There has been predictions for some time now, that the browser will become the OS meaning that importance, and even existence of, an OS will be less important.
E.g. here is a blog that discusses the issue.
I haven't come that far yet, as a developer I still need applications installed locally that depends on having a OS like Windows or Linux. But there has been some real changes in which applications I use, and how I access them.
First of all, blogging, social networking and getting informed is new activities that I now do regularly in the browser. My social networking activities has become quite varied and wide, so a lot of time is spent using the browser for these activities. All mail accounts is GMail, even for job purposes. My employer, Webstep is using Google Sites for exchanging all types of information, and it is accomplished completely using a browser. All this, and most of the time I do not even have to push the save-button. I wonder how many work hours has been lost because Microsoft products does not have auto save...
Firefox also has a lot of useful addons available. Ubiquity is definitely one of them, as I can do a lot of things with the content on the web pages I visit. I also use TwitterFox a lot, and GMail Notifier. The delicious plugin is used heavily and has solved my bookmark synchronization need once and for all!
Most of my tools I use at work is OS independent (Java), so it does not really matter if I use Windows, Linux or OSX. It's just a matter of personal- and project related preferences. The application that most often forcing me to use Windows nowadays is iTunes (no I will not provide a link!), and that is not freely. For my N95 I by music from 7Digital and Telenor Music Store which both works excellently in the browser across OSes. We have an iPod and to sync it, I find it easiest to just do what Mr Jobs tell me to do.
As a contradiction, I am now starting to use Maven more seriously on my daily work. Earlier the projects I have been working could not use Maven because of several reasons. With the m2Eclipse+Nexus plugin installed there will be less need to use the browser to find OSS components. Probably the largest step forward in improvement of my development tools in a long time. It really makes handling dependencies between components easier and a whole precise.
