And Windows is trying too hard to be like OSX. Which is the worst of the bunch, usability-wise.
Nicest OS I’ve used for a long time was BeOS. Ah, BeOS. Sigh.
Cas 
[grumpiness mode]
All current OSes that have more then 0.5% of the market share are (more or less) identical and they all suck. What people really mean when the say “OS” is that set of bundled user space applications that start up automatically for them.
[/grumpiness mode]
I almost tried using Be when it came out, but figured my NeXT experience was enough of “user base than can be counted on one hand”.
I really only switched to linux because my laptop is quite old and was running Windows XP, I was just surprised how much I liked linux after the switch.
Linux desktops - well, Mint at least - seem roughly on a par with XP. Trouble is Windows 7 moved the game along quite a way. Good thing Windows 8 screwed it all back up again 
Cas
Not a fan of Ubuntu, personally been using OpenSUSE with KDE4 for number of years, its pretty much the perfect desktop for my use.
KDE4’s matured a lot since its initial release and highly polished for desktop use, more should give it a try.
Further the underlying library (QT) is very solid and IMO a lot better designed and functional than the equivalent (GTK) that powers Gnome.
Also even better these days with Steam (and DOTA2 ftw) working flawlessly.
linux mint with XFCE. the main barrier for me to getting into linux is i know i can do everything i can do in windows in linux, but i don’t know how yet. but i need to be able to di it NOW for college. so im stuck on windows for now.
Damn right. At least on the desktop. Ms screwed the desktop version of w8.
I just bought my wife a lumia on win 8 and I thought it rocks.
Linux Mint is very very nice
based on Ubuntu without the horrible Unity ui
and there is even a version where you already have all codecs you need, so you can watch all the videos you have
Since I already use mac at work and being productive, I could use Linux as well
only problem, like even since, Adobe Suite.
If the Adobe suite works, only then people can be really productive in the media industry
And the rest is the devil in the details: like you have software to download youtube videos… but thats windows only, gotta find an alternative, if there is one, which I am sure there is no alternative which is quite as good as the DVDSoft thingy with all its features
you simply want everything to be like you’d expect… foe example I need a image viewer where I can rotate the mouse and the images change, instead of getting smaller and bigger. Some free linux/mac programs CAN do this if you change settings, some cannot - and so on.
On the mac a lot of things are weird. for example you cannot change what happens when you close the lid on a mac book. there is no setting for it… you need an external tool.
you also cannot change the odd mouse movement which feels slippery for windows users.
and I had to do a set of shell commands to get my macbook to hibernate instead of sleep
So I dont know: obviously you can do everything in linux; but when you have an operating system that can actually do less/or at least offer less options than fucking windows, we have a problem.
I would take linux with adobe stuff over mac any day, but until then mac works too I guess
also the fucking mac key…
have fun changing either all your programs or your brain to use the mac key instead of CTRL… wft
Lots of little things need to be fixed. Like that amusing anecdote about how Linux lets you choose exactly in which way you want your sound broken. Or the complete failure of real, modern desktop windowing system to rise from the mess of KDE/GNOME/all the others so we can all just code to one API. I do admit that it edges in the right direction.
Cas
Just takes too freaking long
Yeah, the old cat herding problem. I wish someone like Torvalds was in charge of the desktop UI part as well.
Cas
Despite the problems with Linux as have been pointed out so far, I have found Linux to be better than Windows and OSX, and not just because I hate proprietary software.
With WINE working properly, I am even able to play my ‘Windows-only’ games easily. Although that did take a while as I had to install a lot of 32-bit packages on my 64-bit system for everything to work properly.
I think the degree to which Linux is useful to you is dependant on how comfortable you are with using the terminal. If you put a little bit of time into learning how to use it, then you are able to troubleshoot your own problems much faster than you could on Windows (and presumably OSX, which I don’t have, but have had bad experiences trying to fix simple problems for it).
I am using Arch Linux, which may mean that some of these thoughts do not apply to all ways of using Linux, but the thing is that no matter what distro of Linux you use, there is the helpful community out there for when all else fails.
The one problem I have with Linux, and the open-source concept in general is exactly what @princec and some others have said above. There is potential in Linux, but people get too excited with the new freedom it brings and spiral off in many directions without getting anything useful done.
Perhaps one day open-source will become mature, and then Linux will be able to become the ultimate OS.
The reason I don’t use linux as a desktop PC OS is because I don’t believe that is where its strengths are.
Linux is a great operating system because it is open-sourced, free and very easily adapted to any platform. It is the OS to use when you don’t have a compatible OS for what you are working on.
It is a great OS for microcontrollers, or control systems. It’s great when you need the ability to fine-tune your kernel to do something as a software\hardware engineer.
As a desktop PC, it makes simple tasks very tedious. There are particular distributions of linux that are great for the casual desktop user, but I’d say more than 65% of the true linux community aren’t targeting casual desktop users. This is an area Microsoft\Mac will always lead because they target casual to intermediate desktop users who are working on predictable platforms.
I only use Linux when I need to use linux.
Linux even runs on playstation. The native operating system of the PlayStation 3 is CellOS, which is believed to be a branch from the FreeBSD project.
You are like 6 years behind with your knowledge.
Like 2-3 years ago Sony took away that feature, provoking all the hackers, including geohot
I know tons of casual GNU Linux users. Generally, they just ask me to install it and that’s all. I use Mageia Linux on my machines and theirs. I accept to do so only when I’m sure that those people won’t go back to Windows and I use a very simple distro so that people can “fix” the few problems by themselves and with the help of the community. The only person who asked me to install Linux and reinstalled Windows several months after got a virus directly in the boot loader and I no longer helped her as she got what she deserved. There are less than 50 known virus under GNU Linux whereas there are more than 500 000 virus under Windows.
He’s saying that the OS the Playstation runs is linux based…not anything about the “Other OS” feature.
I think you mis-understood that. I just said that CellOS is a variant of FreeBSD which is type of unix/linux.
lol
Windows and Mac are great that they make an easy-to-use system for simple tasks, but then they fall flat when you want to do something more complex (or even a simple task with one tiny difference). Meanwhile, Linux has a few glitches for doing simple tasks, but after a one-off fix, can be just as efficient, if not more so, than Windows/Mac. And even then, there is no overhead for doing complex tasks.
The difficulty of a race should be in the race itself, not in getting to the start line. One should not have more trouble getting to the start of a 1500m race than if they were doing a 100m race.
I switch between windows and some linux distro every 6 months so I can have the feel for both cause i end up getting tired of one or the other. but yea, linux allows a lot more ways to do stuff dev wise.
But gabe is starting to bring the rise of linux 8D