I have used an IBM PC-based computing system since I first started using a computer back in the early 80s. Since then, I’ve moved from DOS 3.0 up to Windows XP Professional, with many stops along the way. At one point I’d considered getting an Apple Macintosh computer, but back then, the price was prohibitively expensive, as was the software. In recent years, I’ve even had experience with another operating system, which ran on my current hardware. I’m not really convinced any one system is better than the other, but I am convinced that some of the other computer users out there are truly whacked!
If you want to start an argument on a discussion board that is as heated as politics or religion, just mention your computer operating system. If you mention you have a problem with Windows, the Mac zealots will chime in: “Buy a Mac.” Or the Linux crowd will tell you what a heathen Bill Gates is, and that you’re contributing to corporate greed, and that you’re far from worthy, and hell, you must be rebooting fifteen times per day since Windows crashes so often, and every hacker out there is breaking into your computer simultaneously.
Yeah. Whatever, Einstein. Sure.
Personally, I could care less what computer operating system you use. I personally use Windows XP Pro, and have no intention of changing anytime soon. The other operating systems look attractive, but for me to change mid-stream would be to lose literally thousands of dollars of software, which would be very expensive to replace or, in many cases, impossible to replace, since equivalents do not exist for other platforms.
See, the computer zealots can’t grasp this concept. They feel the solution to everyone’s computing problems is to change to their choice in OS. Their world isn’t so rosy either.
To me, an OS is a tool. Or actually, more like a toolbox in which I keep everything else I use in my daily work. At the end of the day, if I get work accomplished, that is all that counts. WinXP works for me. The hosting company I use happens to have FreeBSD (a Unix variant) as their operating system. When I first encountered it in 1997, it was all new and confusing to me. 10 years later, I’m comfortable with using it, and have also installed it a couple of times on spare computers in-house. It is a very stable and secure operating system. It is also one of the best platforms to run a web server and other processes that are used in web hosting. And the Mac folks won’t admit it, but their precious operating system is actually just a flashy graphical shell on top of–yep–FreeBSD. Just like KDE, or Gnome…other graphical shells that are open-source and free for the download.
To each his own. My advice: quit fretting or gushing over your operating system, and the OSes of others. It’s just a computer, and a computer is just a tool. Use whatever works the best for you. Each one has strengths and weaknesses, and none of them are perfect, or 100% secure either: that’s just the nature of computing. Same as it’s been since computers read from punch cards.