What is the best computer operating system for various uses?

Best Operating System

While the answers given above are good ones, it is not as simple as one OS fits all. There are a number of parameters needed to make a sound decision. What is the best operating system for your use is determined by your uses, the number of users, the number of transactions, the size of the transactions, the complexity of the transactions, the security needed for those transactions and users, the response time expected to complete the transactions, and your budget.

For "A system where thousands of transactions occur in a day, such as railway reservation system", a mainframe using OS390 or MVS or VM is the most reliable, secure and the fastest, but it might not be in your budget. A step down is some UNIX variant AIX, SCO UNIX, HPUX ect. LINIX is included in this list and Linix is free.

I am not knocking Windows OS's, they run many high volume sites and applications but they are not the solution to every problem.

Here are more opinions and answers from other FAQ Farmers:

• Actually, the best OS for e-mail wouldn't be Windows at all, but rather MAC OS, preferably the latest available. Microsoft is infamous for it's horrible security problems, it releases security updates sometimes daily (usually weekly though) and creates a new OS every other year or so. Apple, on the other hand, just released it's first security update in response to a virus little more then a month ago (no viruses had been able to attack Mac OS before). And unlike Windows, new versions of Mac OS come out much less frequently. For the average user, and only considering the e-mail objective. Mac OS is very much superior to Windows. Linix/Unix is also a good choice, but it is suggested you don't use these unless you feel competent in their use.

• If your only interest is in the internet and email mac or windows will do nicely. Mac is more secure but windows has the larger market share and is more likely to work with Internet applications. For gaming it's widows, period. most games never get ported over to mac or linux and if they do they run poorly. For graphics and video editing mac. They've always been the leader in this catagory. For financial transactions I've read that to this day cobol based solutions still handle more than all others combined. But that's probably just because of all the legacy programs and servers at banks, cc companies and the financial markets have left over. Other than that I'm not sure. Serverwise Apache is the the easiest, is stable and free. Unix is more powerful but much more complex as well. I would say apache with mysql/php. Avoid MS in this area since one thing you don't want is an unsecure server. And if you want to do it on the cheap and not pay for an OS or want something more stable than windows go with linux. A bit of learning curve and harder to maintain but free and stable.

First answer by Pranav Bharti. Last edit by Chyndonax. Contributor trust: 166 [recommend contributor]. Question popularity: 278 [recommend question]

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