Which is better? Which is most affordable? Which is most secure? Just a few of the questions I hear frequently, and to be honest they are all good questions. So, I am going to try and answer these the best I can.
To begin with, lets address the fact that of all three OS options I have listed, Windows is by far the most popular. Windows is on billions of systems around the world and most all consumer software is developed with a Windows first approach. Windows is shipped out with countless new PCs, Laptops, Servers and tablets on a daily basis. In the corporate world (where I have spent many years), you will be hard pressed to find anything besides Windows especially on a desktop. Many web servers, file servers and some applications do run on Linux due to the security and speed. With that being said, I have noticed a trend with startups opting to build their company with an army of Macs. Now just to let you know, MacOS is basically just Linux with Apple’s spin on it. The same commands that work with Linux will also work on a Mac. However since this article is mostly aimed at a consumer level I will stick to that.
If you are a graphic designer, web designer, music engineer and any other creative type of person then the choice seems to lean towards Mac. Although, I am not 100% sure why. I have done audio production at one point and have used both PC Cubase and Sonar (I know that is a discontinued software) and Mac’s Logic Audio Pro. Both seem to produce similar results and have similarly easy OS configuration for the equipment to integrate with the DAW. I have also used Adobe suite on both platforms and again both delivered a similar level of performance (Both high performance machines). As far as your basic use (web surfing, email, chat, calendar, shopping etc) they are both going to be similar.
The main difference comes in the security and functionality depending how you plan to use them. If you opt for Windows I would recommend a solid third-party antivirus and firewall. I would also use the same on a MAC but that’s just me; a lot of people claim there is no need. That may have been true some years back but I think we have entered a whole new jar of pickles.
Now let me talk about Linux for a bit. I spend a lot of time in Ubuntu and Centos Linux as I provide admin tasks to several VPS and dedicated servers running web applications. I also have Ubuntu desktop on one of my personal laptops. That being said, I did load up Garuda (A cool looking interface over ARCH Linux) for my wife and it created some extra work for me. She did like it but there is a learning curve with Linux. If you are someone who is not computer savvy I would not recommend Linux unless you like to learn or have a tech savvy partner or friend close by. That being said, Linux has come a long way and they are not done by a long shot. Also, Linux desktop is free and if you just want to surf the web get email and use a free office suite its easy to load and will work very well even on old machines, so don’t discount it all together. If you’re a professional, you already know all of this and probably have a Linux machine already. That’s it for now, I will continue to write these short “articles” as I have time. Happy computing!
