I use nitrous.io on a Chromebook. So I guess I'm using linux! I have finally broken away from all my Microsoft software and I have never felt more productive. I have lots of flexibility using the cloud IDE, and I can work offline, although not in nitrous, when I need to. I feel "closer" to the web technologies and secure in not using proprietary software (I make careful choices).

I personally like Mac. When I first started i was using Windows and everything was just plain hard and I was thinking I wasnt going to be able to learn it. I went to a friend's and he showed me his set up. He just sat down and started working. I was amazed at that. No messing with 14 things to just be able to use your computer. Things maybe different now but I moved to a Mac and have been very pleased.

I'm using ElementaryOS, which is a Ubuntu fork. It's quite minimal, but it's a lean distro and because of that very fast.

Have a look: http://elementary.io/

Wow, stop there, this is like asking: "Which food is best for drawing pictures?". The answer highly depends on

• your OS preferences
• what language you use
• what you are programming
• for what platform you are programming
• what IDE you use

Without the answer to those questions it is impossible to give you an answer.

-- Update --

You are getting bored with a stable and good environment? The OS should always just work in a non-obstructive way. It's not about being "boring".... Well. So you want to try a Linux distro as a web developer? Hmm. Well, I personally prefer Gentoo, but that one might be too much work for you. I also use Arch, and it works like a charm. You always get the very latest software (bleeding edge, might as well crash, so be careful!). If you want to go with something more stable, which is also good for a newcomer to the open *NIX world, you might want to give Mint or Ubuntu or even OpenSUSE a try. Maybe the following diagrams can also help you choose:

• linuxtrainingacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/…
• http://i.imgur.com/jy1BF.png

In terms of DE, I really love KDE, because I like the looks and customizability. As for the IDE, I use WebStorm and sometimes Kate. You might want to install Docker with a SQL DB and NGINX or Apache, depening on what you want to develop.

I really like Arch Linux with i3 as window manager

I does my web development works in linux. i use ubuntu on my desktop and ubuntu mate on laptop.

Atom : Text editor OS: Ubuntu / Ubuntu Mate

Depends on what you're doing. iOS requires Mac, so if you're going to do any iPhone/iPad development, that's where you need to be. Mac covers all other non-Microsoft programming languages, too. Plus, if you really, really wanted to do .NET development, you could always try out the Mono project. This is the most expensive route. Macs aren't cheap.

However, if you're more geared towards Windows apps, then obviously, Windows is the way to go.

If you're in between, the absolute cheapest route is Linux. At least you can do Android development on Linux.

Have tried all of them Linux, Windows & Mac, but Mac always came out on top so I moved over to them fully a couple of years ago. Best of all worlds and just very stable workhorses - probably had about 2 crashes/freezes across all the systems in 3 years. Plus the software availability is great.

Linux

For me is Mac OS X, since more or less five years ago I develop over Mac and i think for me is the best choice, because the base is unix and have a lot of applications to make life easy, the user interface is pretty nice and the terminal is more ore less like the linux, by other hand i think another one system to develop is ubuntu