Ole Juul
Veteran Member
Although I keep systems with Windows around, for everyday use it's Ubuntu. On older machines, it's Debian or NetBSD.
I no longer need to write Windows code (thank heavens) and about the only thing I do on the web is browse and email. Almost all EDA tools are available in *nix versions and the security is better than Windows. I've been on and off of Unix since about 1978, so it's not as if it's strange territory.
I think that's the main reason that many people are still running Windows - they need it for work compatibility. I've never had to deal with computers in a work situation (other than as a user) so it's been irrelevant to me and I've had the luxury of making my own choices. I know I'm lucky in that regard.
As I said above, my choice now is FreeBSD. I still have a couple of Linux machines, and actually just put Ubuntu Server on a new box and added Fluxbox for a GUI since it will be used for some browsing as well as home server. Ubuntu Server is just so damnd quick and painless to install. I also put Linux Mint on my wife's new (to us) laptop a month ago because Mint is really good at running codecs right out of the box - which is good if you're not too critical about the purity of your system. Still, I'm moving away from Linux specifically because distributions are generally continuing in the MS-Windows wannabee path which doesn't suit me well. BSD seems to be holding it's own and not giving in to fashion quite as much and is built with user choices and not defaults. It's also got (most recent count) 24011 programs to grab with a click (or "make install clean") and can run all Linux programs too. So - HUGE freedom. /salespitch