Which operating system is best for music-making in 2026?

[legendCNCD]

Amiga

[fedexnman]

Windows 11 for me . I built a PC . Linux is ok . Mac is nice but not for me . (Expensive)

[Starbright]

MacOs - and I ued to be a windows guy.
I had two attempts with it. My first attempt used to be a Macbook Air (1018, i5). I used it fairly a bit but had to do a more demanding production (which it couldn't handle at the time) and dropped it.
Then last year Windows 11 got so horribly on my Acer Predator (i7, 24 GB RAM) that after a really bad upadate and one crash too many I've decided to get an M4 Mac Mini.

And what can I say it just smokes everything away (except for Kontakt 8 in the beginning). I can record at 16 samples if I want to and if it crashes (which it only did once due to a faulty vibe coded vst) or I accendentally stumbe and unplug it (only happened twice), it boot up again and recalls what I did last (no lot session).

Also having not to work with ASIO is a blessing on MacOS.

[_leras]

The best OS is the one you have. But I would say windows has much better backwards compatibility.

[TechHaus]

Deleted a lot of music making stuff off my mac over the weekend. It's weird, I connect it to my tv via hdmi to stream more than I use it for work. It's like a glorified "chromebook" or chromebox or macbox, in this case. The OS is just so cheesy and cringe - I hate the design language. They even made Logic look horrible compared to the Emagic and early Apple days.

The Apple will still get some ai use because it does have the 24gb unified memory vs my 8gb graphics card on my Linux workstation.

Meanwhile, my home music making machine is a 2016 Thinkpad running Manjaro with some lightweight plugins (Hive 2 and Renoise Redux).

[sandandpaint]

MacOs - and I ued to be a windows guy.
I had two attempts with it. My first attempt used to be a Macbook Air (1018, i5). I used it fairly a bit but had to do a more demanding production (which it couldn't handle at the time) and dropped it.
Then last year Windows 11 got so horribly on my Acer Predator (i7, 24 GB RAM) that after a really bad upadate and one crash too many I've decided to get an M4 Mac Mini.

And what can I say it just smokes everything away (except for Kontakt 8 in the beginning). I can record at 16 samples if I want to and if it crashes (which it only did once due to a faulty vibe coded vst) or I accendentally stumbe and unplug it (only happened twice), it boot up again and recalls what I did last (no lot session).

Also having not to work with ASIO is a blessing on MacOS.

I am just now, with a dev, working through yet another strange behaviour on my win11 machine . If it turns out to be the result of a win11 update I will switch to Mac if not I will stick around unti the next strange whatever happens with it.
But the Mac Mini is where I will go. There might be a new one announced in a few weeks at their WWDC but if not or if it is months and months before delivery then I will get the M4 like you did

[stratology]

Apple Silicon was really a game changer.

On the software side, macOS Tahoe is arguably the worst macOS in the history of the Mac. But - the person responsible for much of the decline of macOS has recently gone to Meta - causing hope and celebration in the Mac enthusiast community.

That being said - Tahoe is still light years ahead of anything on the Windows side...

[Tiles]

Which operating system is best for music-making in 2026?

https://musictech.com/guides/essential- ... g-in-2026/

Wrong question imo. You do music with DAW's and virtual instruments. And then you have a look at which operating system your setup runs.

[AsPeeXXXVIII]

I'm doing quite fine on my Linux system.