MacOS, so easy to use that even 5 year old me had no trouble using it. Also because of how reliable it is, my custom PC running Windows has crashed more times in the past year than all the Mac’s I’ve ever had combined (since 2007)
Windows is rock solid and doesn’t crash unless there are problems with a 3rd party driver or hardware like RAM. That’s why custom rigs can sometimes have problems because it’s not all controlled by one company.
I prefer Linux though. I find Windows annoying.
I’m not sure if this is a joke or not, but in case it isn’t: Windows isn’t stable at all, third party drivers or not. I’ve never had a Windows PC that I would describe as stable, including the preconfigured laptops and towers I’ve had. They all bluescreen and crash or freeze more or less regularly (but stability isn’t what I care about when I run Windows).
I’ve have Windows for at least the last ten years and this has maybe happened at few times. Windows is still a privacy hell, but it is stable.
It was not a joke, I’ve worked on Windows and Linux for decades and I’ve worked on Symbian OS and Android as an OS engineer. With the right hardware and stable drivers neither crash. Anecdotally (which admittedly proves nothing) my gaming PC’s only ever crashed because I had bad RAM, which i diagnosed with memtest86.
It’s not the operating system. This is the weakness of Windows/Linux - the many many vendors of PC components and badly written drivers. It’s not the operating system’s fault as such, unless you count the OS’ fault for not running a microkernel with drivers in a less privileged ring like Symbian OS did.
Now, the UI freezing and having weird random slowdown that’s another thing and one of the reasons I prefer Linux. I’m very grateful for Valve/Proton that I have been able to ditch Windows completely now.
Yeahhhh this sounds like user error. We have heaps of computers in my house we’re currently using. One is a prebuilt from like 2009 (Phenom II x4) and the rest I’ve built myself. They all run incredibly stable. The old Phenom is up nearly 24/7 as a media player in the living room. It’s got some hodgepodge random RAM I found and a low-end SSD. Never crashes.
My other computers are all higher end gaming machines and the only crashes I have are when I’m playing a game that is known to crash. Never just random bluescreens or freezes. Oldest machine is 10 years, newest machine is a few months.
I also have some Linux machines and an old MacBook and those are stable as fuck as well, but man… something is wrong with your Windows usage.
Windows 95 and Debian were my “holy crap this is cool” operating systems as a kid.
Windows slowly went to hell over the years, and Debian didn’t, so now I mostly use Debian.
Love how most of the responses are different distros of Linux.
1998:
Me: I’d rather be running Linux
Systems Manager: Linux is a day late and a dollar short. Novell is the future. Microsoft might be interesting too.
She went off to teach community college after she got laid off.
My favorite is chromeOS because it requires zero maintenance and I can access all my data, apps, and preferences in minutes on any compatible device by just signing into my account.
Opensuse Tumbleweed after the whole Red Hat situation i started looking for similar distros as i really liked Fedora went to Opensuse Tumbleweed had no issues almost as if i never switched distros (obviously package manager is slightly different but not too hard to get used to honestly) i mean i can even still install Rpms
Currently running fedora, because it is stable, easy to use and just works. Also, gnome is imo the best designed major, full-featured desktop environment that exists out there (even including windows or macos).
You might get a more tailored experience with window managers but im currently to lazy to set that up. I did use dwm for a time though, but it wasnt really flexible enough for me.
Dwm is literally the most flexible wm imaginable, its just not for everyone. The intention is that the codebase is so small that you can just program whatever you want (or download patches from others and do your best to make them all work together)
Debian Linux on the server: all the flexibility I need in a server OS.
macOS on the desktop: it just gets out of the way and lets me do my job
I use Debian 12. I very recently switched to it from windows after using windows for about 10 years or more.
What do I like about Debian when compared to Windows?
I really enjoy using the terminal. Still a beginner. Yes learning the commands is tough but sometimes I just prefer using the terminal instead of using a gui.
Everything else about debian is also great.
“arch linux” with EndeavourOs. Simple to set up, light weight, they seem to have good opinions on package choices. What I like about arch is that if something breaks, I know how to fix it since everything is so configurable and modular. If something breaks in Windows/Ubuntu I don’t know how to fix it and the os/distro isn’t designed to let you solve the issue yourself.
I’d just like to interject for a moment. What you’re refering to as Linux, is in fact, GNU/Linux, or as I’ve recently taken to calling it, GNU plus Linux. Linux is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another free component of a fully functioning GNU system made useful by the GNU corelibs, shell utilities and vital system components comprising a full OS as defined by POSIX. Many computer users run a modified version of the GNU system every day, without realizing it. Through a peculiar turn of events, the version of GNU which is widely used today is often called Linux, and many of its users are not aware that it is basically the GNU system, developed by the GNU Project. There really is a Linux, and these people are using it, but it is just a part of the system they use. Linux is the kernel: the program in the system that allocates the machine’s resources to the other programs that you run. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself; it can only function in the context of a complete operating system. Linux is normally used in combination with the GNU operating system: the whole system is basically GNU with Linux added, or GNU/Linux. All the so-called Linux distributions are really distributions of GNU/Linux!
GNU gets credit for the GPL, and for being the first major project to start to create a free Unix operating system. So it’s true that when the Linux kernel was first released, the fact that you could boot a usable operating system on top of it was due to GNU.
But…the success of what most of us just call “Linux” since then is due to thousands of individuals and organizations other than GNU. The vast majority of free software running on top of a Linux operating system has nothing to do with GNU and is not licensed under the GPL.
Let’s say I’m running Linux on a server, for a small app running the MERN stack. Literally none of the MERN stack is GNU.
Let’s say I’m running Linux on a desktop. I’m depending on Wayland, KDE, Chromium, VSCodium, and a dozen other tools, none of which are GNU.
However, the fact that I can use the same OS to run a tiny embedded device or a superpowered server, that’s due to the Linux kernel and the thousands of individuals, organizations, and companies who have made it into the most efficient and versatile operating system kernel in the world, period.
So to me, I have no problems at all calling the operating system “Linux”.
As a user of the GNU Guix operating system, and a big fan of the GNU Emacs editor…
yeah, you’re completely right. Linux is a perfectly apt name.
First? BSD just chuckles to itself
Found the Stallman!
This is so annoying
I don’t stop there. I like to give the FULL name of my operating system when I use it. Example:
“What distro are you running?”
“Oh on this laptop here? This laptop is running Mint, daughter of Ubuntu, son of Debian, daughter of Linux, son of GNU! Her ancestors hail from the mountains of Copyleft, where the mighty Stallman wields his hammer Emacs to forge her people’s legendary tools!”
Anything shorter is just disrespectful.
My 2nd favorite pasta, only topped by
Own a musket for home defense, since that's what the founding fathers intended. Four ruffians break into my house. "What the devil?" As I grab my powdered wig and Kentucky rifle. Blow a golf ball sized hole through the first man, he's dead on the spot. Draw my pistol on the second man, miss him entirely because it's smoothbore and nails the neighbors dog. I have to resort to the cannon mounted at the top of the stairs loaded with grape shot, "Tally ho lads" the grape shot shreds two men in the blast, the sound and extra shrapnel set off car alarms. Fix bayonet and charge the last terrified rapscallion. He Bleeds out waiting on the police to arrive since triangular bayonet wounds are impossible to stitch up. Just as the founding fathers intended.
I always hear people say how good macOS is but never say what exactly is good about it. Please tell me why I should try it out
Personally for me it’s that it’s not as resource heavy as windows whilst offering a similar out of box ‘it just works’. Sure it’s not the best tool for the job in a lot of regards but for example I have two laptops from early 2014. A macbook air and a windows laptop running windows 10. The macbook air runs smoothly when browsing the Web, or studying whereas the windows laptop ends up slowing down a lot and chugging.
I will say I am a fan of the best tool for the job approach though. Doing a lot of office based work and need word editing or spreadsheet editing? Windows. Gaming? Windows. Server work? Linux. Music/video production? Macs
Well, for starters do you have a mac?
I wouldn’t attempt to try hackintosh or something like that in a non Apple product, not if you don’t like thinkering at least.
Obviously macOS works better with Apple products, performance and battery wise (for example in models where you can install Windows it sucks big time battery performance wise, and the hardware doesn’t help either).
What I like about my mac is that it is like having the best of Windows and Linux merged, you got a nice interface with good program support and also scratches the Linux itch with its terminal, and you can also install homebrew from there, very similar as you’d do from any Linux distro (I manage completely my Synology NAS from there with SSH for example, something that was not always possible in Windows natively).
The keyboard commands are nice as well.
Maybe I just feel that way because my OS journey went from Windows > Linux > macOS.
By no means it is a perfect OS, It sucks that it is not as customizable as the other two, also its window management sucks balls without the proper programs (apps/programs really improve the experience overall).
Honestly I don’t think I can cover all the good and bad things about this OS, or any other, if you are interested you can give a quick glance in any Apple store, but that is just the tip of the iceberg obviously.
Arch Linux
So that I can brag about using Arch Linux.
Seriously though, I wanted to learn about Linux and chose trial-by-fire. I’ve used other (Debian based) distros but pacman + the Arch user repository are hard to live without now.
Though if I ever had to reinstall I’d probably save myself some headache and install EndeavorOS.
I use arch btw.
Gives me the flexibility to do what I want and contrary to the internet I haven’t managed to break everything. I managed to break Ubuntu through
Whatever the fuck my brain runs. It’s done a pretty okay job keeping me alive, and that’s worth something, right?
It’s done a pretty okay job keeping me alive
Well I’m glad it’s doing a pretty okay job for someone.
Are you… a ghost? D:
Unfortunately no
My answer isn’t unique, but Arch linux is just my favorite to use. I just really love the ability to assemble things exactly the way I like them during the installation process.
I also really like the idea of a rolling release distro, meaning no major upgrades. I just run pacman -Syu once a day and things have been great.
Lastly, almost any piece of software I could want is available in the official repositories or the AUR, and it’s super convenient to be able to install things right away from the command line.
Editing to add: My work laptop is a MacBook Pro and I love it. macOS is really pleasant to use and anyone who says it’s not is a liar. Apple’s user experience game is on point
