Replying to Best Operating System Till Date

I have always had 2 OSs running on my system, always split between a windows and linux based OS. Currently I have Win 7, and will stay here likely for a while because it is pretty decent. For the other half I have played with Mandriva, Mandrake, Red Hat linuxes (those are not free distributions), but I have landed on Ubuntu as a pretty decent free OS. Good for everything except gaming, I would say. Nice to have the versatility of 2 OSs. I haven't tried any of it's direct competitors, and I know a lot of people don't take Ubutntu seriously, but I say try it, it's extremely easy to set up and if you don't like it, don't keep it.

i find alot of people have this setup, even myself runs Windows XP and Linux Ubuntu on my PC, i even had Windows XP and Linux Mint dual boot on my netbook... now have downed my netbook to just one OS - Linux Mint due to space issues


i'm sure alot of geeky mac/apple pc owners have dual book with Windows or Linux... it's just handy having two OSs

I have always had 2 OSs running on my system, always split between a windows and linux based OS. Currently I have Win 7, and will stay here likely for a while because it is pretty decent. For the other half I have played with Mandriva, Mandrake, Red Hat linuxes (those are not free distributions), but I have landed on Ubuntu as a pretty decent free OS. Good for everything except gaming, I would say. Nice to have the versatility of 2 OSs. I haven't tried any of it's direct competitors, and I know a lot of people don't take Ubutntu seriously, but I say try it, it's extremely easy to set up and if you don't like it, don't keep it.

as others mentioned already, it all comes down to preference and usage... in my opinion i would say Windows and Linux, but i've only started using Linux and loving it... i've never used Mac OS before other then the iOS on my Ipod Touch...

If you're into Gaming i think Windows would be your best choice... Linux is quite a mature OS now and has varieties of Distributions to pick from...

if someone asks me which is the best OS... i'd give this Answer, if you just started using Computers, i'd suggest going with Windows

I don't think WindowXP is the best, but It's the best choice I can make so far.

My new laptop comes with Windows7, the lookings and apps somewhat changed but I don't see anything that I need and I can't do in WindowsXP.

I really don't like to support this endless software updating. But it's not for me to decide. As long as people have money to waste, softwar will keep updating.

I tried Ubuntu a while ago. I felt it's a more powerful OS than Windows. But the power is in user's hands-- you need some coding experience to drive linux systems. If you still prefer click through, then, better stay with Windows since main stream of apps are still with Windows so far.

I don't realy believe that the support for x-bits has anything to do with how great an OS is.

Heard of device drivers and application support ? some apps are still using win32 forms and have some issues on 64 bit machines. Same goes with device drivers. Operating systems are compared with respect to the changes that are going on in hardware industry, how they reflect to these changes etc. For example, Quad cores can't run old Win operating systems etc. If the hardware that you're using is not supported on 64 bit OS then it is pretty much useless for you. There are folks who have old hardware and it performs poor with these limitations. So best operating system has to go along with hardware changes. Afterall touch screen based computer don't use win 3.1. It is just your opinion that X-Bit OS has nothing to do with hardware changes but in reality that is not the case.

I think soon when 64 bit operating system starts to roll on modern hardware then chances are there that this type of discussion will come out again. I mean i'm reading this on most of the PC related information sites. I found that soon 64 bit operating systems are going to be on new modern hardware. That way there is going to be more RAM and Harddisk usage from these systems. So surely there is some interesting discussion on best operating system. We can not neglect that as more and more operating systems are going to make use of graphical and computing capabilities of modern hardware.

This discussion is going to be based on how these operating systems are performing better with 64 bits capability. So i think we should not call it useless because those who can't take benefit of new 64 bit systems are going to stay in past and will not perform on new machines. So in my opinion their market will decide the lifetime of that product (OS). So be it gaming machine, business or casual usage machine. 64 bit OS are going to make these discussions more interesting. Pity that people don't compare OS like they used to earlier in 2000 or mid 2005-10 if i remember correctly.

I don't realy believe that the support for x-bits has anything to do with how great an OS is. Windows 3.x was a 16-bit OS and it was great, Windows 95 made the transition from 16 to 32 bit and it was good at that time (except it's lack of Plug and play, but that's something else). Windows 98 was 32-bit as wel as NT4 and 2000 and afaik they were all pretty good. Windows ME was 32-bit and it sucked bigtime. XP was 32-bit for a long time and it was awesome. The 64-bit version was pure crap because it was a miserable patched version of XP.
Vista was crap, both 32 and 64-bit version. Windows 7 is great, both 32- and 64-bit versions and the same thing might be true for Windows 8.

So, the address size has nothing to do with the greatness of an operating system and as long as 3,2Gb of memory is sufficient to run the next version of Windows/Mac/Linux then I don't think that 64-bit is a must.
Besides, "The best operating system till date" should be about the operating system and not about the hardware it runs on. A great user experience on a brand new pc can turn into a nightmare when you run it on exotic or plain old hardware, so it wouldn't be a faire comparison, would it ?

Fyi: I have a 64-bit Windows 7 at work with 8Gb of memory, a 64-bit Windows 7 with 2Gb of memory, a 32-bit Windows 7 with 3Gb of memory and a 32-bit Windows 7 with 2Gb of memory and they work exactly the same, one is just a bit faster than the other.

I think soon when 64 bit operating system starts to roll on modern hardware then chances are there that this type of discussion will come out again. I mean i'm reading this on most of the PC related information sites. I found that soon 64 bit operating systems are going to be on new modern hardware. That way there is going to be more RAM and Harddisk usage from these systems. So surely there is some interesting discussion on best operating system. We can not neglect that as more and more operating systems are going to make use of graphical and computing capabilities of modern hardware.

This discussion is going to be based on how these operating systems are performing better with 64 bits capability. So i think we should not call it useless because those who can't take benefit of new 64 bit systems are going to stay in past and will not perform on new machines. So in my opinion their market will decide the lifetime of that product (OS). So be it gaming machine, business or casual usage machine. 64 bit OS are going to make these discussions more interesting. Pity that people don't compare OS like they used to earlier in 2000 or mid 2005-10 if i remember correctly.

What is the best car, what is the best restaurant, what is the best grocery store ... it's personal and a pretty useless discussion. It's even more useless because the many different operating systems that are around also differ a lot on what is called 'normal use'.

I think best depends on what you want to do with it. Most people who just browse the web, listen to the song, do office work or some other minor task are happy with both linux, mac or windows. It depends on which platform dependent app they use and for which they feel using windows. Many find windows organization of files much better than linux. Many find single drive stuffing way of linux more complicated. Many find windows slow or disturbed with performance for some apps. Some find apple based computers too expensive for their use. Some find apple enough for their needs. It's all depends on what you want to do with things. Based on that you'll get answer for the best.

Recently microsoft changed their OS plans and soon they're planning their operating system, web based. So surely games, apps and some other third party apps dependent on HTML5 and Javascript. So all those folks who learned .NET and Java for the desktop and web purpose will surely get turned off with the new windows announcement. But still you can see linux improving more than windows if such type of windows release comes in next version. I see some decrease in number of windows users if windows 8 is purely based on HTML 5 and javascript. Because that way many will find their applications not running on new version of windows.

Take case of linux, it is more dependent on internet. Without internet, it's hard to get software for the linux. Even compiling the source and installing software is quite complicated and not user friendly to be honest (no matter how much linux fanbois argue). So if any OS is dependent on internet for most of it's critical operation then it has limited scope for offline usage. Though some apps do work offline and can be used like windows but still there are issues.

In case of apple, the operating system and hardware cost is like owing a car. Besides that apple design limits the features for users. Many features are limited and it's really hard to get apps similar to linux and windows for mac. Developer network has cost to join and in turn developing for apple goes more than windows and linux. If most of the developers are low on budget then surely they'll have issues with apple and will hardly develop apps for linux.

So you can see there is no such thing as perfect and best for all. Just because large number of people use X thing, doesn't mean it is good or best. Operating systems are like religion and restaurants, people like it because of viral effect. But very few stick with it do get their work done and for their work purpose.

There have already been a lot of answers to this question, have a look at the other topics in this forum.
You will see that the answer depends on what you name "best".
If for you "best" means "cheap", the answer will probably be "Microsoft windows because it's bundled with the PC I just bought in the supermarket near my house", or you will say "Linux, the free version" because it's free.
If "best" means really reliable, and able to sustain several millions of TPMC transactions with a huge number of simultaneous users, you will choose a proprietary Unix system, probably AIX on a 64 processor machine with a terabyte main memory.
And you will also notice, while reading the topics on the forum, that there are some people who say "You definitively have to use a Mac!"