What is your main OS (operating system) at home?

[TonyJZX]

Win10

with some smattering of Win7 on older hardware

I have a laptop that "upgraded itself" to Win11... it actually sucks

I also have some iphones ipads and of course a slew of android devices around

to me Win10 has actually proven to be quite ok after a rocky start

 

[terryforsythe]

PCLinuxOS here. I was one of the handful of the original developer team that forked PCLOS off Mandrake back around 2000 and have used it ever since. I just got a big surprise from the poll here. Linux users outnumber Mac users by 1 member WOW

Mandrake was the first Linux distribution I used, back around 2000 or 2001. Linux desktop has come a long way since then.

 

[antcollinet]

Multiple votes are possible per voter (tick more than one OS when voting). As I'm posting this there are 444 voters but 654 votes. It's the percentage of voters who voted for that OS, not percentage of total votes.

Ah - that makes sense. Thanks.

 

[terryforsythe]

The goal is to run a desktop for daily use with the best software availability. I am handy with running terminal commands and downloading packages if need be. Definitely will try out Mint Linux and Fedora before going full dive into one of them.

Linux Mint has a Windows like desktop, regardless of whether you use the Cinnamon, Mate or Xfce desktop environment, all three of which are officially supported. They look similar, but I prefer Cinnamon, which is their flagship desktop developed by the Linux Mint team. Xfce may have a little bit less resource usage, but it is a non-issue if your system has at least a dual core CPU and 4 GB or more of RAM. Personally, I have never seen the point of using Mate on Linux Mint, but some people do.

Fedora officially supports the Gnome desktop. Gnome is not my thing, but some people love it. Fedora is available with other desktops, but they are not officially supported (at least the last time I looked). I tried the KDE Plasma variant a couple of years ago, but ran into some issues - relatively minor, but annoying. My recommendation when you try Fedora is to stick with the Gnome desktop, at least initially.

As far as software availability, both Linux Mint and Fedora are excellent.

 

[RayDunzl]

Windows and Android and whatever resides in the various little boxes scattered around.

My last Apple anything was around 1998.

 

[mdunjic]

Industrial, fanless mini-PC, 16GB RAM, Win10, with 1TB SD card … used as dedicated Roon Core

 

[No one you know]

Work or home I am Apple...
My current arsenal: the M1 14" MacBook Pro, M1 11" iPad Pro, iPhone 13 Pro, Apple Watch Series 7.

I just bought my wife the M2 MacBook Air - fantastic machine.

 

[Sal1950]

Multiple votes are possible per voter (tick more than one OS when voting). As I'm posting this there are 444 voters but 654 votes. It's the percentage of voters who voted for that OS, not percentage of total votes.

What's done is done but it doesn't seem right.
The poll asked "What is your main OS (operating system) at home" ?
How many MAIN os's can you have?

Mandrake was the first Linux distribution I used, back around 2000 or 2001. Linux desktop has come a long way since then.

Mine too, Texstar had a website dedicated to Mandrake users and then we started building update packages for
it's users cause their dev team was so slow at getting things out. A few years later we had so much at hand we just
decided to fork it into a rolling update distro that would "never" get out of date.. It was a fun ride, until it wasn't.

 

[Blumlein 88]

What's done is done but it doesn't seem right.
The poll asked "What is your main OS (operating system) at home" ?
How many MAIN os's can you have?

Mine too, Texstar had a website dedicated to Mandrake users and then we started building update packages for
it's users cause their dev team was so slow at getting things out. A few years later we had so much at hand we just
decided to fork it into a rolling update distro that would "never" get out of date.. It was a fun ride, until it wasn't.

Sometimes the main OS isn't all that clear. My main OS for most web stuff/general computing is Manjaro (used to be PCLinux for many years, thanks for your part in it Sal). My main OS for recording things is MacOS. Then I have a Windows laptop for running Pkane's software, a recording backup and to run a Plex server for the home video rig. I could drop at least the Windows rig if not for Pkanes software.

 

[alekksander]

Industrial, fanless mini-PC, 16GB RAM, Win10, with 1TB SD card … used as dedicated Roon Core

fanless owner here. fantastic idea to have a radiator as a ground stand.

 

[pseudoid]

fanless owner here. fantastic idea to have a radiator as a ground stand.

Having a NUC-size performance mini-PC would really be fanless fantastic for me!
My HTPC NUC-10-i7's fan kicking-in while watching a movie is both annoying and frustrating.

 

[mdunjic]

fanless owner here. fantastic idea to have a radiator as a ground stand.

Agree ... cheap accessory from Amazon.ca BUT very useful

 

[mdunjic]

I also added couple more cheap heatsinks on top as well … it helps a lot

 

[pseudoid]

I also added couple more cheap heatsinks on top as well … it helps a lot

I hesitate but curious to ask (it is NOT intended as a dig): How does your fanless mini-PC handle 4K video? @60fps?

It had originally cost me $100 for DDR4-2666 SODIMM (2x8GB) for the NUC10-i7.
Then, it cost me another $150 to upgrade/replace them to DDR4-3200 (2x16GB), since I was getting tearing and frame-drop issues @4K.

 

[mdunjic]

I am only using this mini-PC as my dedicated Roon Core ... I don't care about TV and movie watching using that ... as my Insignia smart TV (Fire TV, that's being used as a mini-PC monitor as well) handles those task without any issues nicely. Hope that answers

 

[alto]

I run Arch Linux as my main OS and I have Windows 10 on dual boot for the occasional gaming session.

I also have a server and a few Raspberry Pis, they all run Rocky Linux.

 

[dasdoing]

I use Windows 11 on my main work computer - there are some programs/plugins I rely on for work that don't have Linux equivalents. I have a Windows 11 SSD on my backup computer just in case my main computer crashes at the wrong time, but otherwise I run it on Linux.

I tried using Arch as a daily driver for a while, but I got tired of troubleshooting issues popping up after rolling release updates. It was like playing whack-a-mole. I would solve one issue, and a month or two later another issue would pop up, and so on. Linux Mint has been quite the opposite, it has been very stable.

*.pacnew packages is key to Arch stability. my Arch instal was very stable. I think I only fresh installed it once in 12 years

i think that sentence is a proof of that we live in parallel universes.

you are doing it wrong!

i don't know Your habits ofc, but personally i tried to move back to windows and that was impossible due to pain, tears and home abuse it caused. not to mention licensing that basically stated my kidney might belong to m$ one day and that is for my own good. it's full of terrifying statements like that and to be honest i can't get how millions of users agree to it.

for me win11 just works. it gets out of my way. no maintenance needed.
also Linux would take my time with non-productive stuff. this is why I call it a hobby. Last example was Pipewire....I spent months playing around with it. But what did I gain from that? nothing lol

 

[terryforsythe]

*.pacnew packages is key to Arch stability. my Arch instal was very stable. I think I only fresh installed it once in 12 years



for me win11 just works. it gets out of my way. no maintenance needed.
also Linux would take my time with non-productive stuff. this is why I call it a hobby. Last example was Pipewire....I spent months playing around with it. But what did I gain from that? nothing lol

My latest Arch installation with KDE has been going for a few years. I will check out .pacnew, though. Maybe it will help alleviate Arch update issues. Thanks for the heads up.

Linux does turn into a hobby. If you get into customizing it, which for me is one of the main benefits of Linux, it can be a time drain, especially on rolling release distributions. On my previous Arch install I had Gnome installed, with use of Gnome extensions (e.g., Dash to Panel, etc.). One day an update to Gnome came through and many of my extensions stopped working - I booted into a blank desktop. Rather than fussing with Gnome, which I wasn't too impressed with anyway, I installed KDE and SDDM. There were too many packages with both Gnome and KDE installed - my menu was cluttered and updates took forever. I then decided to uninstall Gnome. Uninstalling Gnome borked my whole system. I could not even chroot into Arch from a thumb drive to fix it. My experience with KDE on my latest Arch installation has been better, but not anywhere as smooth as Linux Mint Cinnamon.

I still keep Arch around on its own SSD, but I have far, far fewer issues with Linux Mint, which is on a fixed release cycle. Virtually everything I need is available from the software manager, which now also includes flatpaks by default. If there are any packages where I want the to keep up with recent releases, I just install the flatpak versions.

Pipewire and Wayland have made strides, but I don't think they are yet fully ready for everyone. Fedora and other distros switching to them as default will help speed up their development, though. Eventually they will become the ubiquitous, kind of like systemd, and most of the bugs will be worked out. That is when I will make the jump.

 

[elvisizer]

these days SteamOS almost classifies as my primary OS since I spend so much time on my steam deck. primarily using linux for gaming . . . smh never would have thought I'd see that back when I did my first linux install back in the 90's

 

[Blumlein 88]

My latest Arch installation with KDE has been going for a few years. I will check out .pacnew, though. Maybe it will help alleviate Arch update issues. Thanks for the heads up.

Linux does turn into a hobby. If you get into customizing it, which for me is one of the main benefits of Linux, it can be a time drain, especially on rolling release distributions. On my previous Arch install I had Gnome installed, with use of Gnome extensions (e.g., Dash to Panel, etc.). One day an update to Gnome came through and many of my extensions stopped working - I booted into a blank desktop. Rather than fussing with Gnome, which I wasn't too impressed with anyway, I installed KDE and SDDM. There were too many packages with both Gnome and KDE installed - my menu was cluttered and updates took forever. I then decided to uninstall Gnome. Uninstalling Gnome borked my whole system. I could not even chroot into Arch from a thumb drive to fix it. My experience with KDE on my latest Arch installation has been better, but not anywhere as smooth as Linux Mint Cinnamon.

I still keep Arch around on its own SSD, but I have far, far fewer issues with Linux Mint, which is on a fixed release cycle. Virtually everything I need is available from the software manager, which now also includes flatpaks by default. If there are any packages where I want the to keep up with recent releases, I just install the flatpak versions.

Pipewire and Wayland have made strides, but I don't think they are yet fully ready for everyone. Fedora and other distros switching to them as default will help speed up their development, though. Eventually they will become the ubiquitous, kind of like systemd, and most of the bugs will be worked out. That is when I will make the jump.

Manjaro seems to filter out these issues with Arch. I've had one installment of this running for six years on my daily desktop.