Windows is a family of operating systems from Microsoft, Linux is a publicly developed operating system kernel (not a complete OS), and Macintosh is a line of PC hardware from Apple - so they aren't semantically equivalent things.If you are asking about purchasing a new computer, then there are considerations ofprice, hardware, and operating system. There are many vendors of commodity computers that typically ship with one or another version of Microsoft Windows. They cover a huge gamut of price-points, feature options, and quality of build. Typically, they concentrate on the low-end with various engineering compromises to keep price-points low. These are your typical multipurpose computer, best for office productivity work (the very low-end perhaps more geared to communication). Windows is designed primarily around two use-cases: gaming, and office applications. If interested in gaming, you really want to select something from the higher end and be particularly picky about the included graphics hardware, bus speed, and the cooling mechanisms in the computer. These commodity computers permit you to install Linux-based OSes on them in place of Windows, in a dual-boot configuration, or in a virtual machine in Windows.Macintosh computers compete only at thehigh-end and the use-cases they are designed for tend to be more creative or science related -- particularly audio and video production and computational sciences (esp. computational biology). Macs have stellar technical support and are easy to get serviced. Macs ship with the OS X operating system, which is basedoff of BSD UNIX. Most Linux software can be compiled to run on it as Mac-native software. Macs also ship with software that permits you to boot Windows on them, and you can run Windows and Linux-based OSes on OS X via a virtual machine.Chrome-books are inexpensive Linux-based computers running a Linux operating system called ChromeOS. They are simple and cheap, but are designed around using the built in software or web-apps. They are typically very limited hardware, and intentionally configured not to permit the user to access the computer at a low level (eg, write programs on it, install software). If you are looking to run aUNIX-like Linux-based OS on a commodity computer,vendors tend only to ship it on server and workstation class hardware. You would need to download A Linux-based OS and install it yourself on anything else (relatively easy to do if you have a fast Internet connection).Which should you buy? Buy the one that best satisfies your needs (which you don't state).
