Favorite Operating System For Development?
Posted by Davy Brion on December 22nd, 2008
With the recent news that the cutoff date for Windows XP has been extended by a few more months, i was wondering which operating system you guys prefer for development. So i’ve added a poll to the site (it’s on the right top of the page) where you can cast your vote.
I have to admit that i still prefer Windows XP, probably because it’s the lightest one of them all at the moment, and since i run XP in a Parallels VM on a cheap Macbook, that kinda matters 
At work, i’m using Windows Vista… not really happy with it though…
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:32 pm
xp is clearly the winner for me. i even set my vista at work to “classic look” because aero bothers me. Somehow the aero UI feels slower… could be that’s purely psychological though.
on the upside: i’m hearing good things about windows 7 performance, even if it’s still pre-beta! they still have lots of time to screw it all up again of course, but let’s hope for the best
December 22nd, 2008 at 8:34 pm
yea my work vista also has aero disabled… i also had the impression that it made everything slower, not to mention that i don’t really like the look of it (not that i like the ‘classic’ look or anything)
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:31 pm
For the past few years, i’ve been using linux+xfce and a very slimmed down/network restricted install of windows server 2003 running in vmware server.It’s nice to have the ability to move the vm around or hit it over a network when needed.Since I don’t let the vm access anything but the local network, the need for virus scanning software seems unnecessary, so I get a bit of a speed increase from that as well
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Vista works very well for me.
IIS7 is way better for setting up various websites than the awkward webdev combos I used to do.
and on my laptop, which is a 4 yr old 1.6Ghz+1.5Gb machine it works very well, and even faster than a super-cleaned-up XP.
If I had a lil’ time I would have looked into setting up a win2008 workstation. not going back to XP though, I like IIS7 too much …
December 22nd, 2008 at 10:43 pm
@Ken
are there any specific IIS7 features you really like or can’t live without? I’m not trying to be a jerk or anything, just wondering if i’m missing out on some cool stuff
December 23rd, 2008 at 2:14 am
Davy,
Windows Server 2008, before that, Windows Server 2003
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:55 am
i’ve heard a lot of great things about windows 2008 as a development system so far… but it does take some effort to set it up, right?