Operating Systems
Once upon a time, there was DOS, and I used it. From the age of 2, apparently, and possibly even younger. Nowadays I'm usually using Ubuntu at home, or Windows XP at work. Of course, I'm usually using other things on top of Ubuntu or XP or whatever, and the choice of OS doesn't usually play that big of a part of the experience, but I decided to write about Operating Systems here so that's what I'll do.
DOS
What's to say? It existed, it ran stuff, and it's rightly gone from normal use now. FreeDOS is useful to run old DOS games. Anyone that thinks that's a waste of time hasn't played X-COM.
Windows 3.1(|1)
I actually don't remember this all that much. It's not really a normal operating system anyway. Like DOS, it runs games.
Windows 9x
The first thing I remember doing with Windows 95 was ... playing games. The Journeyman Project II: Buried in Time, I believe. Later on, though, I became a little bit of a power user. I didn't do all kinds of crazy modifications, just ran regedit a few times, changed the boot image at least once, and could describe each step of network configuration from clicking the start menu to restarting the computer without having done it for months.
Windows XP
Shortly before going to college, I upgraded from Windows 98 SE to Windows XP. There was basically no change. Later on, SP2 came out. That was big. I liked the improved wireless stuff, I didn't like the firewall, but since this is Windows I enabled it before too much time had passed.
Debian
In my first year at college I started playing around a bit with Linux—specifically Debian. Oh, I think I tried Red Hat and maybe Suse or something else like that first, but I had the best experience with Debian. Right from the start, there, I was compiling the kernel to better support my hardware. I didn't really get Debian working as my primary desktop until after the school year had ended, but I then stuck with it for two more years before going on to the next one.
FreeBSD
Yep, FreeBSD. A friend switched and used it as the main OS on a few of his computers (all but his Macs) and raved and so I eventually tried it on my server. Nice! It's still there, but I think I've decided that I slightly (but so very slightly) prefer Debian still. Well, Debian or Ubuntu.
Ubuntu
Ubuntu for the Server is, as far as I know, Debian. Different repository, sure, but is there *that* much of a difference, really? Ubuntu for the desktop, though, is awesome. Once I get a graphics card that supports Compiz Fusion, it should be even more awesome. I especially like the integration of the package installer with various preferences and media players, so that if you try to enable, for example ntp, and it's not already installed, it asks if you'd like to install it. If you try to play something that you don't yet have a codec for, it can install that too. All that and (like Debian, FreeBSD, &c) it's free, with excellent software (except, still, for gaming, though wine is getting better, or so I hear) and the security updates won't (by design, at least) disable your computer (think WGA).