Ah, finally found the old flamewar discussion...
Windows:
It is the de facto standard in the IT business and will stay there for at least another five to ten years. With Vista, Microsoft is shooting itself in the own foot, not necessarily because of the lack of innovation, but because of the more and more rigid politics behind it. Businesses are becoming more and more fed up with the way Microsoft operates and begin to look for alternatives.
The greatest threat to Microsoft is not the competetion, but Microsoft itself. And with Gates gone next year, the company will lose most of what defined it.
OS X:
The only real alternative available to Windows and the most usable and userfriendly OS on the market. Who's ever used a Mac for more than a week is not likely to go back to something like Windows or Linux, unless he has to because of some business critical application that only runs on Windows.
Besides, OS X offers ALL of the geekish things Linux has, it is just hidden under the hood, but once you go there, you will find a FreeBSD operating system with a Mach kernel. And I for sure prefer a FreeBSD userland over the chaotic Linux inconsistencies.
Linux:
Linux simply is not usable enough in everyday DESKTOP scenarios and it still lacks commercial applications (or applications that are able to compete with commercial ones in terms of quality and support) in almost every area conceivable.
Or to say it more bluntly: If you need more than a web browser and OpenOffice or the few very specialised applications that do exist for Linux (like Blender or CinePaint), you will erase it faster from your hard disk than it took you to install it.
The GIMP is no match for Photoshop - you can ask any professional photographer to tell you why. There is nothing there that gets anywhere near software like Logic, Live, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut or whatever else you might need. And where is the business software? I know some companies who do use Macs even for "boring" business stuff like accounting and writing invoices, but I do not know any company that uses Linux on the desktop. And guess what the few companies who "migrated" to Linux actuall do: They use a Microsoft Terminal Server in the back, and the client OS is not more than just a non-MS RDP client.
The biggest problem of Linux is that many software development companies regard it as hostile ground for commercial software, and they believe that the Linux user base is not willing to pay for software. I believe they have a point there, and it explains very simple why nobody is porting commercial software over to Linux.
For certain uses, however, Linux is a nice server os. It's good as a proxy, firewall, router, web or database server, but it still sucks completely when you want to use it as a file server for Windows clients, for example. OS X can do that job better, but if you need a file server for Windows, you basically just have to use Windows Server.
Because of its chaotic nature - Ubuntu Linux is different than OpenSuSE is different than Fedora is different than Gentoo and so on - I would chose a *BSD Unix for any such use anytime over Linux. FreeBSD has a clean design and actually is a full operating system, not just a kernel with *some* userland around it.
FreeBSD is what Linux should haven been, but Linux has more marketing hype behind it.
And besides all of the above, FreeBSD still outperforms Linux in Unreal Tournament 2004. So who the heck wants Linux? ;-)
By the way, there even is a Debian GNU/kFreeBSD available, for those who want to use their GNU userland without the Linux kernel...
In general, the whole discussion is useless and only good to burn some spare time. Windows will be around for the years to come, but will begin to lose market share even on the desktop. Some will switch to OS X, others will switch to Linux. Some few will then later go back to Windows, because they realize that their companies do not have the necessary knowhow to keep a Linux environment alive and going.
However, I do believe - or hope - that in ten years from now Microsoft will have lost a significant share of the desktop market to the competition. Most of it will go the Mac, some to Linux. And if not, I don´t care. I am more happy with my Macs than I ever was with any Linux or Windows machine, and from all that I see it is possible to make a living in the Mac world - even with writing software. ;-)
Windows:
It is the de facto standard in the IT business and will stay there for at least another five to ten years. With Vista, Microsoft is shooting itself in the own foot, not necessarily because of the lack of innovation, but because of the more and more rigid politics behind it. Businesses are becoming more and more fed up with the way Microsoft operates and begin to look for alternatives.
The greatest threat to Microsoft is not the competetion, but Microsoft itself. And with Gates gone next year, the company will lose most of what defined it.
OS X:
The only real alternative available to Windows and the most usable and userfriendly OS on the market. Who's ever used a Mac for more than a week is not likely to go back to something like Windows or Linux, unless he has to because of some business critical application that only runs on Windows.
Besides, OS X offers ALL of the geekish things Linux has, it is just hidden under the hood, but once you go there, you will find a FreeBSD operating system with a Mach kernel. And I for sure prefer a FreeBSD userland over the chaotic Linux inconsistencies.
Linux:
Linux simply is not usable enough in everyday DESKTOP scenarios and it still lacks commercial applications (or applications that are able to compete with commercial ones in terms of quality and support) in almost every area conceivable.
Or to say it more bluntly: If you need more than a web browser and OpenOffice or the few very specialised applications that do exist for Linux (like Blender or CinePaint), you will erase it faster from your hard disk than it took you to install it.
The GIMP is no match for Photoshop - you can ask any professional photographer to tell you why. There is nothing there that gets anywhere near software like Logic, Live, Soundtrack Pro, Final Cut or whatever else you might need. And where is the business software? I know some companies who do use Macs even for "boring" business stuff like accounting and writing invoices, but I do not know any company that uses Linux on the desktop. And guess what the few companies who "migrated" to Linux actuall do: They use a Microsoft Terminal Server in the back, and the client OS is not more than just a non-MS RDP client.
The biggest problem of Linux is that many software development companies regard it as hostile ground for commercial software, and they believe that the Linux user base is not willing to pay for software. I believe they have a point there, and it explains very simple why nobody is porting commercial software over to Linux.
For certain uses, however, Linux is a nice server os. It's good as a proxy, firewall, router, web or database server, but it still sucks completely when you want to use it as a file server for Windows clients, for example. OS X can do that job better, but if you need a file server for Windows, you basically just have to use Windows Server.
Because of its chaotic nature - Ubuntu Linux is different than OpenSuSE is different than Fedora is different than Gentoo and so on - I would chose a *BSD Unix for any such use anytime over Linux. FreeBSD has a clean design and actually is a full operating system, not just a kernel with *some* userland around it.
FreeBSD is what Linux should haven been, but Linux has more marketing hype behind it.
And besides all of the above, FreeBSD still outperforms Linux in Unreal Tournament 2004. So who the heck wants Linux? ;-)
By the way, there even is a Debian GNU/kFreeBSD available, for those who want to use their GNU userland without the Linux kernel...
In general, the whole discussion is useless and only good to burn some spare time. Windows will be around for the years to come, but will begin to lose market share even on the desktop. Some will switch to OS X, others will switch to Linux. Some few will then later go back to Windows, because they realize that their companies do not have the necessary knowhow to keep a Linux environment alive and going.
However, I do believe - or hope - that in ten years from now Microsoft will have lost a significant share of the desktop market to the competition. Most of it will go the Mac, some to Linux. And if not, I don´t care. I am more happy with my Macs than I ever was with any Linux or Windows machine, and from all that I see it is possible to make a living in the Mac world - even with writing software. ;-)