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The AtheOS web server runs Apache on Athena OS, an operating system written from scratch by one guy. He did place it under the GPL, however. It looks useful from the screenshots and the ported applications list, that is, if you have hardware that is compatible with it. I'd have more incentive to try it if I still had a hardwire. The extremely centralized development model of AtheOS makes it an operating system to watch in the future.
BeOS, I think, is the OS that never was. Yes, there is a BeOS community out there, but, if I really want to run an unsupported operating system, then I'll run Windows. There's no source, so the only way to solve problems is through 'hacks,' not entirely unlike problem solving under Windows, a method of problem solving I loathe. Besides, the last time I checked, they didn't have a 'stable' port of Mozilla. And there's no Opera neither. Sure, there's XFree86, bash, vi, gcc, etc... but the Opera thing is where I draw the line.
Running Windowmaker on Darwin is probably the closest thing a person can come to a ????step experience without paying big bucks. But other than that, what's the point, on the x86 anyway? FreeBSD has more stuff, and, Darwin is not MacOS X, which costs mucho dinero to run. Besides, Apple is evil.
An XFree86 port and ports system make this a potentially useful operating system. But, unless one has a specific reason to use Darwin, one has other, better, alternatives.
This is my favorite operating system. As I took a UNIX/Linux course, I remarked to a classmate that my most enjoyable experience with a computer involved FreeBSD 2.2.8. And my computer at the time was an obsolete 486/80 with a 350MB hard drive. Later on, I thought more about my remark and installed FreeBSD on TAZ, a PII/400 with 384MB's of RAM. Interestingly enough, I am using it as a non-networked desktop OS. Blasphemy? Perhaps. But my custom kernel is small and fast. I basically use FreeBSD to play music, read technical documents, and write web pages.
Thought: I wonder if I would have fallen in love with FreeBSD if it wasn't for not having an alternative on my 486? That is, if I wanted contemporary functionality on the 486, I absolutely had to use FreeBSD. Forcing yourself to use a UN*X operating system may be the best thing you'll ever do computing-wise.
The FreeBSD ports tree at the time of this writing consists of 7,000 ports and climbing. In comparison, Debian only has a couple of thousand more, though I suspect that as the number of ports increases, the proportion of useful ports stays constant or decreases. In other words, OS' with only 2-3,000 ports are probably as functional as an OS with 7,000 plus ports 95% of the time.
RMS is the Marx of the Information Age. He's good for some things, but not so good for other things. But, when it comes down to it, the Open Source community needs him, for better or for worse. I hope that the only people alive today who are read, say, two hundred years from now, are people like Stallman or Nader. But it's likely that our artifacts will consist almost entirely of pornography and episodes of Jerry Springer. But, back to the subject, Hurd in itself is hilarious. Maybe it will make for good literature some day. The UN*X community is thankful that Linus is a pragmatic. Is RMS and Linus the Emerson and Thoreau of our day? I don't think so. I would rather read one of Linus' kernel announcements than any essays of Stallman's, well, because for one, they're funnier.
It's not. And, even with Debian GNU/Hurd, it may never be. But who cares? We have the BSD's and Linux.
This is the operating system with a cool name. This is bleeding-edge UN*X. And there are so many distributions that that's the only thing that can be almost definitively said about it, or rather, the general Linux community. There are distributions that cater to Windows users to the point it's offensive to traditional UN*X users, or to the point that the respective distributions exhibit the weaknesses of Windows. And there's Red Hat and Mandrake, the most popular ones. I like and recommend these for the novice, but they practically can't be configured through text files, where the real power of a UN*X system can be harnessed. And there's distributions like Debian, a distribution so good that people thought it was a good idea to come up with derivatives. And there's obsolete distributions like Slackware that some people insist on using when they should just be using *BSD. And then, saving the best for last, there are Linux distros that are more BSD-like. I think these were created by BSD users who wanted both the compatibility of Linux and the sanity of a BSD system. I may try one of these BSD-like Linux distros one of these days.
UNIX is not an operating system. It's a higher plane of existence.
OpenBSD is rumored to be so secure that it prevents the person who installed it from actually using it. This is among the least user-friendly modern operating systems. I can't wait until I have the know-how to use it as a desktop OS. For a classic UN*X experience, choose OpenBSD or NetBSD. TDR, OpenBSD's high priest, oh I mean 'leader,' is a good example of a classical UN*X user. UN*X people are arrogant, PPC UN*X users doubly so. Is TDR a PPC UN*X user?
OpenBSD, like FreeBSD and NetBSD, has a ports system. But OpenBSD has fewer ports than the other BSD's. FYI, NetBSD has 3,000 ports.
Is this the fastest operating system on the x86? Very possibly. Is it the most useful? Probably not. But there are AbiWord, Mozilla, and Opera ports. Is there an OpenOffice port? It's possible. It's almost moot point what platform one runs on these days due to the availability of high quality functional Open Source software. But QNX is commercial, designed for real-time applications, and the availability of QNX on the x86 is for all practical purposes, a coincidence. It's nice that they offer it for download, though.
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