Bitcoin Forum

Some discussions about security made me wonder which OS most people use. If you use multiple Operating Systems, choose your favorite one. If you don't know, don't answer the poll.

Good idea to have a poll.  Might be interesting to see how skewed the population is compared to other large computing communities (eg Boinc - they have stats on OS and hardware).

Might also have been fun to include legit versus pirate on the list.

I use anything and everything but windows :P using windows near any form of e-currency = financial suicide :D

Win 7 Ultimate on almost every machine I own (4) and 1 OSX Snowleopard box (for iPhone work).
...Regardless..my bitcoin wallet/instance is on a detached external portable 1TB HD fully encrypted and tucked away in a fire proof box in my bedroom closet. I just use blockexplorer to keep track of my balances.

64bit OS/2 Warp
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2010/6/21/131516/891

Ubuntu to mine, windows the rest of the time.

There are still too many programs that I use daily and work only on windows to make the full switch, but I would if I could.

other => both windows and linux equally.

mac most of the time, linux for mining

Huh, looks like the large market share makes Ubuntu a big target. I guess I'll do my Bitcoin transactions in BSD from now on: same security as Linux, but less attractive to thieves since nearly nobody uses it...

What about Linux primarily, Windows for gaming? :D

the most secure os is Dos  :D no internet no nothing.
Its is a very long conversation about what is secure and what is not.
i use 4 distros of linux among ubundu, suse,debian,unbreakable linux ;) , windows, and some times a mac (!).
NONE of these is secure. For anything of them to be secure it would need an educated user.
if you understand what i am writing you will get my point.

If a forum mod is reading this, could you post the OS usage stats from your http logs?

This. Though with my GPU mining all the time, it's hard to find a time to boot into windows for gaming. :)

My windows license is not pirated, as I get them for free through MSDNAA.

This used to be true, but Windows 7 is a pretty solidly secure OS. 

Every major Internet provider I'm aware of has switched to modem/routers, so fewer and fewer of users are directly connected to the Internet, which closes the door on virtually all threats outside those initiated by the user themselves.  Stay away from phishing attempts, don't download exes from untrusted sources, and leave the Windows update service on auto. 

/ 25 years using/developing on Dos/Windows
/ No infections - virus, trojan horse, or worm
/ No "hacked" accounts, stolen USD or BTC, etc
/ Did lose some family photos once due to a flawed backup strategy. >_<

Not to be a party-pooper, but you do know that you're not allowed to use that for anything other than testing, right?  You may as well just pirate it if you're not going to buy a full license.

You may use the software for non-commercial purposes including instructional use, research and/or design, and development and testing of projects for class assignments, tests, or personal projects. You may not use MSDNAA software for any for-profit software development.
When you are no longer taking credit courses in the member school, you may no longer obtain MSDNAA software. However, you may continue to use previously installed products on your computer, provided you continue to follow MSDNAA program guidelines.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/academic/bb250622.aspx

I'm doing lots of personal projects (aka beating that final level in game xyz) and testing computer games on my windows installation. Also some surfing (errr, research). For commercial and for-profit needs or anything serious, Ubuntu is my OS of choice.

As soon as I'm no longer a student and a new Windows version is out, I will buy it. It's not like I'm a Microsoft hater, I actually like Windows 7. And I usually don't pirate things. :)

Mac OS X is based on BSD... so which should we pick?

Ubuntu for all web browsing and Bitcoin - Windows for everything else.

Then you're already way ahead of your peers!  Sounds like you're well up to speed on the valid uses of MSDNAA, even if you are stretching definitions a teensie bit.  ;D

Yes, and BSD and Solaris are both Unix so pick (other) since I did not list Unix.
Seriously, what's the point in playing stupid? It should be obvious which choice is for you if you use a Mac, but even if it isn't: My first post says "if you don't know, don't answer the poll".

Slackware and OS X. Also Windows 7, XP, and FreeBSD, but I don't happen to run any Bitcoin stuff on those. Didn't answer the poll, obviously.

I was being a smart-ass, sheesh.  ::)
 
Joke was lost on the audience

AFIK, fire-proof boxes are designed to keep paper from bruning, not protecting electronic media. A few hours in a fire would probably fade any data stored in a fire safe.

There's no option for "all of the above." I'm a mac person, but most of my mining is done on linux. I recently got into PC gaming as kind of a by-product of having so many damn graphics cards.

No known infections   :)

He is right, the temperatures will be way to high for a HD to survive. The data might be recoverable (i even think it would be), but it would be very expensive.
It sure wont work when plugged back in.

Got a pretty good sampling so far. I personally use windows installed on a second hard drive. I only turn on that hard drive when I want to move coins.

I picked Mac because that's my favorite OS for personal machines (I have a MacBook and a home built Hackintosh), but I use FreeBSD on my servers (absolutely love FreeBSD jails on production machines), and I'm using Ubuntu Linux on my mining rigs and on my home media center. I pretty much use a little bit of everything besides Windows ;D

If Windows could finally include a decent UNIX compatible command prompt/terminal I'd consider using it for some things, but right now that baby toy they call cmd.exe just doesn't cut it for me and I've tried Cygwin but that just wasn't the same.

I primarily use Ubuntu on my netbook and have win7 for when I want to watch Netflix. Before my desktop died (ran the cpu and gpu miner at the same time and blew my small 460 Watt PSU which took my motherboard with it >.<) I mostly used win7 and occasionally ran ubuntu.

Windows, the quiet majority.

ORly? OpenBSD may not be that good of an idea :)
http://marc.info/?l=openbsd-tech&m=129236621626462&w=2

Linux is ahead 67-65 right now, unless you also count the 'Linux for Bitcoin' number, in which case it's 83-65. Unless you mean in general, in which case it should be the oblivious majority :)

Depends.  OpenBSD's claim to fame is that it's default install is secure from remote attacks.  However it's default install has just about nothing and while pkgs and the ports tree are audited to a point they share an awful lot of code with the parent project.  I.e. There have been far more than two remote exploits in Apache on OpenBSD.  I myself have had an OpenBSD box hacked.

OpenBSD has a richer privilege system than standard Linux but not better than GrSecurity which is a full-blown RBAC system.

As I've mentioned way too many times.  I also think that OpenBSD could have done a better job on W^X which is their ASLR product.  PaX is much more robust (but as a contrast it needs to be enabled).


I used hardened Gentoo - that's Gentoo with PaX/GrSecurity patches.

Newbie...not sure if I can post yet or now.  We'll see.

I use FreeBSD.  I'm familiar with the hassles of building from source on this platform and prefer to do things this way for systems that I care about.  I'm using a Trunk source pulled from git a week or two ago.  If I wanted to pick up the fix for the wallet creation seg-fault from a few days ago, it would take only a few minutes.  If there were a a defect which effected me more or which I cared about more (e.g., a notable security issue) I could patch it just as easily.

bitcoinX.com stats:

Windows     76.11%    
Linux          10.40%    
Macintosh   10.04%


The same poll but only for mining rigs and detailed to xp/vista/7 would be very interesting.

There already was a poll:

http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=21499.0

Similar to Gentoo.  Which is source based, ergo patches get integrated into the package management system quickly....in fact you can easily create or modify an ebuild to accept a patch that isn't in the current source tree.

Desktops: Latest fedora
Netbook: Debian with heavy custom tweaks
Laptop: Fedora 14
PS3: Debian
Servers: Debian or OpenBSD

I also have a partial windows taint on my laptop (had to unfortunately) - it's never booted for the most part and gets used about once every 2-3 months