Ask HN: How many of you use Windows as primary OS?

I did some testing of my graphic card using WebGL on Chrome (windows 8 and ubuntu 12.04 13.10 and Fedora 19 (64bits) ) and what i can tell you is that performance on Windows is better for at least 30% than on any linux distro (i'm sure its more but lets say its 30%). I've used amd propriety drivers on each linux distro (latest beta) and latest catalyst drivers for windows.

My laptop is HP 4720s with i5 CPU and Radeon Mobility 6300 series with 1gb dedicated memory.

Another thing is that most of major open source web developer tools used on Linux got their windows versions (plenty of WAMP packages, eclipse, vim etc)

I might be one of the few people here that likes Windows 8 new interface. Its fast and running apps is just blazing fast. You press Win key and start typing apps name (almost identical like on gnome or unity).

Also one more thing, Microsoft with windows so far is the only one succeeded to create same interface for PCs, tablets and phones (canonical is trying with Unity but i'm not sure it will do anything usable any time soon).

So why all this hate for Windows ?? Price ? I'm not buying it that price of windows is main problem, most people spend more money on games (much more money).

Linux is open source ? Like Ace Ventura like to say Rheaaallllyyy? So what? How many of you give a fuck about that ? How many of you write software and sell it ? (most of you I'm sure, be it web service or mac apps or iPhone apps or android apps, so you say you care about open source ?)

Security could be, but i don't trust to anything that is connected on internet, anything that is man made can be broken and cracked its just lack of the will to do so :) and popularity of OS itself. If Linux was popular like windows you really think that viruses and other crap would not float around internet?

There is so many advantages of windows over Linux that's just insane. I'm not saying that there is no Linux advantages over Windows but i think more things from windows miss on Linux than other way around.

I am not in any way involved with Microsoft and this is my personal opinion!

Thank you for reading :)

Bye

Two different questions. Everybody uses Windows for web development because you need to test sites on all major browsers and IE only runs on Windows. The title asks about Windows as a primary OS. Nowadays with multiple cores, lots of RAM and tools like Virtualbox it is easier than ever to use Windows as a primary OS because you can have Linux in a VM anytime you need it. I have about a dozen Linux VMs that I use for different purposes, i.e. they have different things installed, so it is easy to work with PHP one day, and Tomcat the next day. Just swap VMs. I always build the VM using the build docs for the production servers so that I match the final production system as closely as possible. That means sometimes I use a Centos VM and other times I use an Ubuntu LTS vm.

I do and always have - currently have Windows 7 on my desktop, Windows 8 on a new laptop (had to buy Start8 to get the start menu back to avoid that metro crap). I develop websites in .NET (ASP.NET webforms and MVC) for enterprises. While I'm typing this I'm repairing my VS install because the Resharper keyboard mapping isn't working on this Windows 8 laptop for whatever reason. I guess I should be used to this time wasting stuff by now but I'm not...

I uninstalled that piece of crap months ago!

Ok it isn't "that" bad, at times Windows is pretty unbearable.

As of 10 months ago, I totally wiped the hard drive, and installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu on there. I've no reason at all to go back to Windows, as Ubuntu handles everything I need done, and much better too.

I only have Win7 installed on another computer for my gaming needs. Hopefully with Valve getting on board with Linux, we can eventually scrap Windows altogether.

Used Win all my life, and for something like 5 years for web dev (not really serious web dev, but getting a technical degree on it).

I was thinking on moving to Ubuntu because I like the Python/Django stack and it was more difficult on Windows. Then I bought my new laptop that came with win8 preinstalled.

It got me kicked out of windows... Now I'm a happy Ubuntu user at home, at work, Win XP

I did until my day job required me to work on a project with a file named "con". Go try and create that on Windows. I dare you. No, I couldn't rename the file.

Now OS X is my primary OS, and it works fine.

Me. Windows 8.

What's the point of this thread? Where do you want to go?

Sometimes I temporarily install windows 7 on a VM, beyond that I haven't used windows even close to seriously for years.

I'm full blown RHEL/fedora.

OSX at home, Windows 7 at work (but working most of the time SSH'ed into Linux box anyway).

I use Windows 7 because I rely on Photoshop. I'd use mint if that were not the case.

OSX here, and Ubuntu at work...

I do, but mostly because I have to have Adobe and Visual Studio running.

I do, but only because I'm doing primarily .NET stuff.

Ubuntu on personal laptop. Windows 8 on office laptop.

Oh, there's lots and lots of us. Really.

Fedora at home, Fedora at work

OS X at home, Windows at work

Debian at home, OS X at work.

windows at work, ubuntu in a VM on windows at home for certain reasons