

Ask HN: Mac, Windows, Or Linux? - siong1987

"[2] Y Combinator is (we hope) visited mostly by hackers. The proportions of OSes are: Windows 66.4%, Macintosh 18.8%, Linux 11.4%, and FreeBSD 1.5%. The Mac number is a big change from what it would have been five years ago."<p>I read this from http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html. I am just wondering: is this the latest stats? PG, could you please let us know the latest stats?
======
tdavis
1.5% FreeBSD?! I love this place.

I bet Windows is still the majority since HN is probably a big work-time
hangout for the corporate drones ;)

~~~
likpok
Windows has also evolved into not a bad operating system. It gets a lot of bad
press, but, as far as I can tell (I run linux) it is a quality piece of
software.

Basically, MSFT realized that they need to compete, so they are doing so.

~~~
jwilliams
I find Vista to be a huge step backwards.

I know it's a bit of a sport to bash Vista, but there are loads of things that
I don't like... In particular eyecandy that has zero functional purpose.

Admittedly, XP was reaching a good level of maturity.

~~~
SwellJoe
I thought the Vista bashing was just "It's different and I don't like it!"
kind of bashing that all new versions of software get...until I tried it. I
built an HTPC with Vista Ultimate (which includes all the Media Center stuff),
and I've been simply stunned by how bad the OS is. Simply horrible design
decisions abound.

For example, while watching a movie (using MS' own player, even...though their
player doesn't support Blue Ray, you have to have a separate piece of software
for that) any notifications in the bar will popup and interrupt the movie.
Given that notifications have become a constant feature of the OS in the past
few years (really, does a mouse driver need to have a popup to notify you of
updates?!?!? apparently so...likewise Java, likewise Windows updates, even
Steam, which I want to like, is a nuisance). Notifications are happening all
the time, and they'll interrupt anything else you're doing. I've never liked
the notification bar in Windows, and I've always hated how many pieces of
software think they're important enough to be allowed to nag me constantly
while using the machine (it's one of the reasons I would never used Windows on
my desktop), but Vista seems to take it to a new and astonishingly horrible
level.

In the same vein, screensaver and power saving do not know when you're
watching a movie...so, you pretty much have to turn them off, if the machine
is for watching movies.

In a different direction, the audio, network, and video drivers keep breaking.
Not sure why or how, but every few boots I have to reinstall one or more of
the drivers from the original disks (installing via Windows automatic
detection and installation installs drivers that don't work), or from the
manufacturers website.

Also on that subject, audio will not work after changing the input on the TV--
it uses HDMI for the audio connection, and some types of "off" events can
never be recovered from (while others can...actually turning off the TV and
turning it back on works fine...but switching inputs and then switching back
breaks it).

Shutting down is broken. How can that be? I have no clue. But, sometimes when
the box is shut down, it reboots immediately after. Not always...but about 40%
of the time. Sometimes it goes into a state where it can't be shutdown
properly, and a hard power off is the only solution.

While I have lots of other complaints about Windows, even when it's working
exactly as intended, these things are just bone-headed and irritating, and
can't possibly be considered right by anyone sane.

I keep thinking the next Windows Update will solve one or more of these
problems...but, so far, they're all still present. The audio thing was fixed
for a while, but then it broken again. I hate mysterious behavior in computers
perhaps even more than wrong behavior, so this just served to piss me off
more.

~~~
jwilliams
The ones that bother are me are things like the transparency on the window
borders.

It's transparent, but it blurs the background.

It serves no purpose - if it was transparent and you could see though, I could
guess there might be some practical application.

OS X has a lot of eyecandy, some of which is totally useless, but a lot of it
does have practical value (e.g. expose looks good and I use it all the time).

~~~
niels_olson
please provide examples of totally useless eye candy in OS X.

~~~
neilc
The animation that happens when Expose is activated, the "Genie Effect" for
minimizing windows, and the reflections of dock icons that show up when the
dock is at the bottom of the screen are examples that come immediately to
mind. (Arstechnica enumerated some of the UI regressions in their Leopard
review.)

~~~
lallysingh
The genie effect tells you where in the dock the window is, and the expose
effect tells you which desktop you're currently on.

~~~
jpd
You'd think that there would be a standard place for minimized windows to go
so that it isn't needed or something...

------
catone
If anyone is interested, here are the stats for Rails Forum -- which is
predictably pretty Mac heavy given how great Rails development is on a Mac.

Windows: 47.84% / Mac: 32.76% / Linux: 18.95% / FreeBSD: 0.07%

(iPhone is actually ahead of FreeBSD at 0.11% -- even though the site is not
iPhone optimized at all)

~~~
thwarted
Development is one thing. What's the percentage that is of platforms for
deployments? So I develop my rails app on the mac, if my production system is
actually 20 machines and linux, that's a 20:1 ratio of servers deployments to
development deployments.

------
DarkShikari
It isn't always black and white.

I run Windows. But I have half a dozen SSH sessions open to Linux boxes, and I
do my development exclusively under Cygwin (which is sufficient, 99% of the
time, to develop for other *nix systems).

And I have a Powerbook sitting on my desk running OS X.

------
zacharydanger
Linux does a great job of getting out of your way _after_ you've passed the
learning curve. And if you do any sort of web development you can clone your
production stack on your development box without worry.

------
matthall28
Mac OS X for my home machine (MBP) Linux for servers (Debian or CentOS
usually)

------
makecheck
I'm also curious if it knows which IDs registered as which OSes.

For instance, I use a Mac at home, and I use Linux via VNC on Windows at work
(though I don't visit HN from there, others might come here from work). So
technically I could be using any of the 3, and if I really wanted it to
"count" I'd consider myself a Mac user.

~~~
kentosi
Agreed. I mostly browse HN when I'm at work where it's Windows XP. Otherwise
I'm on a mac at home.

------
jcromartie
For my free time, I want a system that stays out of my way. When I'm done with
work for the day, and I want to hack on fun projects in languages from C to
Smalltalk to Lua to Scheme, or communicate over various chat protocols and
IRC, or do any kind of reading or writing, i do it in OS X.

------
morlockhq
Linux, preferably of the Ubuntu/Debian persuasion

I have a Windows partition on my laptop for some work stuff and to help with
Windows support, but I almost never boot it. I generally just work from memory
on that stuff.

------
bemmu
Mac Mini for writing code for my rented Linux and Solaris boxes while I'm not
playing games on my old PC.

~~~
windsurfer
Where can you rent computers from?

------
arjungmenon
I use Windows Server 2008. It's an excellent operating system. It's very fast,
very stable (has never crashed), e.t.c.

And above all I can run 90% of all the apps in the world (I'm guessing over
90% apps are for windows).

If you want to use Linux, run it in a VM on Windows; or use Cygwin for basic
apps.

~~~
staunch
> _If you want to use Linux, run it in a VM on Windows; or use Cygwin for
> basic apps._

Strike that. Reverse it!

~~~
graemep
Or Wine, if the apps you want work on it - the only Windows app I use is IE,
and that just for testing.

------
drhowarddrfine
After having spent the day trying to explain how the web works to a few
Windows developers, I am further entrenched in the thought that Windows is for
people who just don't know any better.

~~~
mironathetin
To a windwos DEVELOPER? Man, this is sad.

