This poll is a result of the operating system discussions in the performance tuning forum and later (more appropriately) the offtopic forum. If any of the alternatives don’t fit exactly, choose what fits best. I’m really interested to see the results (and compare them with my expectations). 
You can write down the reasons, why you didn’t try an other OS or why you don’t use Windows (anymore) in this thread, but please avoid a flamewar.
Alas there are still some applications that I use which can only run on Windows. However, since I do pretty much everything else in Linux, I’m not really having to deal much with windows - just more those applications I use 
Give me a shell over a start menu any day!
Will.
Work development is Win XP. Only limited testing on a single Linux box. My laptop is a Mac Powerbook which I use for all email, surfing, digital photos + music, making DVDs etc… I use it more than my home PC. The home PC has Windows and Linux but I mostly use Windows on it to play Q3 when my boss gets bored and wants someone to kill.
I have 2 HD, one has Windows installed the other has (IIRC) Mandrake 8. I did have RH 9 at one point. However, Grub corrupted my MBR the first time I installed Mandrake, which caused me no end of grief. Since then, I’ve never been able to get a boot loader to work, even from a floppy. I had RH6 up and running without audio or networking on another system a few years ago. Never could get them configured properly. I don’t have time for messing with it when Windows just works. Perhaps I’ll try a future version of one of the distros when I buy my next system, but not again on this one.
The current results aren’t exactly what I expected, but unfortunately it are not enough voices to draw any conclusions.
I have 2 OS installed, Win98SE and RH7.3. Now I’m using more Windows, there are three reasons for that:
[]Games/Emulation
[]Java’s Fullscreen Mode runs (almost) only on Windows
[*]Eclipse’s poor performace on Linux
Since two of the issues can be solved in the future(IMHO Gaming on Linux, at the same scale of Windows is still very far), the Win OS will be used only for gaming.
Rafael
My home pcs are likely to remain Windows only for the forseeable future. However at work I have spent a lot of time recently removing Windows dependencies from our application, and making some computations run on servers rather than the client. The intent being that the server processes can then run anywhere that supports Java 1.4.2 or better.
I was a long time windows user until I got SuSe 6.2 some years ago. Unfortunately the OS was not convincing at this time and I got back to windows. Last autumn someone told me of a source based Linux distribution which gives you powerful control over your installation. This one was Gentoo.
Since that time I use Gentoo Linux mainly for everything but gaming. Btw from time to time I see other Gentooers on this board.
To keep the flame war away: I appreciate every linux distribution effort and respect everyones reasons to choose the one which fits her/him best
I started with Win (as a user & consumer, not programmer) when I was little and I’ve sticked with it ever since. There are some reasons for not using Win, but none of them is convincing enough.
Long long ago, I was using Slackware. But then my machine was rubbish, and it was all that would work on it
Not too long a go, I was a 99% BeOS man. Why, well it looked nicer, was faster, more stable, etc. Only turning to Windows for LAN partys. ( That might bring the usage a lot higher than 99% )
Now I’m 100% Windows. BeOS is dead, OpenBeOS is still way to young to use, Linux is a great server OS, but I’m not happy with it as a desktop OS yet, and everything I need from Linux, I can get from Cygwin (with the exception of testing apps on Linux, and playing with KDE/Gnome at a reasonable speed, but then I think I would end up using coLinux or VMWare over partitioning, installing etc. )
My next machine will be a Mac, its a shame it might take a long time before I have the cash to buy one.
My trusty desktop that i’ve used for the past three years is a PC, which is hooked up to a 22" CRT… I mainly use this for DVDs, the odd game and as a storage unit.
My iBook G4 which i seem to use all the time these days, is a pleasure to work on and I code all my apps (Java, Cocoa, Coldfusion) from within either Eclipse, XCode or BBEdit. I also use my apple to run a CVS pserver so that I can develop under the PC when needed.
…Hopefully, going to get either a powerbook or G5 desktop next, so I’ll be able to hook up my 22" monitor and develop under a 2048x1536 res. mmm. lol.
I use Mac OS X for pretty much everything. I do have a windows box that I turn on when I need to test some of my work (programs or websites).
I ran Mac OS 8.2 for years, and hated windows. Don’t think I had a reason either…
Eventually I started taking java classes, and needed an os that supported the most recent jre, so I bought a computer with XP Home on it. Now my primary computer is my g3 ibook running mac os 10.2.8
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger on a 2.0 ghz G5 single processor with 2.5 gb of ram.
The support for developers on the Mac OS is immense, and because the same company makes the software as the hardware it’s a lot easier to get tech support. I rarely play any games but my own, and as I see that as the main reason to own a PC, I don’t have one. Also, I have Virtual PC for the odd document or file I need to run, and for testing some of my stuff. But I live at a University so if I ever want to test a competent Windows machine the opportunities are everywhere.
Linux Fedora Core 3
better then any operating system i used suched as windows server 2003, windows xp, but Mac is preetie sweet too.
Linux - SUSE 9.2
Win XP
Not bad if you can keep the fighting with the operational environment down to a minimum. I miss my Linux days, although I enjoy being on the cutting edge of driver technology. I’m not sure if I could stand windows without a cygwin shell, however.
widowes is definatly my faviorite