At the front with a nearly 10% lead was Windows 7, the newest offering in the Hive, with 36% of the vote. Ubuntu took second place with 27% of the vote, followed by a near tie between OS X and Jolicloud—12% of the vote each, with a 58 vote margin pushing OS X slightly ahead. Pulling up the back of the popular crowd was Linux Mint and its 8% share of the vote.

For a closer look at the winner and runners up, check out the full Hive Five. Have an idea for a future Hive Five? Send  an email at tips at lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line.

Windows 7 has such huge bias among pc users. XP is definitely better for systems that have lower specs.

I feel like people saying Windows 7 is so much better are suffering from the placebo effect to cure them of their Vista woes

Important note there is that the actual Windows 7 version that ships with every netbook is NOT the actual Windows 7 version that won.



As a very sad user who has not upgraded from Windows 7 Starter Edition to Windows 7 Home Premium based solely off the moral objection of paying for an OS that is over 20% of the actual cost of the entire system I have to say don't believe the hype.



If you get a "Windows 7" netbook you are getting a severely gimped version of the Windows 7 OS - and I'm sure if the results were voted for Windows 7 Starter vs Ubuntu or even Windows XP the results would have come in much different