programming on different platforms

[Chromium]

When I first started programming, I used a text editor & the command line to compile & run my programs. However, then I switched to the Eclipse IDE, and I've been using that ever since (I also used Visual Studio when I took a C++ class). As you can see, my exposure to different development environments is pretty limited. I don't really understand why some people prefer to program on Linux than Windows, for example. To me, since Eclipse is what I mainly use, it seems that Eclipse would probably run just as quickly on Linux as it does on Windows. However, I think this may be because I've only written small student programs as opposed to large systems.

Could someone explain to me the pros & cons of developing on different platforms?

[DavidSnider]

Linux has a huge tool set of programming related tools that easily installed with the various package managers. You can get the same tools for windows, but it's kind of awkward to use.

Also, Linux seems to use memory much more efficiently.