Windows XP.
- It is sufficient to run almost all altcoin clients if you are not mining (they are nearly built for Win32 by default.)
- You can assign a separate VM to each client (no real opportunity for malware.) The overhead of a WinXP VM is not too large. Just don't give it write access to the host HDD!
- Fast User Switching is harder to exploit than sudo or UAC because sessions/processes are isolated
- There is no other OS so well-debugged for so long that is still having new software developed for it. Comparable Linux/BSD/OSX versions (i.e. those with no new features for a decade) are long abandoned.
Aren't windows xp obsolete and abandoned from microsoft already? I mean no updates not anything. I remember reading a roadmap about future support of os by microsoft but i can't seem to find it now.