Comparating the most popular Operative Systems of our days
- Article type: Informative article
- OS needed: Windows, macOS, Linux
- Programming language: N/A
Overview
On the present day, there are 3 “major” OS (Operative Systems) around the world:
- Windows (we are going to talk about Windows 11 for now)
- macOS (it used to be named OS X)
- Linux (this includes a lot of different flavours and derivations)
They are pretty different, and they have their own “pros and cons” when you want to write code on them. On this article, we’ll talk about those differences.
Windows
Windows is an OS developed by Microsoft. Its latest version is Windows 11 (last verified: 02/02/2022).
Windows pros
- Its pathnames are easy to handle (most of the times). Most of their files are based in a single disk drive (commonly
C:/). That makes easier to work with paths. Also, external units (aka USB drives) are handled like a separate disk drive (D:/,E:/,F:/, etc.). - It is easy to get most of the professional apps. I mean, Office apps, Adobe apps, etc. Also, it is easier to find programmer tools on Windows.
Windows cons
- It is very sensitive with the user permissions. If you are a programmer, you should notice this point. By itself, Windows 10 doesn’t let you modify
files outside the user directory (
C:/Users/[your username]). Even if you are the administrator of the system, you may have to explicitely provide the permissions to many of your programs. - Windows always wants to download programs from the Microsoft Store. At the first sight, this looks like a security advantage. But sometimes the programs from the MStore are different from the program official website. For example, see my Article 2.
- If a newer OS “generation” is released, it is hard to do the transition. A clear example was the transition from Windows 7 to Windows 8, and then to Windows 10. If you search this on a browser, you’ll find many stories of people dealing with the transitions.
macOS
This OS was developed by Apple Inc.. Its latest version is named macOS Monterey (last verified: 02/02/2022).
macOS pros
- It is really easy to upgrade it. You don’t have to do a big transition, because it doesn’t make incompatible changes. Actually, you don’t have to buy the OS again!
- It is developer-friendly. macOS provides several programmer tools, like a command bash, an Objective-C API, and much more.
- It doesn’t have problems to save files in the cloud and the computer (at the same time). This makes your work easier.
macOS cons
- Sometimes, you can get confused by its paths. The macOS paths are a bit more complex than the Windows paths. Anyway, you don’t have to worry a lot for this.
Linux
Many of the Linux flavors (Ubuntu, CentOS, Debian… and much more) are maintained by many organizations. The kernel was created by Linus Torvalds. When we say “Linux”, we are refering to the group of operative systems based on that kernel.
Linux pros
- It is strong against viruses. It is stronger than other OS (Windows, macOS), as far as I know.
- It is developer-friendly. Most of the times, it is very easy to handle, so developers feel fine when using a Linux machine!
Linux cons
- In some cases, it is hard to distribute software compatible with all the Linux flavors. A simple example is the Python packages problem. I’ll try to explain it: each OS has tags to be compatible with some built distributions (wheel). But there are a lot of Linux tags, so it is hard to identify them.
- It is not so popular than other OS. So, it may be hard to find useful documents about it.
And this is where the article ends. I hope you like it, and maybe share this with more people. To go back to the main page of my website, press here.