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[njaddison]

I'll always love FT2 and MilkyTracker. Anvil and Elwood used FT2, and they inspired me to begin tracking.  And MilkyTracker was the first tracker I learned to use. But, if you want an unbiased opinion, look at how long took me to figure out how to use the trackers that I use now.
MilkyTracker - 1 Week
FastTracker II - 2 Months
Impulse Tracker & Schism Tracker - 3 Days
OpenMPT - Still clueless...
Scream Tracker 3 - Don't have any .s3i instruments. It screws up my .wav files.
SkaleTracker - 3 Weeks
SunVox - About a day, but the interface is awkward, so I don't really use it.

I use .xm format, but today, I learned how to use Impulse Tracker and Schism Tracker, so I'm making my first .it module. It's just as easy, if not easier than, using FT2 and MilkyTracker.

[BlueSkies]

It's hard to find the perfect tracker. They all have some kind of niggle:

Milkytracker - no effects, no VSTis
MadTracker - no undo
openMPT - uninspiring GUI
SunVox - no pattern follow mode for a whole song
Renoise - much more complex: steeper learning curve

My favourite is MilkyTracker, despite its limitations. Small, clean interface, everything right in front of you. Pretty colours.

For effects and VSTis I recently downloaded Psycle and I've been reading the tutorial on that. Very similar to Buzz but with the added bonus that it works on my computer. No niggles found so far...

[null1024]

MilkyTracker is my preferred one nowadays.
I've memorized nearly all the keybindings so I can do things pretty much reflexively in it now -- it no longer gets in the way of me making a song.

Ideally, it'd have more sample processing effects in the sample editor [like a resofilter, distortion, and reverb] so I don't have to drag things into Audacity/bake a DSP chain into a sample in Renoise, but that's just wishful thinking. Actually, ideally Milky would support all the extra features in IT, haha. That's not happening ever, but a man can dream.

I used to use Renoise as my tracker of choice, but I would spend hours fiddling with DSPs and mixing. And I'd often only have one pattern. So, it got in the way of tracking.

Schism and OpenMPT don't really feel right, and either way I can't be bothered to learn a new set of keybindings now, haha. Even if using a tracker that supports the IT format brings separation of instruments and samples [super-useful], more channels, NNAs [super-duper-useful], and a built-in resofilter effect [infinitely useful].
I'm too lazy to make the effort to switch now. 

[Saga Musix]

and either way I can't be bothered to learn a new set of keybindings now, haha

You know, OpenMPT has fully configurable key bindings... You can always make a Milky keybinding for it and then send it so me that other people don't have to make their own in the future (yes, I've said this to several people countless times, and I never got a keybinding from them).

[freakshaw_dr]

*Modplug Tracker*. Because it's the *easiest* tracker to perform better *overview* and *arrangement* of a module.
I prefer *IT* format because it's easy to make good sounding of *chord* atmospheres (specially, dominant-minor-major 7ths).
That's all.. ^_^ Cheers to Modplug staff!

[zzo38]

I don't really like the tracker file and prefer MML. I also hate VST; if I want to generate these sound effects, I will use Csound.

I did make a MML compiler into .MOD and .XM format so that it can be use MML with such format, though.

I think .IT format has too many features; many things aren't needed and don't help at all.

However, nearly all of these tracker format have problem; you cannot arbitrarily stack effects together, and global effects still have to go in a local column, and so on. But, they are common format so, we can use them nevertheless.

[Jay]

I migrated from Composer 669 & ST3 to IT to Buzz to Renoise to SunVox to Schism and finally back to IT. WTF? Story time:

I started in the early '90s with Adlib Visual Composer and KingMod, but never made anything noteworthy (heh) with them. The piano roll & musical staff interfaces didn't stick and I soon migrated to Composer 669 and ST3 in one or the other order. Eventually Impulse Tracker came along and I used that alongside ST3 for a while. (I only have one of my 669 modules anymore! It ... isn't brilliant. Or even finished. But I probably made about 5-6 in that program!)

Then there was a hiatus of ten years (to the day!) from 2001 to 2011 during which I didn't *finish* any tracks, but started quite a few in IT, Buzz, and Psycle. By 2011~2012 I was writing on Buzz almost exclusively (its IT-like controls helped), especially after the New Buzz versions came along. Everything from my "hiatus over!" debut of Proterozoic to Eddie at the Mental Institution was done in Buzz, controlling external synths via Polac's MIDI out.

I *love* Buzz and would still be using it to this day if it were multi-platform. But I became increasingly annoyed with having to keep a windows install around and went Linux-only on all my PCs by mid 2012. Wine can't run Buzz, but I'd started using Renoise and Schism by then. Renoise I got fairly good with but for some reason never completed a track. Schism was just like old times except for one fatal flaw: its MIDI *suuuuucks*. If it works at all it's so full of timing errors it's unusable. I've even tried it on a MacBook Pro with a USB-MIDI interface, aka *the* reference setup for amateur musicians these days, and it was still totally off.

(On that note, Linux's audio system also *suuuuucks* just as hard, at least on most mainstream distros. If you've ever tried to get the three-headed demon that is ALSA/JACK/PulseAudio to cooperate you know what I'm talking about.)

I discovered via DosBox that Impulse Tracker's MIDI is rock solid and amazing, but running it that way isn't satisfactory because DosBox doesn't emulate the AWE64/Interwave or MMX (needed for simultaneous samples+MIDI out and filters respectively) so you're stuck using it as a MIDI only tracker with the MPU-401 driver.

So... in 2013 I built a complete custom ISA rig just to run DOS & IT again. I tracked down an exceedingly rare (in New Zealand where I am now) GUS PnP Pro & AWE64 for it, ordered a SIMM adapter for the AWE off this Tripod website that hasn't been updated since before the Y2K bug was a thing, and put it all together. I'm happy to say it works *amazingly* well. I've got the tight, focused interface of IT in a single-tasking environment, with no creativity-sapping driver issues, and direct control over all my MIDI synths - it feels like I'm *playing* them instead of only willing them to do what I want! Finally!

So that's where I'm at now. I've also played with SunVox a bit (most notably making Sines of Madness for a compo early this year), which is a really great prog but just not my go-to for creating things.

BTW I still have "my" copy of Adlib Composer from all those years ago; it seems to have worked its way through decades of various archives and backups intact (unlike my 669 files.) It's on my DOS rig now and works just fine. I keep toying with the idea of finally learning it properly and doing something... Or I'll make a tune or two in something even more obscure (AllSound Tracker, DigiTracker, Imago Orpheus??) But IT is just so comfortable and flows so well with my creative process it's hard to step away!

[Jay]

...and after that wall of text, my biggest gripe about just about every tracker that isn't IT/Schism (or ST3) - (this applies to Buzz too although it's certainly not the worst offender) - the SAMPLE BROWSER.

IT lets you look through an entire sample library by moving around a full screen interface with the keyboard and *jamming notes with the 'piano' (Q2W3ER5) keys as you go along* as if they were already loaded into the module! This is the single most important tool I have in the early stages of module construction: being able to effortlessly try any sound I want and see how it might fit into the song. You can even jam while a pattern is playing!

I don't know why other trackers can't get this right... Either they make you click to play the note (at one pitch only), use the mouse to move around the sample library, cram the entire navigation process into a tiny window (FT2) or make you load every sample through a freaking *dialog box*... It's such a fundamental concept to tracking but nobody gets it right!

[Saga Musix]

On the note of MMX, I think there is an unofficial DOSBox build (maybe the daum stuff?) with an MMX implementation, so you could give that a go.

[ncovert]

I prefer XM and IT format. I use OpenMPT as my tracker. I like XM because it's effects are nicely balanced, and I don't have to worry about having both sample and channel panning, only sample panning. I like IT because it has channel panning, and instruments are optional, you only need samples. Most of the time, I use IT format.
OpenMPT is my tracker of choice because it runs on Windows, doesn't have a garish high-contrast DOS like interface, and everything is easy to use.