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.
EOL is April 14, 2014
Despite this lots of people still use XP =(
There is nothing wrong with XP. Yes no more updates after April of 2014 but it is a solid OS.
XP's network stack could be easily manipulated to do sniffing functions, you didn't have to worry about UAC. Besides 98, Microsoft got it right with XP.
7 is nice, but compatibility for older programs is problematic, 64 bit support is great for newer systems with more than 3 gig of ram, and the fact you can run 32bit programs is nice on the 64bit version.