I've only looked at CI and CakePHP (as I work on a non-framework proprietary system full time) and I've found the learning curve and general ease of use on CI to be much better than CakePHP.
I have quite a large project I want to do in my spare time, but which one that is going to be built in will depend on which one I need to know more of when I change jobs soon. I'm hoping they use CI, but whatever they use will be whatever my new project is built in, so I can learn in my spare time.
Regardless of outcome, I'll still be using CI for my personal website, which I am working on now.
Developing mostly on Ubuntu 14.04 in a VM. Probably insane, but it works.
