Never had issues with updates nor unresponsive applications or blue screens of death. Plus if you practice safety it is almost impossible to get malicious stuff. Working happily ever since.
If you are a serious player alongside with programming go for Win.
If you are a hardcore backend dev go for Linux.
Nothing else to be said. My advice is to try them all (borrow a friend's laptop) if you can.

*except a couple of times but no damage was done

Another question: What do you think are the requisites / features we need to care about when deciding a pc, particularly being a dev?

Linux over here. Windows wsl2 works fine and stable but it comsumes a lot of ressorces. When things like docker or something crash with wsl2 most of the time it's because the system runs out of memory. So you need a good system with a good amount of ram and then still it's kind of a waste. I really used it heavily for more then one year but. Would recommend a dual boot setup instead...

I love using Linux it's just perfect. I've started using macOS for the past few months and now after some time, I can say it is also a really nice environment for DevOps, SysOps. In my opinion, Windows needs some tweaks like enabling WSL2 in order to get a grip with other tools like using the command line.

Web developper, amateur musician and gamer here. To me, the perfect OS must handle those 3 activities.

Linux is perfect for web development. Everything run smoothly and can be customized to your personal tastes. For gaming, thanks to protondb it improved a lot. But there are still games that I can't play on linux. And about music, well none of the VST I use are linux-compatible.

I only used mac for 4 months last year. No complains for coding on it. I have no experience on it for music production, but I know for a fact that it's way ahead of all its competitors. And gaming... Well apart from wow...

And now windows. Obviously the best choice for gaming. Music production could be improved, the drivers and audio routing is not as good as on Mac. And thanks to WSL2, I can code with the same workflow as if I was on Linux.

So in conclusion, windows for the win !

Endless theme

Windows just feels broken these days. I mean why do you have two different apps for one function (control panel and windows settings) so I decided to convert to linux and it's great for development and normal usage but for gaming I would always choose windows

Rhe discussion was who has more experience with vulnerabilities.

The previous point was that Windows has more experience and this was too say that mac has experience in a sense too. With the big assumption in both cases that more published vulnerabilities means more vulnerabilities to solve and thus get experience.

But you can also interpret as you have done, that mac has more vulnerabilities (solved or not) and this means the software is insecurely designed.

Back to previous comment though - that I found sources saying that no OS is more inherently secure than the other. They all have weaknesses. Mac gets targeted less and like you say means mac users are less vigilant in a way.

Linux

Linux Mint is the best choice for me.. ;)

Linux.
Versatile, open, stable, customizable. No paying for bells and whistles I don't care for. Nothing I cannot customize, be there enough time on my hands. No vendor lock-ins. No stupidity like "I'm a machine, I know better than you, pesky human! You do not run that binary unless you click three buttons now!" I ate all of that, and I don't want any more.

The Macbook and MacOS are best tools made for a programmer. I love it and it motivates me to code in every way possible. The retina screen looks gorgeous, the current magic keyboard is the best for typing. Think of it this way a chef working in a 5 star hotel vs a chef working in a 3 star hotel. However, I totally love Microsoft's VS code.

Also, I am fine with windows OS as a normal user but I have too many complaints when I use it for programming, like its bad shells like cmd, powershell and really old legacy kernel. They really need to build a better shell and kernel. And rather than putting a linux subsystem like wsl or wsl2 they can follow the unix fundamentals into their kernel and re-write it. They need to abandon their bad legacy stuff like registry keys etc like stuff. I agree it would interfere with the backward compatibility of the existing apps but they have to do it someday.

But I really appreciate the fact that we have a windows kernel which belongs to complete different family than Unix but they need to make their stuff more refined. Because of these differences we can debate about it and think about building a better OS. This could help microsoft redesign their OS, making it more efficient. Linux is good for Desktop but on laptops it really sucks. You need to get a Dell XPS dev edition or System76 laptop to run linux which costs similar to a macBook Air in which case you are better off with a macbook air which gives you option to put linux for free in it and a really good ergonomic package as well.

Also, for Linux fanboys, I like the idea of linux on server theres really no competition here, but I'm skeptical about using a linux distro on desktop as the kernel is still monolithic which affects stability. Windows 10 OS and MacOS both run on hybrid micro-kernel which provides good stability, modularity and extensibility. If you are interested you can try to fork redox OS majorly implemented in rust and make it better, the authors have made good efforts to make the kernel Unix like and used micro-kernel architecture. I'm really looking forward towards the future of redox OS.

WSL2 (The new hybrid Linux/MS setup that's all the rage) > all of the above... 😬😅.

My point exactly, that was before WSL2 added an actual Linux kernel running on the Windows OS and made switching between the two like flipping a light switch via the built-in "remote access".

They're not boring stories. (Apart from those of some TV series).

I have a Windows too, and it is true that he sometimes gives me headaches, sorry, it often gives me headaches. But when you get the hang of it, and if you're a bit tech, it all clears up quickly (and with a few reboots).

Even having the money to afford (years of savings) I preferred a good Windows to others, simply for its computing power. I don't want to criticize the mac, but when I overclock the pc, it can support like 60 open chrome tabs with more than 30 extensions, and obviously with a video game on the second screen. This is magic...

The reason why MacOS beats Windows out the water is because you can run Windows and linux on almost any Mac device but you can't run MacOS on Windows. This means that you can't develop apps for Apple products on Windows. Furthermore, MacOS is way more stable and smoother compared to the majority of windows devices!

Linux user for the last ~20 years, settled on Ubuntu since 2005.

Many people in the industry use Windows because they have no choice (it's the company's choice). When I have to use Windows (at some clients) I'm painfully inefficient compared to my Linux setup.

I've had a few Macs for years. It feels like Linux because you get a Unix-based system, but the scripting and automation (and CLI ecosystem in general) is far behind a Linux system.

Well, I use all three operating systems. I use my MacBook primarily on the couch to do some research, general Browsing and some organizing. It also serves as a guest notebook. It doesn’t have the best hardware specs, so I settled over to windows / linux for tasks that require more resources.
I use Windows for many tasks, especially Photoshop, Lightroom, gaming, 3D Modelling and dev tasks concerning my job (Java with IntelliJ). I use Manjaro Linux in a VM for coding node.js, python etc. In oppose to many other comments, I think that powershell is a very good scripting solution because it provides lots of functionality in very small commands. For example: I coded a ps script in 20 LOCs that does the same tasks as a bash script with 70 LOCs.
tl;dr: There isn’t a perfect OS, if your tasks exceed coding (for example iOS development requires some sort of macOS, either locally or remotely). Photoshop and Lightroom only run on Win and macOS. Windows path statements suck, you don’t have a native access to zsh etc. Linux is very limited when it comes to gaming etc. Virtualizing windows may cause some work, if you’d like to use a dedicated graphics card and want to have access to the full power of your machine.

Linux >Mac>Windows

Current Setup:
Processor:Ryzen 5 5500U
Storage: 512 GB SSD
RAM: 8 GB
OS:Windows 10 + Pop OS 20.10 Dual Boot Main OS: Pop OS 20.10