Its interesting, I heard from a dealer that cubase was developed on linux for its stability, and then put on mac and windows, but i can't substantiate this. i also find it hard to believe, since cross platform development for gui is a bit difficult. then again, a well structured code base could do it... so who knows. not me.
I'm only 27, but I do recall a number of the machines you've mentioned on these forums. I can recall wanting an Atari ST when I was a kid... finally getting a color computer 2&3 from radio shack... playing on the Amiga in the store.... being amazed that my new 486 pc didn't have 4 part harmony built into it when i got it. Unlike a lot of my generation, I've used most of those alternative OS', and find them better than windows in a lot of ways. Unfortunately... applications and market share go hand in hand. In fact, I've already been laid off from one OS that went defunct, Tru64. The good news is.... windows is getting there. They've come a long ways, and new competition from mac and linux will only make them stronger. Now, if only manufacturers would let us choose which OS we wanted to run, and not give us to run this hardware, we only give you drivers on this platform.....
I personally can't wait for a dual-core AMD 64 solutionwith 8 GB ram. Windows won't be able to touch that, at least till longhorn comes out. Its use of SMP resources is horrendous, and its memory management mediocre at best. (Can you tell i like shinies?)