Best Unix OS / BSD / Linux distro

Sun - Solaris / OpenSolaris

1 (2.9%)

BSD - FreeBSD

2 (5.7%)

BSD - OpenBSD

2 (5.7%)

BSD - NetBSD

0 (0%)

BSD - Other

0 (0%)

Linux - RedHat-based (ex Fedora, CentOS)

1 (2.9%)

Linux - SUSE / openSUSE

3 (8.6%)

Linux - Ubuntu-based (ex Mint, gOS)

13 (37.1%)

Linux - Debian-based (ex MEPIS, Knoppix)

4 (11.4%)

Linux - Mandriva-based (ex PCLinuxOS)

0 (0%)

Linux - Slackware-based (ex Vector, Zenwalk)

0 (0%)

Linux - Arch-based

0 (0%)

Linux - Gentoo-based (ex Sabayon)

4 (11.4%)

Linux - minimalist (Puppy, DSL, etc)

0 (0%)

Linux - roll your own

0 (0%)

Linux - Other

0 (0%)

Mac OS X

3 (8.6%)

HP-UX

0 (0%)

AIX

0 (0%)

OpenServer

0 (0%)

Minux

0 (0%)

Other

2 (5.7%)

What's a UNIX?

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 25

[Harry Tuttle]

It's of course a stretch for now, but it's fully conceivable that future bodily implants will roughly resemble modern-day computers, which can be hacked or DoS'ed in a number of ways...

Shit! That means one day I may have a pacemaker and some jerkwad company will be phishing to tell me that my battery could be ready to give out, and I should call them immediately for a replacement. 

[AL the Inconspicuous]

So I've spent the past couple of days reviewing the state of various BSD-licensed OS'es in an attempt to dump the communist virus [2] [3] that calls itself GNU/Linux.  I've been particularly happy with DragonFly BSD for a whole list of philosophical and technical reasons, thinking I've finally found a base for my AnCap OS, but then the brains behind this fork has to screw this up by posting this socialist drivel on Slashdot...  What a letdown... 

If I can't agree with any OS philosophically, I might as well continue pirating Windows... 

[BobRobertson]

If I can't agree with any OS philosophically, I might as well continue pirating Windows... 

Don't you mean the philosophies and politics of the authors, rather than the OS?

Far as I can tell, an OS is just software.

There there, AL, it's ok. By using GPL or BSD code there's no "statement" being made. At least by using unlicensed Microsoft code you're overtly violating their corpratist soul-crushing strangehold. Maybe even depriving Bill Gates of a few fractions of a cent.

...while maintaining demand for their products and their market share.

[AL the Inconspicuous]

I'm not giving up on all BSD's just because of one Slashdot post by one programmer, but I was very disappointed because Matthew Dillon is essentially the brains behind DragonFly BSD, and its innovative distributed FS and other innovations that could have helped BSD catch up to and even exceed Linux.  I am now more likely to use FreeBSD instead of DragonFly though...  But I have to be honest - it's much worse than Linux. 

[AL the Inconspicuous]

This non-technical video on FreeBSD clustering mentions some cool facts: The Matrix movie was rendered on FreeBSD!

[youtube=425,350]<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/bAsYz5pVwyc&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/bAsYz5pVwyc&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/youtube]


Unfortunately it also confirms my observation that government loves BSD... 

[AL the Inconspicuous]

I'm in trouble on UbunuForums.org again, this time on a "I don't think Linux has 1% market share" thread that alleges all common desktop OS usage statistics are manipulated by a vast Microsoft conspiracy.  My last post:

The moderators of this forum insist on removing this post I've previously made on this thread, most likely due to the small part of it highlighted in red below:

You have to define your market share criteria more specifically - per CPU, per desktop user, etc. Linux definitely has the lion's share of the supercomputing market, the server market, and it's doing well in some embedded / NetBook market segments as well.

The only market segment where the >1% Linux market share is debatable is the most visible one - desktop users. I think that if you do a study that adjusts for people trying Linux very briefly before going back to Windows and socialist government organizations where Microsoft isn't a politically-viable option then Linux desktop still falls short of 1%.

Also, here's a funny story: I was running OpenBSD for a while, and a couple of Web-sites gave me trouble before I changed my Firefox user-agent string to pretend it's Linux, and then I never set it back... A lot of Solaris, *BSD, AIX, etc users run Linux browser binaries, which will fool a lot of casual studies. I think many studies just assume that anything that isn't Microsoft / Mac and smells Unixy is Linux, and that would also include the various bots crawling the Internet, many proxy users, etc.

It is perfectly relevant and essential objection to the Linux usage market share statistics - if the government imposes a certain alternative by force then it isn't a market!  Was Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book" really the best-selling book of the 20th century?  Of course not, the Chinese government just printed it ad nauseum and forced everyone to carry it!  The same would apply to communist countries where Linux's main competitors can't do business, but whose users are nonetheless counted as part of that ~1%.  A discussion that fails to address this issue doesn't even begin to approach the realm of truth!

You can have your political spin, or you can have the credibility that I lend to this forum.  You cannot have both.

Well, at least they're only deleting an offending post and penalizing me gradually, with plenty of warnings, unlike the swift action the FreeBSD Forum idiots took* when I dared to speak ill of calls for government intervention in the Oracle / Sun deal - deleting every post I've ever made and banning me for life! 

[Alex Libman]

OpenBSD 4.7 release day, woo hoo!

Remember when I called Theo de Raadt a "Randian hero"?  Went straight to his head:

[Alex Libman]

Seriously, does anyone else find this coincidence (my e-mails and the OpenBSD 4.7 artwork / song) in any way peculiar, or is it just me?  

Of course there's nothing "heroic" about failing to run Chromium (the one thing that brings the permissive FLOSS stack into the 21st century) in a decent manner - slowdowns and crashes galore!  I've briefly returned to my biggest love in the UNIX world, Gentoo Linux, which is also the fastest and awesomest thing under the sun, perhaps just to remind myself how well this computer could run, but, alas - licensing issues must keep us apart...  I've also tried Haiku OS Alpha 2 - it shows a lot of promise, but I needs a real operating system, not a GUI toy.

So now I'm back running FreeBSD (9-current).  I still don't like its community though - way too many commies...  But if there is to be a "libertarian operating system" fork someday, FreeBSD is the most likely base for it.  (FreeLSD?  )  The anti-copyleft movement is gradually starting to pick up some steam (but more on that on my "Software Freedom Scale" thread).

In the meantime, the above poll results are downright disgusting!  How could so many libertarians be using the favorite OS / distro of socialist dictators and tree-hugging butt-wipes!?  Go try Free/PC-BSD!

[BobRobertson]

or is it just me?

It's just you. Really.

[Alex Libman]

Great - there's nothing I love more than avoiding the company of idiots. 

[Stoker]

What is wrong with Windows? I mean, it's not like Bill's dad was a CIA operative who arranged to have Windows be adopted by Government agencies, thereby making it the standard for worldwide use, or that it has intentional "backdoors" built into it to ensure that everything you do can be secretly monitored or that Black Ops can be funded by stealing from thousands of different accounts because they have all online bank passwords. Maybe Bill gets a bad Rap- it's not like he attends Satanic Rituals at Bohemian Grove or discusses the destruction of America at Bilderberg Conferences, or uses his ill gotten wealth to institute Eugenics programs in Africa, which are experiments for use on us or anything....

[Alex Libman]

Moved - I have a separate thread for debunking Microsoft hatred here. 

[Texas Maverick]

I use a Gentoo based meta-distro that does not have an official name.   I decided that there were some packages that I wanted marked stable that have not been stabled in the official portage tree. So, I created my own portage tree on github forming two branches, one for the official Gentoo portage and the other for my updates to the tree.  I use a bash script to update both branches once a day.

[Alex Libman]

Awesome!  Are you going to use any (other) Funtoo components like Metro?