Windows 7

[thedotmaster]

OSX is a true BSD and has a stellar security profile compared to Windows

No. It isn't.
People seem to think that *nix is all about the code. It isn't.
Yes, OSX uses the BSD kernel.
No, the rest of the system is not open source. No, the rest of the system is not nice, lean code but is instead bloated, shiny, dumbed-down crap putting emphasis on graphics over functionality.

http://www.spikelab.org/blog/osx-is-not-unix.html

What is Unix?
An operative system you might say, and that's correct, but also quite limited. Unix is a culture, a philosophy, it's a way of understanding and interpreting technology. Computers to me were and are a lot like Lego, and I always thought that's a good metaphor for UNIX: you have all these pieces, and maybe a picture of two of how you can combine them and what you can do, and then it's entirely up to you. Such a beautiful concept.

That quote puts it perfectly.

[insomaniacal]

I agree with The DotMaster, OSX may be based on a Unix styled system, but in reality, it has little in common with most *nix's.

[tgoe]

People seem to confuse a closed graphics layer and a few binary drivers with an operating system. The OSX end-user product consists of this layer and the Darwin operating system(Open source; much more than a kernel) put together like legos and perfectly in line with the Unix philosophy. Darwin on its own is very similiar to running any *nix without a graphics layer (Linux without Xorg, Solaris minus XSun, etc.) Of course the GUI differs and I'm not a fan of the shiny crap either but that is a user experience not a technical one.

[JrJarhead]

thing one i dont have the money for mac
second i do have ubuntu i dual boot
third i like windows 7 better than even that because its just so much more compatiable

[mrc99]

im satisfied with win 7 ultimate

[insomaniacal]

Bit of a Necro here but...

Windows 7 is a large step ahead of Windows Vista, it's speed while running is only slightly slower than Windows XP (it also uses a bit more system resources, but that's to be expected). However, it's boot-up is certainly faster than XP. I used to run XP with pretty much the same startup options as my Win7 install, and the Win7 install definitely boots up faster.

Just my two cents based on experience

[faazshift]

Windows 7 is a large step ahead of Windows Vista, it's speed while running is only slightly slower than Windows XP (it also uses a bit more system resources, but that's to be expected). However, it's boot-up is certainly faster than XP. I used to run XP with pretty much the same startup options as my Win7 install, and the Win7 install definitely boots up faster.

At least MS actually made improvements from their Vista mistake. Anyway, im completely satisfied Gentoo Linux. As things are currently set up, my boot time (well, time until the login screen) is like 20-25 seconds (5 of those are kernel init). Whenever I start a windoze machine, the boot process seems to take ages.

[insomaniacal]

It roughly takes me 10 seconds to get to the log-in screen of Windows 7 (From GRUB) and another 10-20 after logging in before the machine is really usable.

TinycoreLinux has a really impressive boot-up time, I've been meaning to set up a really minimalistic but usable environment with it for awhile.

[faazshift]

What CPU do you have? I only have an Intel E5200 dual-core @ 2.5GHz. Also, im sure there are things in the kernel and daemons I could cut down on to make it boot faster, but its built to be a multi-purpose server (apache, bind, squid, rsyncd, samba, etc) and personal computer. Login until usable is probably 10-ish seconds. Anyway, I think ChromeOS boots up in only a few seconds.

[insomaniacal]

I've never tried ChromeOS, I don't really like the idea of everything being "in the cloud" so to speak.

I've got a dual core AMD Turion 64 X2, ~2ghz. But I definitely agree about the extra daemons and such, those can really bog down the computer.