Might take some time... I'm putting in tables... til then read this This guide is best if you are interested in privacy, security and anonmity: https://anonymousplanet.org/guide/ it's not mine, but it is very useful. AH I suppose I should make a usable link, here you go=
The Guide| MacOS | Windows | Linux | FreeBSD | |
| "Just works" | IF it happens to have what you need, yes, | 8/10, | Small Tinkering Needed - Depends on distro., | Small Tinkering Needed, |
| Starter friendly | 10/10, | 7/10 too much bloat and distractions by default, | Varies WILDLY by distro 5/10 to 8/10, | 8/10, |
| Secure | No applications = secure?, | NO, Windows is building up a horrible reputation for being insecure, | Needs insane levels of hardening, will destroy features at some point, but still a 10/10, | Out-of-box secure, |
| Games, | Depends on desired games, | 6/10, | 8/10 - Applications used for gaming will be listed below soon | 3/10, Not meant for gaming, so performance may be eh or some things will just straight up not work |
| Tinker-ability, | 0/10 everything is locked down, I HATE IT, | 0/10 everything is locked down, I HATE IT, | 10/10 Everything from the kernel to the UI can be changed, | 10/10, |
| Reliability | 3/10, | 3/10, | 8/10 Depends on init system and distro., | 10/10, |
Can do all of the basic things you need out of the box (Browser, Docx, Spreadsheets, Production software (3d modeling, streaming, video editing, digital art) Commonly used applications, etc) this does NOT include games, as it has a seperated catagory. it is also to be noted that sometimes hardware itself can cause varied results on your OS, a good example is nvidia on linux being a clusterf%3k to deal with, which requires some reading up or it might just work.
Note: Some of these ratings (The "just works" and Game catagorys) should be taken with a grain of salt. What everyone wants out of their system is a bit different, therefore you probably should make your own decisions instead of going strictly off what I say.
This one has a weird situation going for and against it: The walled garden.
Because of the walled garden there is few applications you can install. Used to be an amazing thing, but over the years users have felt more caged by it. Not to mention security flaws are becoming more and more apparent.
If you wish to read more on MacOS walled garden here is a few links I found while doing research:
What is a walled garden?While I give windows a 8/10 in the "just works" department I believe it is nessasary to preface that this may not hold true on older systems. Windows 10/11 OSs are by no means is lightweight. Windows could very well struggle on slightly dated hardware.
While I have daily driven Windows for well over 6+ years (before swapping to linux permenantly), I documented all my issues with Windows, the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.
For starters: The beginner experience is horrible in my opinion, I would not dare give this to a kid, grandma just now touching a computer, or even a seasoned PC user straight off of MacOS. The bloat is horrible, OneDrive, Edge, Netflix, Instagram, Candy Crush, you name it, it's probably pre-installed. This is bad because if you are running windows on a slightly out-dated laptop (Like I was for a few years), or maybe even a newer laptop, the performance is horrible. You basically HAVE to resort to finding a older version of Windows in order to have a nice fresh first experience.
Windows LTSC is the only version of Windows I recommend, in case you need it.It is fair to say that Microsoft wants your money, all companies do.
Remember at the end of the day = Microsoft owns your Windows OS.
Microsoft will find every way in there power to advertise to you or to make you use their paid software. OneDrive is a reminder of this fact, as it resides in your file manager of all things, constantly BEGGING you to use it and its tiny storage. My grandmother kept accidently uploading pictures to her OneDrive, eventually thinking that she needed to pay for more storage, when in reality she has more then enough space, 300G of space to be exact.
In the realm of it "just working" it's.... okay. I would personally say everything works perfectly out-of-the-box (OOTB.), it has everything you need, being the most popular OS has its perks, that being everything is supported, but it comes at a price. The price in question is performance. With all these layers upon layers of support for applications, the amount of storage, ram, and processing is staggering. The extra 'Services' that windows runs are generally useless to your average person. Why would a work computer need 10 gaming related services running constantly? Why would a gaming computer need 50 services that bog down performance?
Security on Windows is a joke. Full-stop. There are at least 3 vulnerabilitys found every day, minus the ones that are not publically known. Oh and if you download a virus on accident? Windows won't help you. Best it will do is send you continuous pop-ups saying there is indeed a virus on your system. Which by the way, being on the most popular OS means that virus creators basically target your PC, so expect every fake download link to nuke your PC or give you ransomware.
Reliability on Windows is also a joke, it's constantly killing itself, it was rare to go a full month on my Windows systems without something breaking, be it the WiFi or disk itself breaking, making all my data lost and needing to do a full reinstall. The culprit behind this awful breakage is of course Windows auto-update.
Here is a case where auto-update shook the worldWant to customize something? go to Linux or FreeBSD because Window's look and feel can't be modified.
Moral of the story is:
Still plan on using windows? expect to spend hours fixing your system, which could break very easily. (You won't even need to break it yourself, Microsoft AI powered auto-updates will do that for you!)
In the future I will add a list of third-party tools to debloat windows for those who need it, other then that, please just go to either FreeBSD or Linux.
This is the OS I have the most experience on. On Windows we had "The good, the bad, and the downright ugly" now we have "The good, and the questionable".
First let me say this:
Linux is not one company, and it is not one monolithic OS, Linux is the Kernel/core of which indiviuals or community can build upon to make something called a "Distribution" or Distro for short. Each Distro is its own flavor of linux, some meant for coders, others for the common worker, and some made for gaming specifically. I will go over some specific distros after the feature report.
Most of your application might need to be replaced with their open-source counterparts (Don't worry, it's completely free!). This isn't too big of a deal, you can pretty much sum it up to getting used to a new User Interface, the looks of the application, you might even come to like the open-source versions more, like me. For starters: Browser and Microsoft 360 Suite, these can be replaced by Firefox (or LibreWolf for a more secure/private opition OOTB.) for the browser and LibreOffice for the suite. If you need a Chrome-based browser, use Brave Browser.