I'm run a MacBook Pro and 2 multi-beast setups. I'm probably one of the few who actually uses brew and built-in Apache and php.

I use BBEdit as my Editor (lol, have done that since the MacOS 7.6 days. I also used OS X since the beta days since I hated relying on FTP to test things on a server.

Note: OS X is not a Linux variant but a BSD variant. Actually, IRC it's a FreeBSD variant that uses a Melon Carniege micro Kernel.

@opheliadesign lol. @alenn even win 8.1 to 10 is a pain as I really enjoyed 8.1, once you embraced the changes it really was easier to get around. Lol but yeah once you get use to an os and get everything set up change gets harder.

I use Debian Stretch as the host OS and vagrant for making a couple of machines with Ubuntu 14.04. One for serious development and the other for experiments. I use Yakuake a lot for the command line, so I find Windows (because I haven't tried OSX yet) a little bit annoying for being productive.

Windows + Homestead.

elementary OS + Homestead

edit... I'm now on OS X & homestead...

Greetings, I use Mac with zend server and PHPStorm

Windows + wamp all the way. Just like the professionals do.

Windows 10. I use Powershell with scoop which enables a lot of functionality/shortcuts that normally are lacking in the cmd including touch, vim, git, openssh, chmod, cat etc. It works like a charm :).

Glad to see so many responses! To be honest I haven't spent much time with homestead. I'm always spinning up dedicated boxes for projects.

I'm kinda really tired of MAMP. After spending so much time in CentOS and Ubuntu boxes via vagrant, I like being able to go to familiar places to make changes to conf files and such. The GUI is nice for MAMP, but i feel like I could make a macro to generate virtual hosts programmatically and maybe not miss it :)

I am really, really sorry to hijack this thread for my question but currently I don't see any other option. Please forgive me!

For the love of god, I cannot start a new discussion as it will always tell me that the validation has failed. Yes I have entered the CAPTCHA correctly, I have used a title and a body. I used different browsers with adblock and without and I did not find any information anywhere about minimum requirements to create new conversations.

Bug or am I being an idiot?

Sorry.

@SirGraham I've had issues with that when posting from my iphone, but never my desktop (using chrome)

For bash in Windows I absolutely love ConEmu, http://conemu.github.io/

I use Windows 10 with IIS and PHP-CGI - no (big) problems at all. There are sometimes just some issues regarding caching, but this is handable.

Why Windows?

• I've grown up with SQL Server, which is in my opinion the best DBMS so far.
• I like to have everything in one place instead of VMs here and there.
• Games!

Used Windows with XAMPP for almost 10 years and Linux (Debian, RedHat) for production. When I bought my MacbookPro two years ago, I felt alive again :). It comes to personal experience: if you're comfortable in console, I would strongly recommend MacOSX. It has the eye-candy AND the full power of bash (or any shell you prefer, really).

If you rely on your mouse and you absolutely love the drag & drop functionality of (let's say) Visual Studio, or if you are in trouble when you do not have the IIS Administration GUI underneath your mouse pointer, you should stick with Windows.

OS X (whatever the latest version is. ATM it's yosemite at work and el capitan GM at home). Gave up on windows almost 8 years ago and I don't see myself using it any time soon.

Ubuntu 14.04 at work & home. I'm suprised at the number of Mac users here - I didn't realize it had caught on in the dev community like it has.

@Kryten absolutely! I'm not a fan of Apple's over inflated pricing and marketing but MacOS is great for development because it is Unix based. Unlike Linux, it is much easier to work with unless you're a total geek (I'm trying to become one of those) and there is a wider range of commercial software available (like Adobe products).

So, built in terminal, stable, and Unix commands = great for development.

WIndows + Homestead

Mac + Homestead, but I installed couple of php versions on my mac using homebrew, composer, phpunit and phpcs as well.

Long time windows user, switched to osx last year from boredom and a better terminal experience, oh and Meteor. Use my Mac for personal projects but still use Windows at the day job. I have no problem using either, Macs aren't perfect but I love the experience in general... Though I'm still slightly faster on Windows but I attribute that to hours clocked at the day job.

Almost fully converted to using the keyboard for everything... or as much as possible anyways.

Say what you want about shiny macbook pros being overly expensive, but I've always had high end PC laptops... Sager, top of the line Samsung, they don't compare to my Mac. The retina screen alone is worth it, but the enclosure and keyboard just ooze quality.

This might sound goofy, and I'm not the first person to say this... Oh and I hate Apple as a company, but when I'm on my Mac I feel like my work has to live up to this beautiful machine lol!

I use Arch Linux with homestead docker. docker has been nice because then it doesn't require me to run a VM wasting resources and battery when I'm on the go or in class.

I run OSX and homestead. For small stuff I use homebrew to keep a 'real' php on my Mac.

I also develop in Python for data mining utilities and translation/validation.

Is this a realistic question because I'm sure that it's equally mixed between all operating systems.

It's far from equally mixed. Take a look at the global market share which shows OSX at 7.79%, Windows (combined versions) at 77.12% and Linux trailing behind at just 1.62%.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/268237/global-market-share-held-by-operating-systems-since-2009/

Outside of the US, OSX (Mac) fairs even worse. In the UK the only people using Macs are 'artistic' types like graphic designers, with of course a small minority of other users.

By those numbers alone, most Laravel developers MUST be using Windows, but that doesn't mean that many wouldn't 'prefer' to use OSX, myself included.

I use OS X, with everything I need installed with homebrew. No VM's or whatsoever.

@sitesense those numbers have been pretty stable for a decade. Max I've seen Mac is 10%. With all the offices around the world and entry level pc's being under $500US it's not a surprise, add in MS's active directory and other enterprise (though enterprise is used very loosely) it's to easy to use windows at the office.

Expecially in an office environment, but training on Windows xp and 7 was pretty simple as most home pc's are Windows. Now Windows 8.1 was a great os but a perfect example of people with out much tech knowledge being able to navigate the changes and thus dismissed as garbage. Vista, well not the best os by any stretch, still suffered from drastic changes that people couldn't grasp. I got a lot of calls just asking where "my documents" went. Remember the constant asking permission to run an application? It was a nightmare for most users yet Linux and Mac have had users actually type passwords since I can remember for the same process with no complaints.

Just changed from Ubuntu to OSX one week ago. I think any Linux/Unix will do when it comes to development.

@sitesense We have to disagree here, as you can see in this topic, the most developers are using osx rather than windows. Those are global statistics, developers are different.

@ionutbajescu

All the places I have worked dev wise has been Windows pc's. Many of them we could use our own, but not paid for or insured.

Ubuntu :)

@ionutbajescu I agree that most people replying to this thread are using OSX. In fact I just did a quick tally. Some replies were a bit vague so don't take these figures as perfectly accurate:

OSX = 24 | Windows = 13 | Linux = 9

Even so, I think there's more going on here. Without wanting to stereotype anybody, I think 'Apple' owners are more likely to respond to a thread like this. It's the 'in-crowd' thing.

You can't really argue with actual statistical figures though. Take a look at another source below and this time they ARE developers: https://stackoverflow.com/research/developer-survey-2015#tech-os

Who knows though - perhaps Laravel/Laracasts does attract the kind of person who is also attracted to Apple products? That would be interesting.