Mac/Linux/Windows are all OS's capable of hosting a music workstation application. Bigger issues, I believe, is the hardware used to drive the app, configuration of individual apps and the connectivity between applications. Look at some of the sizes of samples now available or the combinations of different plug-ins that people want to use for sounds, groves, processing etc all in real time. Is a system with 2 dual-core CPUs with 64GB of RAM an unrealistic requirement. Financially, for most, yes. But technically it may not be so far of the mark. Another related issue is how "clean" do you keep the system. Do you use it to experiment with every piece of software and utility that comes along? Hardware Specs and Software configuration are bigger issues than what OS. When you look at devices such as Liontracks or Open Labs you are looking at devices that are optimized for the task at hand. The expectation would be better performance than similarly configured PCs. However, if they are true open systems, you can probably mess them up too as much as a PC if you are not disciplined in your approach to software configuration.

All that being said, my personal preference for a laptop of Windows vs Linux would without question be Windows because music software offerings are scant on Linux as compared to Windows. As example, what are the notation software options for Linux? Pick up the current magazine of your choice and see how many software vendors list Linux as a compatible option.

In the professional music production world, most work is done on Macs. However, when needing raw horse power for things like large sound libraries I have seen several setups where banks of PC's are employed as a cheaper option to be used as slaves for computing power of instruments.

[This message has been edited by RobertG (edited 08-29-2006).]