Preferred Operating System?

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It depends on what I'm doing at the moment. For the usual household stuff I prefer Windows, however when I'm at work programming I prefer Linux.

I have a new favorite - Manjaro Linux.

I was putting parts together for a loaner, something that should "just work" even through updates. AMD APU on a gigabyte mobo, Realtek ALC887 nic - all red flag items. I first tried Debian but the philosophical adversity to closed source blob drivers ended up being a PITA. So I ran the gamut of the other big names. Most had trouble with the APU, but it was workable with a little work. None would properly install or configure the audio, even with hours of adjusting, configuring, installing, blacklisting, etc.. I finally tried Manjaro and...it worked. Beautifully. Five minutes later it was up, running perfectly and fully updated.

I think in my case it's more a question of what operating systems I am able to tolerate using the most, since I've never encountered a "perfect" OS that does everything I need it to the way I want it to.

Overall, I'd say that Windows 7 is my current favorite, even though there are certain things I can't stand about it, like its update system, and its inability to efficiently manage system resources, as well as its closed-source highly undocumented nature.

Linux is becoming more and more promising all the time, but by its very nature Linux-based operating systems tend to be much more rough around the edges and slapped together compared to operating systems like Windows and Mac OS X. This is too bad, because Linux does an excellent job of managing system resources and providing customizability... even though you pretty much have to be a programmer to take advantage of the latter.

On the topic of OS X, I find it is a very nice OS in some ways as well, very polished, yet its hardware support is appalling, and its utter lack of configurability frustrates me. I think if Apple were to release it as open source, the whole OS not just the Darwin kernel, I would strongly consider using it more regularly.

I'm having trouble posting links or anything over six lines - captcha hates me right now. So please google,
Manjaro: A Different Kind of Beast
for the differences. The makers of Manjaro feel they are substantial. So far, I like it but I plan on staying well within the 'stable' updates with this box,

Thanks Mr_bigmouth_502, but that's part of my normal routine w/ captcha. Most of the time it returns me to a blank text entry field (unless I was quoting someone), but occasionally I'll get lucky and my text will still be there. Either way its a habit to ctl-a, ctl-c before I submit. Still, I've tried submitting 5 & 6 times for the same comment before giving up with no change in the outcome. Today it seems better, so long as I keep my reply under 6 lines long. And yes, it's sad to have to see it that way.

My preference for most purposes is OpenBSD. I've also used a number of other UNIX OS's.

For my principal work station, I use SuSE Linux, primarily because it handles dual monitors better than OpenBSD.

I also use SuSE Linux on my laptop.

Cloudflare is a caching reverse proxy, but it only caches static things such as images and CSS. I find it interesting that CF refuses to allow any independent benchmarks, which could mean its only good for caching. Of static data. Which would otherwise be cached on the client side anyway...

Windows 7
Does the job and does it well. I mostly use Windows for gaming, and with all the updates it has recieved so far, it's pretty stable...

Windows 10
I have this on my PC at work and my laptop. It's just a shame that it spies on you a lot unless you know how to turn it off... also driver problems with the nvidia GPU in my laptop.

OS X
I'm pretty meh about this one. I have an older Mac mini that I used as a media center pc. the biggest major pain was that it can't write to NTFS formatted drives, essentially making my 3TB external drive useless... also not being able to set VLC as default for movies on an NTFS drive.
Also, after I upgraded to Yosemite it's also just been really slow.

IOS
not my thing, it's too simple and "nooby" for me, plus it just plain sucks being a developer for the damn devices. Just for testing an app, you need to jump through a lot of hoops, supply a lot of information, and even register the device for development... nah

Android
Easy for the beginners, damned powerful for the pros, and so incredibly easy to develop for.

OSMC
I currently use a Raspberry Pi with the OSMC distro. The Pi itself has vastly increased my trust in computers named after fruit. Apart from a bit of instability with the wifi dongle, it's been working like a charm, even with 1080p movies. Plus it works nicely with my 3tb external HDD and has no probs sharing it with the rest of the house over samba.
Installation is a breeze too...

Linuces
I've tried many a linux distro over the years, from Ubuntu to Slackware and Gentoo. Solid core and solid architecture. Can be a bit of a hassle with all the config files if you need it for something serious, like a webserver or setting up a machine for server monitoring...

my top 3 would be:
Windows 7
Linux
Android (although technically also linux)

I enjoy using linux. I run a CDE desktop on gentoo. Maybe someone out there remembers the "classic" unix desktop

Indeed! CDE got outdated pretty quickly. Motif held on a little longer. I imagine by the late 90s early 00's it looked like a dinosaur.