Microsoft says that Visual Studio 2008 can be installed on any version of Vista (excluding started edition).
But I am not sure, if Home Editions cause not problems with debugging, virtual machines, IIS, MS SQL 2008 and all other tools which developers use or with some old tools like Visual Basic 6.0.
Seems that Vista Business would be the best, but Home Editions are much more popular.
Or, the would be stay with Windows XP Pro?
I would recommend you to stay with Windows XP Pro. I worked for a short while with Windows Vista (not sure of the edition) with Visual Studio 2005 and it took about 2 days to get back to my XP Pro. I could really not put a finger on it but I just didn't like it. Although, I would prefer linux (specifically Ubuntu) over windows any day.
Well, i've got a partition with vista ultimate 64 and another with windows xp prof. i think its not bad to have both =)
If you are deciding for a business you will want Vista Business at least for remote desktop. Vista Enterprise or Ultimate if you are doing mass deployments.
Vista Ultimate if it is your own work station. I say Ultimate because in 3 to 4 years when you buy a new development box, your now 3 year old machine will make a good media center, but you need the features in the business skus as a developer.
Whatever you do, make sure it's x64. Unless you have some random device a manufacturer has abandoned and the only drivers for it are from 2004 and you absolutely need it.
XP is a dog for multi tasking performance in my experience. (the new driver model making vista slow for games... that is something else)
I don't recommend using Server 2008, you will need to add all the client OS features, and not all of them can be added. I also do not recommend using HyperVisor if you like usb devices.
The only comment I'll make about Vista vs. XP, is that I've been running Vista on all of my machines for over a year, and I've been very happy with it.
Vista Home Premium has a stripped down version of IIS, and Home Basic has no IIS, so Business is probably a better choice. If you also need the home-only apps(Movie maker, DVD maker, ect) or BitLocker, then you'll need to get Ultimate.
EDIT: Just read Brian's post.
ultimate 64 bit with loads of mem 8g +
your problems will be with drivers and odd software but VS will fly
paul
I guess it depends on what kind of development you're doing - and on your tool set.
If you develop primarily on the MS stack and have access to a MSDN or similar subscription, I'd recommend that should you have a decently specified machine, install Ultimate x64 as the primary OS and then use Virtual PC to host other versions of Vista for testing etc.
This, of course, assumes that you're doing development of a kind that requires testing on the desktop. I do primarily web development but still find it useful to have a couple of Vista Business x86 virtual machines for testing different browsers and configurations.
The differences between Ultimate, Enterprise and Business seem negligible in my experience, but from what I've found there's nothing missing from Ultimate. Again, if you're using MSDN or Technet media, you'll find you can install Ultimate from the same ISO as the other 'consumer' editions - business and enterprise generally have different images. As other posters have mentioned, the more basic consumer offerings should be avoided because of the lack of Remote Desktop Support, IIS and a whole bunch of other bits.
I see no reason to stay with XP - I've used Vista in various flavours for development work since it went RTM. I've not had problems with drivers, or anything else for that matter, apart from some stuff very early on with NVidia cards on x64 - those problems were sorted very quickly though. Installing XP on a VPC in Vista is an absolute doddle if you need it.
You'll also find other advantages in Vista over a plain install of XP - the most significant being the behaviour of the Start key to launch applications. As any regular user (particularly one who like keyboard shortcuts) will tell you, it can be really difficult starting applications on XP when the need arises.
If you have access to an MSDN subscription then I would seriously recomment Windows Server 2008. Remove all the server stuff you don't need (there are automated tools to assist with this) and you will end up with a rock solid, reliable and fast OS with the Vista Kernal.
It sounds radical but there is a growing trend amongst developers adopting this approach.
I've been using Vista Home Premium as a development machine and I haven't had any problems with it + Visual Studio 2008 Standard Edition, although I haven't had the chance to try using IIS debugging (I just stuck with the ASP.NET debugger).
I'm also thinking of installing Vista (64 version), need to verify the drivers support. Been running Vista Ultimate 32 bits without problems for more than a year in 3 machines.
@Vagmi
I just don't like tomatoes but I cannot put my finger on it. That said, I don't recommend you to eat bananas.
You should be able to pinpoint your problems in a specific question like this.
See a related question that I asked on Vista vs. XP for a Dev machine.
If you are (like us) migrating your current software from VB6 to C# I would use Vista 32bit (at least Home Premium Edition) or continue with XP Pro I think it is Aero that makes creating and moving objects in a form in VB6 painfully slow. I recently developed for two days in XP Pro and VB6 ran amazingly fast (1GB memory in the XP machine compare to 2GB in Vista32) The reason for not liking Vista 64 (that I uninstalled) is because when you write to the registry it writes in different place than you expect it and it was causing lot of trouble. Also, when you have programmed for many years you accumulate lots of little tools (some of them 16bits) that won't work in 64bit, and you can get attached to these little tools! I don't mind about registry entries, but when I saw that my little Spanish dictionary didn't work in 64 bit I uninstalled Vista straight away...
If you need Windows Authentication you need Vista Professional or above.
I've been using Vista Business 64 for the last couple of months, fully Windows Updated.
Every hour or two it freezes on me completely and I have to reset the whole machine. It's been years since XP did anything like that. I'm starting to hate Vista with a real passion.
I have used VS 2005 and 2008 on Vista 64 Business.
No Problems, runs like a scalded ape on my modest hardware. AMD dual core, 2 gigs of RAM.
I think a lot of the anecdotal evidence is going to be pretty badly skewed towards "I'm afraid of change." Not trying to be offensive, but I think people's expectations cause them to throw their hands up in the air and give up at the first hiccup.
Not that I am an MS fanboy. I'm actually more of a Linux fanboy. I just don't see Vista being any more of a PITA than XP. It's actually noticeably faster on my machine and several others I have converted.
If you do have an MSDN account just go out and try it. Dual Booting is easy, my main machine is set to triple boot.
If you want a quick dirty comparison of the differences in price brackets, you can look here.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-vista/compare-editions/default.aspx