Best Operating System available for every day use.

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I've decided to give plain Debian with LXDE a try on my Netbook.

Debian's absence of many "Non-Free" things many be a mild install annoyance but in the long term could be a good stable OS.

Debian Wheezy is now on my Netbook. I have LXDE and also Fluxbox which is different for a Window Manager. Fluxbox may have potential if I can customize it to my liking. It does seem speedy.

I wondered if Linux folks have a preference for their DE or WM? Gnome? KDE? Xfce? LXDE? Enlightenment? Awesome? Openbox? Blackbox? Fluxbox? Other??

It's crazy how many free options are available to customize a Linux machine.

Well, if you want lots of games I can agree that Windows is the best choice at the moment. But there are a lot of Linux games on Steam, and also some which aren´t on Steam too. The only problem about Linux though is the graphics drivers. I have a Intel GPU and the open source drivers sucks, but on the other hand the drivers sucked at Windows too when I tried it.

I voted for Linux. If one does not game or use some program particularly for Win/Mac, I think Linux is the best choice. Why?

+ Installation - much easier when it comes to partitioning then Win, goes faster and one may use a live cd. It´s also a lot easier to install from a USB stick, and one may surf the Internet or do something else while installing.

+ Drivers - In Windows one mostly need to install lots of them. In Linux on the other hand, most things work out of the box, (at least the computers I´ve installed it on) unless one want to use propriety graphics drivers, then it might be a problem. But unless one wants to game there´s no need for them.

+ Freedom of choice - In Win one may only use the default desktop environment, sure there are some things that can be customized, but on Linux one may choose from several distributions and desktop environments.

+ Free of charge.

I´ve never used OSX though, so I can´t compare with it, and some things might be different when it comes to Win 8, I´ve never used that either.

There are surely some other things as well, but these are the one´s that I can think off just like that.

I prefer Linux Mint with XFCE, my second choice would be Mate. Haven´t tried too many DE´s though, but I know I don´t like Gnome, KDE and LXDE. Unity is okey I guess, but I prefer a "classic" DE.

Ubuntu isn't easy to use if your used to Windows, Zorin is probably best cus its most like XP and familiar.

I am using lubuntu currently and like it. Should because everyone use it truely make it best though it is just network externalities. Also can't this be on looks and how people like it be subjective. I don't really like docks for open programs and prefer a taskbar but other people may have different preferences. This is subjective for how people like their layout.

Sometimes I'll have issues installing on a Laptop/Netbook and have to grab the driver for my Broadcom Wifi. Other people might have a headache getting setup with Nvidia.

I followed the Debian Wiki and it solved all those issues without any trouble though.

LXDE, ratpoison, and fvwm.

Currently I like Openbox, GNOME 2, LXDE, and XFCE. I'll probably give Fluxbox a shot at some point. That being said, I think what has happened with KDE and GNOME Shell to be deplorable, -- Don't even get me started on Unity.

A good Linux distro is the best OS for everyday use. My grandma is almost 80 and I put her on Linux Mint Debian Edition. She had horrible luck with antivirus software and was about to buy a Mac when I showed her my laptop running Linux Mint Debian Edition. I told her that it will never get outdated or slow down and she asked me to install it to her computer which I did. I kept Windows 7 there just in case she needed to use it and I showed her how to get to it if she needed to. I told her that she can still manage her Android devices and watch Netflix. I installed Wine and used that to run Firefox with Silverlight. After that was set up, I got her printer working and used a script to mount the Windows partition automatically and showed her how to access it. I then rebooted her computer to show her what to do at startup and booted into Windows 7 to show her that it was still there.

^^^
I need a neighbor just like you

What in the world is wrong with you guys. You'd prefer LINUX over BSD! I'm so tired of the Linux cliché that all these skiddies are throwing on their system just to look cool! Probably don't even know what BSD is much less UNICS! Just saying!

I hate Linux with a passion. If I had no choice but to use Linux I am only doing Red Hat. Otherwise BSD, IBM AIX, HP-UX, and Solaris (RIP) for the win! Hell MacOS is even better than Linux as a *NIX box!

Depends what your every day use is. If you mean the Desktop there is actually an interesting project called Haiku, it's a BeOS clone that is designed for the desktop only and boasts a 10 second boot time and being very fast and just generally good at being a desktop OS. I can't speak for it personally as I haven't got round to trying it.

I can say Linux is a very general use kind of OS depending on the distro, but it does not target the desktop in particular. It's packed with drivers more than most "free" Operating Systems and is well suited for broad every day use on a few different types of machines so definately a good choice.

Some people like FreeBSD and most *BSD users recommend it for the desktop but my experience is that ports will break every time you compile a package from source which may defeat the point for some people. Maybe a FreeBSD user will know something more about that or disagree but that was my experience is all I can say. I think *BSD users probably dont want to use ports for most things and use binaries instead. You can install binaries only and you'll probably be fine. I don't use *BSD for the reason my ATI drivers are not ported there and are not possible to port. So it's a limited experience as I don't really want to sit around waiting for Mesa3D support.

Windows I don't like at all, mostly because of how really unstable, insecure and prone to viruses it used to be. It may be different now in one or two of those areas but I see only one advantage - that most commercial games are made for Windows. Although I game a lot I'm happy playing the games that are available as Free Software so I don't see a use I have for Windows now after using Linux for so long.

Mac OS X - Pretty good for every day use but more for specialists like graphic designers maybe.

But you asked what was *best* for every day use and I say Linux because it's what I know and can use it everywhere (and administer easily after using it so long), that and the amount of software available for it and being able to install whatever you need easily. I like Debian GNU/Linux as it's very stable, just works and doesn't have bleeding edge software in the stable version. There are downsides, it's not perfect (and less perfect than some believe imo) but I say go ahead for every day use.

Not a sales pitch btw, just my opinion

PS: I say OS X takes second. As you just use it, don't need to really change much to do anything. Also gets a little more commercial games than Linux, and sometimes *NIX stuff is ported from elsewhere. Hackintosh only works on specific hardware or needs a great deal of messing about to make work so I can't really say second best (and rate it higher than I did *BSD that just installs and boots? that would be madness ).