Welcome to our macOS Sierra vs Mac OS X El Capitan comparison review, in which we help you decide which is the best Mac OS for you, and whether you should upgrade your system to macOS Sierra. Mac OS X is second-most popular (and gaining market share) and is an excellent operating system for those who can purchase a Mac. Linux is a very good advanced operating system available for free.
Note: Both Mac OS X and Windows have come out with newer versions as of the writing of this answer. Some details may be different from what is written below, and the answer should be updated accordingly. The best desktop operating system to use depends on what its intended use will be and who will be using it. There is no specific operating system which can be called 'the best' overall, and since most current operating systems share most common and advanced features there is much debate on the topic. A few of the most popular operating system, their pros and cons, and some of their best uses are described below. Microsoft Windows: Pros:. The largest library of programs and applications.
Some commercial games work only with Windows and DirectX. Almost all hardware has drivers which are compatible with Windows.
Most widely used. Cons:. Prone to viruses, spyware, and adware if proper steps not taken such as installation of internet security software, which reduces performance speed. Requires regular maintenance to avoid system errors and reduced performance.
Even with maintenance, issues can slowly accumulate requiring a re-installation of Windows to restore performance and fix software issues. Purchasing a Windows license/install disk can be relatively expensive. Windows Vista, the most recent version of Windows, has high system requirements. Notes:.
Windows Vista has relatively high system requirements compared to its Windows XP and other operating systems. This has caused many individuals and businesses to continue using the older Windows XP. The two most common versions of Windows are Windows XP and Windows Vista. Vista, although it has some issues, does have some new features such as search-as-you-type search and a 3D-accelerated desktop, features up until now only found in Mac OS X and some versions of Linux. With the introduction of Virtual-machine software, Windows has become a popular add-on for Mac and Linux in order allow those computers to support Windows-only software or hardware when needed.
The Windows market share has seen some decrease in recent years and months. Best uses:. Gamers.
People who must use Windows-only software for work or school. People or businesses looking for an inexpensive computer yet do not have the ability to use Linux. Mac OS X: Pros:. Relatively simple and intuitive interface with many advanced features.
Not a target for virus or malware attacks, generally: there are no Mac OS X viruses in the wild, and with its UNIX base, it is fairly resilient. There are a small number of trojans (malicious software) which have been known to take effect through applications running in Mac OS X, though they are almost always found on illegal-content-based websites and are not of significant concern.
Apple has begun integrating malware blacklists into Mac OS X to prevent infection. Second-largest selection of software, with many high-quality Mac-only programs in existence, such as those found in iLife. Although at one point software for certain tasks were not Mac-compatible, most software is now either Mac-compatible or has an equivalent that is. Most advanced games have also recently became compatible with Mac OS X. Reliable and high performance. Cons:.
Limited to Apple-manufactured hardware. Some hardware does not have Mac-compatible drivers, though the number of this hardware has recently become small and negligible. In some cases, it may be difficult to do cross-platform network hardware sharing for a Mac OS X based computer in a Windows network or visa-versa. For example, a printer's Mac driver may not support cross-platform printing to a Windows-connected printer, and replacement drivers may or may not exist. Smaller library of applications in comparison to Windows. Notes:.
Macs occupy the medium-range to high-end computer market and as such are not sold for the same prices of some low-end PC brands (e.g. The low-end Mac Mini costs $600 USD yet many mainstream low-end PC brand desktops can be purchased for around $400-500). As a result, Macs are popularly considered to be more expensive than PCs, however Macs have been shown to have competitive pricing to comparable PCs (e.g.
The Lenovo Thinpad X300 costs about $2,500 while the MacBook Air runs between $1,800 and $2,700 and outperforms the Thinkpad, or the Dell XPS One prices at about $150 higher than a comparable iMac. Additionally, the following factors can cause the total price of owning a Mac to be even less compared than that of a PC: Apple iWork is relatively inexpensive compared to Microsoft Office, PCs experience hardware or software failures more frequently than Macs, increasing service and replacement costs, Macs do not require the frequently expensive internet security software subscriptions.
Though Mac OS X suffers from relatively very few real-world hacks, security holes in Mac OS X do exist, just like in any other operating system. Also like in other operating systems, they are fixed with software updates upon their discovery. With a relatively low market share compared to Windows, there are still individual programs which are only Windows compatible.
However, virtual machine software with a Windows installation or compatibility layer software can allow those programs to run even on a Mac. The Mac has seen significant market share increases in recent years and months, something which has also increased the amount of Mac-compatible software. Best uses:. Students who are not required to use Windows-specific software (though Windows can easily be installed to use Windows software). A recent study indicated that the number of American students intending to purchase Macs has neared that of Windows-based PCs. Home users looking for an easy and reliable computing experience who are willing to pay more than low-end PC prices.
Graphic designers and photographers. Scientists.
Linux and other UNIX-based: Pros:. Low number of viruses and other malware, similar to Mac OS X.
Usually free. Large selection of Linux distributions to choose from. Has a large amount of free and open source software equivalents to commercial Windows and Mac software.
More easily customizable. Can run many Windows programs with the use of a compatibility layer such as Wine. (Programs such as Cedega can be used to run many Windows games). Reliable with good performance and low requirements. Cons:. Advanced use and installation of some software may require more advanced knowledge than is required for use of Windows and Mac.
Many commercial programs do not support Linux. Small commercial game library Notes:. There are a few main types of Linux: Debian, Fedora, Red Hat, and SUSE. Ubuntu, a type of Debian, is highly popular among home users, as is SUSE, to a lesser extent. Fedora is more popular among businesses. There are many other (non-Linux) UNIX-based operating systems (with the same UNIX base as Linux), including Mac OS X and SunOS (which are based on Free-BSD). There are also some UNIX-like operating systems.
Through customization and software like Beryl, Linux can be made to have advanced desktop effects similar to Aero on Windows Vista or Aqua on Mac OS X. 'Dependency hell' can make installation of certain programs on Linux difficult even for advanced users. Best uses:.
Experienced computer users looking for a good, free operating system. Businesses looking for reliable and affordable computing, so long as they do not need Windows-only software and have a competent IT manager. Bottom line: Though there is no one clear best operating system, each does have its advantages and disadvantages, and different people will be best using different ones.
Microsoft Windows is the most common operating system and is a reasonable choice for most people. Mac OS X is second-most popular (and gaining market share) and is an excellent operating system for those who can purchase a Mac.
Linux is a very good advanced operating system available for free and is recommended for experienced users. Mobile Operating Systems: Aside from the main question of which OS to use in your home or work computer, lightweight mobile operating systems are also used (and almost always pre-installed or even hard-wired) in mobile devices such as cell phones, smartphones, PDAs, and Internet Notebooks/Superportables (which are similar to downsized laptops with low specifications). There is not a great deal of choice among these, and features differences are based more on the mobile device itself, and less on the operating system. Windows Mobile is usually used in Pocket PCs and Smartphones; iPhone OS (based on Mac OS X) is used in the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch; Symbian is used in Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, and other cell phones; and Linux-based mobile OSes are common both on cell phones and small Internet Notebooks. First off: Freedom.
You can do whatever you want as an end user on Linux, including reverse engineering, modifying, and even making copies and selling it to firends. These are things Windows never allows for its users to do. Second off: Lots of choice.
Linux has plenty of ways to allow for a user to make use of it. There's several desktop environments, several command line shells, and dozens of window managers, and chances are one.will. find their preferred 'desktop' on Linux. On Windows, you're stuck with explorer, even with so-called 'shell replacements' which don't replace explorer so much as try to paint over it, and often poorly. Third: Linux is so much more efficient than Windows in many ways: It and its applications take WAY less space than Windows (Linux and applications are perfectly comfortable in 5-20 GiB of hard disk space, you'll generally need at LEAST 120 GiB just for a 'light' Windows user.), WAY less RAM (Linux can still work comfortably within less than a GiB of RAM, Windows these days is nigh-unusable unless you have at least 2 GiB), and run WAY faster (Performance benchmarks speak for themselves.).
Fourth: Unless you're a gamer, most applications on Linux are a higher quality (And are also available on Windows, such as GIMP, Firefox, and VLC.) than their proprietary Windows counterparts. Fifth: Linux is very stable, provided you use a stable Linux distribution (Debian is legendary for this.). The best operating system depends on what family of operating system you wish to use. Macintosh requires a lot of resources so that is completely out of the question. The best families to look into is obviously windows, but Linux may also be a better choice.
The best windows operating system that ha s been the most successful for working on lower end computers and surpassing 'the old OS's (95, 98, ME)' is Windows XP. XP can run on even the most basic of computers. The best advice to make it run most efficiently is to max out the RAM on the motherboard. Another alternative to a windows operating system is Linux. Pretty much any Linux 'distro' (or distribution of the operating system) can run on a PC platform with even the smallest amount of resources.
I know that the recommended system requirement for Dream Linux is a 20 GB hard drive, 733 MHz processor and 128 MB of RAM. This is quite a debate, and one which I myself had to find the answer to as well. I'm currently a graphic design student, and it seems that most have their own opinions as to which is the best. For the most part, both Windows and Mac operating systems seem virtually equal in this regard. Personall y, I have an Alienware laptop with Windows XP. This is because I find Vista to run much slower overall on any computer, and because I think Windows (overall) is an operating system that allows the user more freedom. Yes, it is true that Windows-based machines are likelier to get viruses and whatnot, but they also permit the user to choose his own settings and decide to open his computer to something that may be considered harmful, even when it isn't.
Thus, Macs end up being a lot safer, but also less compatible with much of the software out there. That said, it is traditionally believed that Macs render graphics better, presumably because of the displays or graphics drivers only.
Also, I'm told and have seen that most art departments and graphic designers seem to prefer Macs to PCs-for the display reasons alone, who knows? Essentially, I feel that the operating system doesn't make a huge difference (as I have come to use both extensively), but rather you simply want a high-performance machine with plenty of RAM (to run the giant programs) and hard drive space (to store alllll those versions of the same project). Answer I have both in my shop, for different reasons.
I do all my designs on Mac, partly because all my fonts are Mac fonts (and I have a pile of them), and partly because the Mac just feels better to me. I can design quicker on an 800MHz G4 than I can on a 2GHz PC. My Onyx ProductionHouse and EFI Fiery XF RIPs run on Windows. Windows offers cheap brute force, which is important when you're driving four printers from one computer and the printers in question are bigger than your car. Answer It depend how much money you want to spend.
If you are buying a Mac for $3000 you can easily get Windows PC 64 Bit 6 GB DDR3 Ram under $2000.Majority of people are using Windows and the results are awesome. It is not a computer (neither Windows or Mac), it is you brain, your skills how you implement them. There is no difference at all if you know how to design you can achieve the same result on both.
This is impossible to answer conclusively. In addition to the fact that no operating system is perfectly suited to all tasks, the word free itself is up for debate.
Free can have several different meanings to different people. To many people it means that it is free of any monetary cost. To oth ers, free means that something lacks any restrictions on what you can or cannot do with it. In operating systems, an operating system that restricts what you can do with it (such as modify the code or sell it) is considered proprietary. The only free operating systems that do not impair your rights to sell or modify them.
Even within free systems, there is debate. Systems under licenses like the GPL force you to make any changes you make to a program you release to the public freely available.
Other licenses like the BSD or MIT license allow you to keep the changes you make proprietary, and even re-license under a different license without making the source available. Comparison of freeware proprietary operating systems The operating systems that are considered the best in their field are listed below. More than one will still need to be listed, as there are still things about them that would make them unsuitable for a large number of people. Desktop / Workstation MorphOS - MorphOS is a desktop operating system with a multimedia-oriented operating system modeled after AmigaOS. Limitations: available only for workstations with PowerPC processors. Limited selection of applications.
No memory protection. BeOS - Multimedia desktop with many features considered rather advanced in its time. Fast microkernel design. Interface is considered by most to be very easy to learn. Decent homebrew community.
Limitations: Company went out of business. Limited selection of apps. Often does not work on computers newer than 2004. QNX - Fast and responsive on extremely low-end / older hardware.
Highly reliable and compact. Applications from many other systems like Linux are easily ported to it.
Limitations: designed for embedded use, not desktop. Lacks many basic desktop features for above reason. Installation requires (free) registration at comapny's website. Commercial use would require purchase of a (very expensive) license. DR-DOS - 100% compatible MS-DOS clone. Includes many features that MS-DOS didn't support. Limitations: does not come with a graphical user interface.
Only capable of single-tasking without some complex TSRs. Limited support for modern hardware. Server QNX - POSIX-compliant; highly secure. Many web server packages have already been ported to it.
Limitations: commercial use would require purchase of a (very expensive) license. Embedded QNX - realtime, portable, highly reliable. Limitations: commercial use requires purchase of a (very expensive) license. Comparison of free and open-source operating systems Desktop / Workstation Linux - Large selection of applications. Support for a broad range of hardware, and runs on systems both old and new. Highly reliable and secure.
Growing community focusing on increasing ease of use. Limitations: Limited selection of commercial software.
The large number of choices in distros and desktop environments can be daunting. Some devices do not work in Linux, simply because the vendors will not release hardware specifications.
FreeBSD - large selection of software (pretty much whatever runs on Linux). Less restrictive licensing (BSD). About 95% of hardware supported in Linux is supported by FreeBSD. Highly secure and reliable.
Limitations: awkward installation of programs (except PC-BSD variant). Limited selection of commercial software. Community is highly devisive and prone to fragmentation. Some hardware devices do not work in FreeBSD due to lack of hardware documentation.
Server Linux - reliable and secure. Very large support for commercial server software. Scales well across multiple cores and handles multi-threading well. Limitations: no support for some proprietary Microsoft extensions (like ASP). FreeBSD - highly reliable and secure. Very large selection of commercial server software. Decent performance and hardware scaling.
Limitations: no support for some proprietary Microsoft extensions. No major commercial backers. Embedded Linux - excellent documentation and reliability. Easily portable. Highly modular (can have unneeded components removed).
Limitations: size still cannot be reduced enough for some types of devices. ECos - designed from groun up for emdedded use.
Highly portable and POSIX compliant.
And More RELATED: No list of alternative PC operating systems could be complete without Linux. It’s the alternative PC operating system. Linux comes in many different flavors, known as. Are some of the most popular. If you want to install a non-Windows operating system on your PC and actually use it, you should probably pick Linux. Linux is a, and there are other open-source operating systems like FreeBSD out there.
FreeBSD uses a different kernel, but it uses much of the same software you’d find on a typical Linux distributions. The experience of using FreeBSD on a desktop PC will be pretty similar. RELATED: Google’s Chrome OS is built on the Linux kernel, but it replaces the desktop and user-level software with a specialized desktop that can only run the Chrome browser and Chrome apps. Chrome OS isn’t really a general-purpose PC operating system — instead, it’s designed to be preinstalled on specialized laptops, known as.
However, there are ways to. RELATED: Valve’s SteamOS is currently in beta.
Technically, and includes much of the standard Linux software. However, SteamOS is being positioned as a new PC gaming operating system. The, but the computer boots to a Steam interface designed for living rooms.
In 2015, you’ll be able to buy PCs that come with SteamOS preinstalled, known as. Valve will support you installing SteamOS on any PC you like — it’s just not anywhere near complete yet. RELATED: Android also uses the Linux kernel, but. Originally designed for smartphones, you can now get. It’s no surprised that a variety of projects exist to — Intel even develops their own port of Android to PC hardware. It’s not an ideal operating system for your PC — it still doesn’t allow you to — but you could install it if you really wanted to. RELATED: Apple’s Mac OS X is preinstalled on Macs, but Macs are now just another type of PC with the same standard hardware inside.
The only thing stopping you from installing Mac OS X on a typical PC is Apple’s license agreement and the way they limit their software.Mac OS X can run just fine on typical PCs if you can get around these restrictions. There’s a thriving community of people building PCs that run Mac OS X — known as — out there. BeOS was a lightweight PC operating system ported to the Intel x86 platform in 1998, but it wasn’t able to stand up to Microsoft’s Windows. Eventually sued Microsoft, accusing them of pressuring Hitachi and Compaq to not release BeOS hardware. Microsoft settled out of court, paying $23.5 million to Be Inc.
Without admitting any guilt. Was eventually acquired by Palm Inc. Haiku is an open-source reimplementation of BeOS that’s currently in alpha.
It’s a snapshot of what might have been if Microsoft hadn’t used such ruthless business practices in the 90’s. OS/2 was an operating system originally created by Microsoft and IBM. IBM continued development after Microsoft left it and OS/2 competed with MS-DOS and the original versions of Windows. Microsoft eventually won, but there are still old ATMs, PCs, and other systems using OS/2. IBM once marketed this operating system as OS/2 Warp, so you may know it by that name. IBM no longer develops OS/2, but a company named Serenity Systems has the rights to continue distributing it. They call their operating system eComStation.
It’s based on IBM’s OS/2 and adds additional applications, drivers, and other enhancements. This is the only paid operating system on this list aside from Mac OS X. You can still download a free demo CD to check it out. ReactOS is a free, open-source reimplementation of the Windows NT architecture. In other words, it’s an attempt to reimplement Windows as an open-source operating system that’s compatible with all Windows applications and drivers. ReactOS shares some code with the, which allows you to run Windows applications on Linux or Mac OS X. It’s not based on Linux — it wants to be an open-source operating system built just like Windows NT.
(Modern consumer versions of Windows have been built on Windows NT since Windows XP.) This operating system is considered alpha. Its current goal is to become compatible with Windows Server 2003, so it has a long way to go. Syllable is an open-source operating system forked from AtheOS, which was originally intended to be an AmigaOS clone. It’s a lightweight operating system “in the tradition of the Amiga and BeOS, but built using many parts from the GNU project and Linux.” Like some of the other smaller operating systems here, it has only a handful of developers. Unlike many of the other hobbyist operating systems here, SkyOS is proprietary and not open-source.
You originally had to pay for access so you could use development versions of SkyOS on your own PC. Development on SkyOS ended in 2009, but the last beta version was made available as a free download in 2013. You can also install — an open-source version of DOS — to. Image Credit.