I have had the responsibility of working a bunch of different operating systems lately, which prompted me to reflect on which operating systems I use and why.

For my own use I prefer Linux because it is stable, secure, powerful and free. Linux gives me the ability to work with just about any file and not deal with proprietary BS or DRM. I try to find Linux equivalents to all the Windows software that I would want to run and many times I find software that just works better. Linux has come a long way in the past 8 yrs that I have been using it and it can be used as a viable desktop replacement however, I personally need to resort to the command more than I would like and probably more than many users could tolerate.

I made a pledge to my wife that next time we bought her a new computer that we would get here a MAC. I chose to get her a MAC because it is stable, secure, powerful and offers a greater chance of hardware support for printers and external devices. She has had a very good experience with her MAC and the only complaint that I really have about it is the cost. MAC’s are expensive and the software tends too be expensive.

We do have a windows machine which we keep around because of the greater variety of low cost commercial software available. It is sometimes necessary to pay for software in order to get things done. I have used Windows machines for about 15yrs so I am fairly adept at getting them to do what I want, and I have tons of software that I have accumulated over the years. The problem with windows is that they in general lack stability. Blue screens of death and rebooting is not what I consider fun. I know that the new Windows Vista is out and some people think it is great, but the few times the I have had to work on it I have found it to be a resource hogging pain in the butt.

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