smallsoftware dreamland by ~lopagof at deviantART

There are a lot of choices in the world of technology these days, and it doesn’t take a well-thought-out Google query to find a huge following of people on any side of any given topic. Of course, there isn’t a digital war older or that has resulted in more casualties than our old favorite, "Which operating system is better?"

Everyone has their personal preferences when it comes to pretty much anything tech-oriented–from our favorite browser to which phone we carry, it’s hard to find anyone who’s not willing to share an opinion. And, to be honest, since the operating system is the basic building block for our core computing experience, it makes sense that the choice would be a highly subjective one. But for the life of me I can’t seem to understand why people take their choice of operating system so personally. You can make fun of a man’s car, you can insult his clothes, you might even be able to get away with speaking poorly about his religion, but don’t you dare make fun of his choice of operating system, or you risk getting the top twenty reasons x is better than y, where x is his operating system and y is, invariably, yours.

I understand that every operating system has its pros and cons. I use Windows 7, OS X, and Linux all on an almost daily basis, and there are things that frustrate me about each of them. And, like any good geek, I have my druthers, give the choice of any of them. But I understand that each of them have strengths, and I’m not afraid to mix-and-match as needed. I use Windows 7 on my home desktop, where I browse the web and game from time to time. I run OS X on my laptop, which is my primary work machine, on which I do my software development. And Ubuntu powers the server on which this very site runs.

But this drive–especially from IT people–to turn their operating system preference into a dogma, and to argue with fervor only used elsewhere when dealing with religion and politics, is counter-intuitive to what we do. An operating system is a tool, not entirely unlike all the other tools we use on our computers–compilers, text editors, browsers–and to turn it into more than that is, in my opinion, only a hindrance to the betterment of the world of technology as a whole and our ability to think and adapt to various tools and resources as individuals. I’m not saying we all need to join hands and sing songs around the campfire and all install OS Winnux, but a little tolerance probably isn’t a bad thing.