[Certhas]

But Linux is used by a vastly larger percentage of C++ programers.

As an amateur, I've found kdenlive and audacity provide decent video and audio editing on Linux. Professionals use Mac.

Typically installing Linux from scratch has involved less fiddling with drivers than installing windows from scratch on an empty laptop for a while now.

If you want a laptop with Linux support out of the box, you can pay for that and it will just work (e.g. http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/xps-13-linux/pd or http://www.dell.com/us/business/p/laptops.aspx?c=us&cs=04&l=...)

Gaming is a fair point, but even that might be changing with Valves efforts.

I use Windows, Mac and Linux each, they all have their advantages, but for serious software development Linux is ahead of MacOsX and both are way ahead of Windows.

[maccard]

> Typically installing Linux from scratch has involved less fiddling with drivers than installing windows from scratch on an empty laptop for a while now.

Windows 8 has worked out of the box on every configuration I've tried, with the caveat that it installs non up to date drivers (e.g. High end graphics cards). My experience with Linux (Ubuntu 15.04) is that the little use peripherals I have don't work at all ( I've a Bluetooth usb adapter and a usb capture card that both are plug and play on windows vista onwards but I've yet to find working drivers on Linux for).