I’m dual booting with windows 8 and Ubuntu atm, and was wondering what OS you guys like to use for programming as well as gaming.
They all have their strengths, but I prefer windows for ease-of-use and ubuntu when I need under-the-hood power (but I haven’t used Mac).
I hate them all. I use Windows 7 Ultimate N 64 bit otherwise.
Cas 
Windows 8.1 for playing, or when Im forced to (VS) and Linux (Mint) for my programming projects.
Windows 3.1.1.
Arch Linux by far. Hopefully in about 5 years, mine will be my favorite though…
My reason for Arch being my favorite is probably the customization and community surrounding it. You run into many problems, and consequently, knowledge.
I love Windows because it isn’t Mac.
Why I ever thought iOS Development was worth the suffering of a mac is beyond me.
Probably Linux Mint.
I used to love Ubuntu, back in the day of Ubuntu 8.04 and gnome 2, but I can’t stand the Unity gui and had to stop. Recently learned that torvalds thinks similarly about the unity gui which is comforting.
Running windows (win7) because most stuff runs on it plus drivers…
Hate mac pretty much, worked with in 2 years on the job.
Windows ME was pretty funny for crashing all the time.
I started with win 3.1
Tried some OS/2 back in the day.
Also AmigaOS back then was pretty cute
What’s your favorite type of surface you like you slamming your head against? Me: none.
Arch Linux here as well.
Just the package manager is enough reason for me to love Linux. Think about the pain to install jdk on Windows, or about compiling silly programs. (You can only compile Rust programs in the Rust shell instead of cmd, there is probably a workaround for that etc… etc…, another reason why Windows should be avoided)
Why Arch? Totally customizable, the disadvantage of ‘totally customizable’ is that it could need some time before it’s ready to use though (depends on what you want, but I personally like the i3 tiling window-manager where you have to install every function yourself). In the beginning it’s quite annoying that when you are working, think of making a screenshot, and find out that you haven’t installed any software to make that screenshot. But in the end, you have something that’s totally yours (although I still and probably forever make adjustments/changes). For example, I programmed my own status bar in C to replace default status bar from i3 (i3-status). In the upcoming vacation I am also planning on writing my own Display (Login) Manager.
I still use Windows a lot though, it’s essential. A lot of things are Windows-dependent: games, but think about Microsoft Office or Paint.NET as well.
RISC OS - every other OS has been playing catch up ever since! 
See, these days I use Ubuntu and love Unity (natural evolution of dock interface of RISC OS to me). Used Mint for years but switched because of Unity, but then I had Mint set up with Gnome Do and Docky so it looked like Unity anyway! Got fed up with lousy Mint attitude to LTS support - hope that’s changed.
Windows 7
My favourite is Windows 7. I’m currently using Windows 8.1, and I’m constantly being annoyed by it’s “features”, though it does run very smoothly. Hopefully Windows 10 doesn’t mess it up this time.
I’ve never used Linux or Mac, and I don’t ever intend to for personal use.
I would absolutely love to be able to dual boot with Linux, not that I have any practical reason for it. However laptops are limited to 4 partitions, and HP consumes the other 3 with recovery items. That may not be the full story though.
Some day I want to be able to get to the position of being able to develop an OS.
@Husk If you’re not using Classic Shell/similar, then try it. I’ve never even seen the metro start page etc. on this machine. By now 8.1 is as least as good as 7 to me.
30 seconds using it, and I love it! Got my start menu back and the software itself works very smoothly. I wish I knew about this sooner, thanks. :
Ubuntu CE :persecutioncomplex:
Windows 7 for my desktop and lubunto for my netbook otherwise.
-ClaasJG
DOS was great too. It gave me the confidence to work with computers.
Always been a Windows person(I prefer the classic theme for the UI over the translucent default theme, however.) I use Mac sometimes because my wife gave me her old mac laptop. I don’t “hate” it, but there’s just a bunch of small quirks with mac that makes using it for longer than 2-3 hours painful. Unless I’m coding. Then it doesn’t matter.
Edit: Windows 7 is my preferred OS for now, my least favorite was Vista. shudders
Windows 7. But I also like the swiss-army-knife-ness of Linux and its tools, so I always have MSYS and Cygwin around.
I quite hate all of them. But when it comes strictly to what’s most tolerable for me, that would be Windows 7. It looks nice and it feels okay.