What is your favourite operating system and why?

Windows XP. I will always keep it on my computer and not part with it.It doesn't give me any problems to speak of..no way would I move up to Vista

I had a great time when I had an account five years ago on a server running Sun Solaris. It just worked. I've since found that OpenSolaris is more of a pain than its worth. I've been playing with Gentoo since my Niece's husband gave me an old laptop with it loaded on. It's so old I've more or less retired it, I installed it last summer into a new laptop, then it broke, (happens) and I finally reinstalled it as a dual boot with Slackware (my very first Linux, it happens) and I'm falling in love with Slackware again (though I really really like Gentoo a lot. I'll boot on either equally). I've just reinstalled Synfig (which I hate) and I'm installing Blender mainly so I can play with the slackbuild files and watch the programs being built from scratch.

Least favorite? Any Windows before XP, because they crashed so much, or Vista, which I can't even tell when it crashes because it is so slo-ow.

Favourite is always going to be a very subjective topic, for me at the moment it is a toss up between xp pro and OpenSUSE 11. XP Pro because you have total control of every aspect of the OS, GPO's etc and now runs very well on pretty much any bit of hardware made in the last 5 years.

OpenSUSE because the OS is well laid out and includes a ton of features and oh yes its free. Never been a fan of ubuntu (default brown got it off on the wrong foot for me).

Ubuntu all the way! I use it and it is fast. It has all the features of windows and more! If you are looking for an operating system for buisness then you should probobly go with windows. But if you want a fun customizable operating system then get Ubuntu! :-) But Ubuntu is almost better than windows in every way exept a lot of programs are only compatible with windows so if you use a lot of software get windows.

:-)

There is a lot of questions in one here so it may take a little while to answer.

Much of my answer will be based upon Ubuntu. Many others disagree with me on this but I class each release as a separate distro. as the differences between them can be vast.

The best for me has got to be Ubuntu 7.04 although now old and no longer supported still holds its head above the more recent releases being mega stable and featuring software that is now obsolete, such as Beryl http://www.beryl-project.org/features.php which is my preference to the increasingly bloated Compiz http://wiki.compiz-fusion.org/

After the success of Ubuntu 7.04 (which in my mind should have been given Long Term Support) Canonical have spent much of their time trying too hard with subsequent releases Which I will a little more later.

If you want to try the best Ubuntu ever.

Ubuntu 7.04

http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/releases/feisty/

Ubuntu 7.04 (repositories)

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GutsyUpgrades

You must enable these repositories as without Ubuntu 7.04 will not work properly.

Ubuntu 9.04 is shaping up to be as good (Alpha 5) was awesome and mega stable like its older sister. (Alpha 6) just released has some fairly major bugs but I am fairly confident that once the Final Release comes along it could challenge Ubuntu 7.04 for top spot.

Much hype was placed around the release of Ubuntu 8.04 which was given Long Term Support (currently Ubuntu 8.04.2) and although good it is nothing special but is ideal as a server.

Now on to the worst. After the release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS a further version was THROWN together which was the current Ubuntu 8.10, utterly dreadful being bloated, full of bugs and regular crashing, which makes me ask the question is Canonical trying too hard. Has the popularity of Ubuntu made developers cut corners.

Ubuntu needs an injection of care and attention if it is to become the best again and it seems as though this may be the case with Ubuntu 9.04

Applications

Beryl/Compiz are both very useful as they allow multiple easy switching desktops.

Beryl is minimalistic which I prefer where as Compiz I run no more than the Cube as many of the plugins are of little or no use but Window Previews and Zoom Desktop are very useful and both are included on Beryl and Compiz once you've got rid of the other rubbish.

GIMP is as good as Photoshop being very versatile http://www.gimp.org/

OpenOffice 3.0 is entirely compatible with Proprietary software http://www.openoffice.org/

Google Earth 5 http://earth.google.com/ is now available on Ubuntu 9.04 by enabling the Medibuntu repositories https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Medibuntu

Remastersys is an awesome piece of software http://www.geekconnection.org/remastersys/remaster... with Remastersys you can create your own custom LiveDVD so each time you want to run a LIVE session you don't lose all your settings. I have done this with Ubuntu 9.04 (Alpha 5) so impressed I was with it.

MPlayer makes for an excellent Media Center with all of the codecs included in the package http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/info.html

Rhythmbox http://projects.gnome.org/rhythmbox/ and GtkPod http://www.gtkpod.org/about.html are both excellent for iPod syncing.

I could go on suffice to say open source can offer everthing so you will never need to be tied down to agreements.

LUg.

Windows XP and Mint Linux dual boot. Have the best of both worlds. I have a feeling that Vista will die off just like Windows Millennium (ME) because it has too many issues to deal with.

MAC OS X.

Reliable and easy to use.

Least favourite was Windows 98, which was forever crashing and needed rebooting several times a day.

Linux for servers because of the fact it relatively is unfastened and there's a large expertise base / supportive community of shoppers and a wealth of unfastened server purposes available. homestead windows for computers because of the fact of severe compatibility with commercial purposes and video games.

Windows XP - its old, but its tested and so far stable, lesser bug reports, easy to recover. I use nearly every imaginable programs in need - MS office, graphic design, even games.

windows 2000. It does not coddle and assume you are an idiot like xp does, probably vista too, though no experience with that thing and don;t want any. I prefer IE to that stupid firefox thing, like its a spastic nerd trying to make you happy by tickling your ear. Unix and linux, that can't dress that granny up for sex, however hard they try. Have a good evening.