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Jeremy Morgan
Jeremy Morgan

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Which Operating System Are You Using?

I asked folks on Twitter what operating system they use to write code and was a bit surprised. (The poll is still going on if you want to see the current results).

It looks like a dead heat between Windows and Linux. I expected much of my audience to be front end developers and web developers, who primarily use OSX. Most developers I talk to regularly use OSX, so I was surprised to not see it above and beyond the rest.

So what are YOU using as a "daily driver"? I'm curious to know. Whether you're a professional developer or a hobbyist tinkering around.

What OS are you using?

It wasn't long ago people would say things like "If you want to develop with {language / platform} then you must use {Operating System}. But it seems these days you can do whatever kind of development you want in each operating system.

Windows was the laggard for many years. If you wanted to do any kind of scripting or run applications only built for Linux you were out of luck. But WSL has changed that. So I'm not too surprised to see the increase in Windows usage.

So What Are You Using to Write Code??

Let me know in the comments what you're using and why. Work or play. You can still vote on this poll for a couple days too. I'm curious.

Oldest comments (46)

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Yuriy Markov

I'm using Windows since v 1.0 :)

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Nathan Glover

MacOS at work, PopOS at home. Only reason I'm not running Pop at work is consistency with my coworkers. Even with GNU Core I don't want to risk it.

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Jeremy Morgan • Edited

Same here. I use OSX at work, and on my laptop I ran FreeBSD for a while, and it was awesome but I ran into some snags that I didn't have time for. I had to get some work done.

I am in the middle of redoing my website completely, and while I'm a die-hard Arch Linux user, I didn't want to take the time required to put Arch back on it, so I went with Pop. It's been really good so far.

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Nitin Reddy

At work Windows 10, Ubuntu as a hobbist. 🤟

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Fran Diéguez

ArchLinux at work and home.

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thojest • Edited

currently ubuntu on main. but testing arch on other system.
incredible!
Will migrate main to arch soon.

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Dan • Edited

I moved on Linux from Windows. Why? Because, my friends who works in IT industry said me that and said why Linux is so interesting in programming. And I moved on Linux. When I started it was very hard for me, but after 3 months of usage I understanded how to work in Linux and my feelings flyed to the heaven because of how cool is Linux. The Linux is WOW!

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Aditya Mitra

I am using RHEL8 (Red Hat Enterprise Linux Verdion 8).
Since this is my first time in Linux, I really need some community help.
Any recommendations?

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noeu

I use Debian GNU/Linux for developing web and mobile apps, both for work and hobbies. The exception is when I need to develop an iOS app.

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Daniel Mileev

Manjaro for home and study. Win 10 for work because not possible to use Linux

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Ben Halpern

OSX for most of my work and personal computing, with a bit of Raspbian here and there 🙂

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Adnan Babakan (he/him)

I'm running Windows 10 on my PC at home which I also code on it. I used to have Ubuntu as my primary OS for 5 years but since I got my gaming PC Windows 10 is way better I think. XD

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rhymes

macOS. I only have one computer :D

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Ghost

Used MS from DOS 6.0 to Windows XP, a bit of Win7 for gaming. Linux since more than a decade (Mandrake 9.3 I think) and exclusively since about 8 years ago. Ditrohoped a lot but mainly Gentoo.

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Aleksandr Hovhannisyan

Windows, regrettably.

WSL works until it doesn't; then I have to go right back to PowerShell and manage my Path and environment variables by hand. It works but is tedious and slow.

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adityamitra profile image
Aditya Mitra

My Professor asked me :
WHAT IS RIGHT USE OF TOUCH COMMAND IN LINUX?

(Hint: It is not just used to create files)

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Christopher C. Johnson

I switch between Windows and Linux a lot