mac : windows : *nix

i personally use 3 types of operating systems on a daily basis. i have an hp with winxp, an ibook with mac osx, and desktops/servers/laptops running redhat|centos|fedora|solaris

these are my opinions about the platforms... not a commercial or endorsement of one or the other. each have their strengths and weaknesses and a lot of the hype is misguided.

microsoft gets a lot of neg press because they are everywhere and most of the viruses and worms are written to target the os with the most number of users.. not that the os is just riddled with holes. but if you think about it... most people use ms programs and os becuase for the most part.. it works pretty well. you can basically run anything on it and find apps to emulate or help you connect to mac and *nix machines via vnc, ssh etc...

on the mac side.. oooo the eye candy. the interface is nice and purdy... again you can find a lot of apps (including microsoft office) the notion that macs are less prone to viruses (like the new set of commercials with the 2 guys .. mac and pc) but it is just because mac has less than 5% of market share... and it is not worth it for worm/virii writers to try and get things to work on both pcs and macs. one thing that macs have on the down side is application support ... a lot of corperate type applications do not work well on macs... visio, vpn clients, active directory rules, ms exchange features... a double whammy is that being based off the bsd *nix distribution, there are worms and virii for these and recently.. apple released over 30 security patches for osx. you also have issues of applications like firefox browsers that introduce security issues as well.

on the *nix side.. you have the freedom of running a lot of open source applications... some really good and some not so good. strengths lie more in server utilization and basic desktop usage... you would be surprised how user friendly linux has become on the desktop. limitations lie again in corporate tools but functionality is similar to osx on the ms exchange support.

one nice thing about the opensource community is that they code for all platforms.. or run based on java so you _can_ run it on just about any machine... there are also a growing number of commercial apps that run on multiple platforms :: mozilla/firefox, freemind, acrobat, openoffice, feedreader, gaim/adium

there are also always going to be things that each system is 'better' at ... even for the same software .. where it will run on linux.. but runs better on solaris but was intended for windows

any and all of these systems can and do get compromised because people leave services and features enabled that do not need to be running in most cases... i had guys at work that were running web services off their machines and did not know it.... whilst generating a lot of traffic on the local network...

if people would take the time to learn more about features running on their computers... and really were careful about clicking on attachments (come on .. you know you have opened at least one virus) or the kinds of websites they visit (yes.. viruses, trojan horses can and are pt on machines by just browsing to a site)

simple tricks are to disable services, never open attachments (even from trusted sources without scanning for viruses .. athough some viruses can be started by the fact that the file is scanned/opened) and run a firewall .. zonealarm and kerio offer free software firewalls (kerio is mo better)

lots of choices out there... i think with bootcamp.. the new intel based macs are really good... have best of all worlds... only if i can get a raise so i can drop a cool $2.5k for one....

what os do you use.. and what features/applications can't you live without? what are some things that you would like to see cross over