Which OS is Best?

The one that works the best for you.

I’ve been experimenting some lately – thinking outside the box. I’ve been trying to analyse the way I interact with my computer, and how it changes depending on what Operating System I am using. (Yes, I’m that much of a Nerd). It does make a difference.

I have 3 bootable OSes on my machine at the moment. Over the past week or so, I’ve not been “suspending” my machine, but rather shutting it down, and I’ve set my BIOS to display a boot menu. I have to consciously decide which OS.

My choices?

Fedora 11 Snapshot

Windows 7 RC

Leopard (Hackintosh/OSX86)

Each OS is very different, and have different interfaces. Which is the best, which is the worst? I don’t think I can answer that. I have come to some conclusions though.

Fedora is very interesting, and I’m constantly learning something, and trying new things. As much as I like it, and enjoy learning more about it, it kinda gets in the way, and I end up treating the OS itself as an application, rather than a platform upon which to run applications.

Windows 7 is new and exciting. It is viewed by many to be the saviour of a large company in the US Pacific Northwest, and fixes many problems owned by it’s predecessor.  As “new and exciting” it is, after a little use, it just becomes “more of the same”. Outside of a few new features, there really isn’t that much exciting after all, and it does what it does well. It can get out of the way, and simply play a supporting role, once you get past the newness.

Leopard, ironically, is the one I end up booting into. I spent most of yesterday in Fedora because of an online “class” being held in IRC involving KVM and libvirtd, but for the most part, since getting a working “Hackintosh’ system going, it’s where I’ve been “living” most of the time. What I’ve noticed about Leopard is that once you get it set up, it just does it’s thing, and you forget that you are running a “OS” and you focus on running your “Applications”, which is what an OS is supposed to do.

The point of this post – it goes back to Linux (as do most of my posts). Historically, Linux has tried to compete with Windows, and win over Windows users. I think this is the biggest mistake. I think Linux should strive to be more in the vein of what the Mac OS can do – run applications, and get out of the way. The first part is the hardest – we need to get “familiar” applications in Linux first. There is a lot shared under the hood between the two OSes (UNIX roots and all), and I don’t think this will be hard to achieve.

Do you agree? Post your comments below.