Well, we all have used Unix, in one form or another (maybe even through embeded products). But which one is your favorite flavor of Unix-based/Unix-alike OSes? Read more and vote! Update: SHAME on you, who ever you are: Messing/hacking with go2poll’s code and altering the results in favor of FreeBSD. By doing so, you are doing MORE BAD than good to your favorite platform.Note: And before you ask: BeOS and AtheOS/Syllable are not in the following list, because they are not Unix. They just happen to be somewhat POSIX (not fully) and have a bash…
Update: I took down the poll. SHAME on whoever messed with go2poll’s engine. FreeBSD went from 99 votes to 177 in a matter of 1-2 minutes, while this is of course not possible with the kind of rate and growth polls get on OSNews by the hour (let alone having only FreeBSD “growing”). By doing so, you just give FreeBSD’s crowd a bad name. (I am even more unhappy about this, as I voted for FreeBSD and now I see a FreeBSD fanboy act as such)!
Right now, I have deleted the poll, and I include an image of the poll just before it got deleted. KEEP IN MIND, that FreeBSD stole a lot of percentage from the rest, its real percentage was not more than 14% before the manipulation of our “friend” started. Before this manipulation, OSX was at 29% and Linux at around 39%.
For the browsers without js, here are the results:
http://www.go2poll.com/cgi-bin/nph-pwrnet.pl?name=eugenia&id=12 (yes, the errors are to expected, can’t do anything about it, as we outsource our polls)
How about an option that is just “Linux”?
I notice is quite high, but does that mean the voters explicitly use any unix specific capabilities, or is it just a black box to them. Is the poll fair in that regard?
P
GNU/Linux is Linux, LONG LIVE LINUX, LONG LIVE THE KING
>How about an option that is just “Linux”?
Nope. Just vote for it and in your mind think of it as “Linux” or “GNU/Linux”. Take it as you want, same thing for me and the poll. There were a lot of Unices I left out in order to not make the poll too long. I won’t populate it with other Linux entries. Linux/GNU-Linux is the same as far as this poll is concerned.
>Is the poll fair in that regard?
Sure it is. MacOSX _is_ Unix no matter how much make-up it has on it. It doesn’t matter if a user has never ran a “ls -l” in his life. MacOSX, architecturally, is a Unix underneath.
I mean, QNX is something that is not your traditional Unix either (I am not talking about the desktop version, I am talking about its embedded life). But it does deserve to be in this poll.
Somebody voted for SCO? ack. masochist.
you can make a non-GNU system (minus the compiler)
>MacOSX _is_ Unix no matter how much make-up it has on it
ok. Then I would say that OSX is the real winner given it short life in the market place. The poll doesn’t really tell us much about how someone uses their unix system. Do you think it’s possible to do another poll which would measure this somehow? I bet it would come out the clear winner.
P
>I bet it would come out the clear winner.
I meant to say
I bet it would come out the clear winner at hiding the unix details from the user.
P
I think Eugenia properly pointed this out. I voted Mac OS X and I use Apple’s X11 and the Terminal all the time, top is a really useful application as well it’s useful if you want to remove certain files or change permissions on folders, the Get Info dialog is really useful but somethings are better left to the terminal
Linux is looking great as well but I have to say now that I have the ability to run Apps like xchat, OpenOffice, and Gimp, I seem to need Linux less. Oh and Safari really is looking superb, no more Galeon.
>The poll doesn’t really tell us much about how someone uses their unix system
Polls are always about basic and generic answers.
This is why we have our commenting section. What you ask, is what people should discuss in this commenting section, instead of talking useless stuff about “Gnu” and “Linux”.
So, people: HOW do you use your Unix? WHY did you vote for that Unix and not for the other? WHAT qualities do you appreciate in your fav unix that you don’t on other?
FreeBSD beats any distro of Linux.
Linux is a poor clone of UNIX.Linux is a hacked together mess.
I meant to say
I bet it would come out the clear winner at hiding the unix details from the user.
P
It hides it no deeper than some Linux distros do, so should we seperate the Linux’s into distro’s into this new poll as well? You don’t want to bombard your normal ease of use Mac people with Unix information and stuff they’d probably call “garbage” or “useless”. I’m not arguing here I’m just trying to understand what point your trying to make, should Unix-based mean console based, steep learning curve?
I like Unix based OS’s to tell you the truth I was going to switch to the PC platform until OS X was released, OS X through the terminal is a lot different then the Aqua interface, and it’s even more customizeable through the Terminal then through your preference apps, having Apache and other web services available as well as Samba makes OS X more Unix based to your standard then some of the other choices like QNX.
I guess my point is that OS X is just as Unix as any other, there is a terminal available and with a click of a button or a nice preference command I can make Unix text fly down my screen at boot.
I guess you’d have to use OS X to be able to properly gauge your opinion, since OS X does not have a “Program Menu” so to say Apple can’t just list it under Utilities, but most users know how to navigate to their Applications, then to Utilities to launch Terminal with the rest of your common useful utitlities like Disk Utility, Grab, Stuffit Expander.
Where is everybody’s favorite Microsoft-built UNIX-based OS, Xenix? (Just kidding.)
To answer the question above, I want all computers to be a black box for me these days. Though I still mess with internals, I don’t want to HAVE to. So far, the most comfortable Unix I have used is OS X. I don’t need a Unix, but it’s there. This doesn’t mean I think OS X is the cat’s meow or anything that drastic. I think OS X needs different a terminal configuration out of the box, by the way…
I use FreeBSD for the following reasons.
1) I originally used 386BSD when it first came out from which FreeBSD is derived.
2) Linux hardly registered on the radar at the time when I was deploying unix servers.
3) I am used the BSD file system organization (SunOS was close) and I prefer the BSD way of doing things over other unixes (SYS-V?)
4) we have a large installed base of FreeBSD servers.
5) The BSD sources have a much stronger pedigree than Linux does
6) it is free (as in beer)
7) it is not GPL
8) the BSD TCP/IP is IMHO the best in the world and it has taken a long time for Linux to catch up to it (if it has at all)
9) at certain times in its life Linux has been a security risk.
Points 3,5,6,8 and 9 factor highly for our deployment of servers in a commercial environment. we just can’t afford to stuff around with buggy server software.
In practice, I only have room in my brain to learn one unix system. For that reason and because it fulfils my needs handsomely, I’ll stick with FreeBSD. What is annoying is that the Linux hype has sucked away the development resources from what I believe to be the better open source solution to a unix OS. We have FreeBSD boxen that just keep on going. I guess I’d call FreeBSD the quiet achiever.
P
this is stupid neither linux, mac os x, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd, nor darwin are registered unixes. And linux and OS X couldn’t be unix even if they wanted cause of the architectural standards that they don’t meet for them to be called UNIX.
Eugenia, I’ve always wondered: why do you outsource the polls? It seems that a poll is a very easy thing to do, seeing as you’ve made a whole commenting/moderating system with SQL references. It seems that it would make life so much easier if you would just write your own script. Is there a specific reason not other than simply not having the time/will power?
I haven’t voted yet because I’m torn…. couldn’t we have 2 polls, one for clients and one for servers?
Here’s my breakdown:
Server = Solaris
Client = OSX
I hate these decisions 🙂
>this is stupid neither linux, mac os x, freebsd, netbsd, openbsd, nor darwin are registered unixes
It doesn’t matter. Can’t you read? “Unix-based/Unix-alike” I wrote.
>why do you outsource the polls?
Easier for me. Also, I want to run polls as parts of stories, and not on the side of OSNews. And that wouldn’t be doable with the current osnews engine, because if I write PHP code for a poll and then copy/paste that code into the text entry (that goes as the body of the story), it would render as code and it wouldn’t get executed. So, I prefer this javascript solution. Hassle free.
where is HURD :*(?
In the “Other”. Hurd is not even properly released yet.
Please keep the commenting as intelligent discussion and not “my problem with your poll is XXX”. I am not interested and it is not our focus here.
PDev is absolutly right!
BSD has all the pros he mentions plus :
*A dev organisation really structured (no crappy anarchy) with a real coordination of what should be done…
*the libc is a pure beauty compare to the glibc
*The fact that it is only one “distro” of freebsd make developement easier : you don t need to figure out if it will work on Mdk 9.1.265626262 or RH 8.0.41815151 wich has the glibc version 2.03201.01505151151218…FreeBSD is FreeBSD
*The ports system is a gem! No dependencies hell etc…
*It is rocks solid
*It is a real performer
*Its configuration methode is really Unixish, that means you can tweak every bit of it by simply (yes i said simply!) editing little conf files in your /etc/
*…
I was a real linux evangelist before switching but i ll never go back, the (power) user experience is so much better!! But that s just a question of taste.
Furthermore I think that the original linux’s spirit has gone. Now the linux communauty is composed by a lotta WaRlOrds using linux because this is “Cool and Underground”…huhu…
oops by BSD I meant FreeBSD, but the others *BSD are also great but they havent the same focus : OpenBSD and ThrustedBSD are security focused and NetBSD is really portable
I use FreeBSD.
So, people: HOW do you use your Unix?
At the console:
I do C & C++ programming in Pico (sorry, I’m not a big fan of Emacs or vi). I also am currently studying the FreeBSD kernel and user world tools’ source code to see how things are done, and to learn. I usually have a console mp3 player going in the background while I work.
In X-Windows:
I use KDE and Konquerer (currently upgrading to 3.1) to browse OSNews and a few other sites.
WHY did you vote for that Unix and not for the other?
I haven’t used all of the ones on the list, so I can obviously only vote for one I have used. I have tried 5 or 6 distributions and versions of those distrobutions, and was never very satisfied with how everything fit together. There is a not-so-fine line between integration and a “jumbled mess”, and all the distributions I tried were the latter. I’m also not a big fan of the GPL license. I could wax philosphy all day, but I prefer less restrictions in the license rather than more (even if you argue they are beneficial to “remaining free” or whatever). It’s much less of a hassle, in my opinion. Just read over it, and then read over the GPL license. All my opinions of course.
WHAT qualities do you appreciate in your fav unix that you don’t on other?
Hmm. I like that is open source, because I’m a college student studying CS, and trying to soak up as much knowledge as possible. If I ever wonder how something works, its neat to be able to do “locate *toolIamThinkingabout*.c” and print it out and look over it.
I like the organization of FreeBSD as well. You can figure out where most anything is, by looking at the reference in “man hier”.
The ports are very nice. It’s nice not to have to worry about whether something will install properly, or put itself in the standard place, be compatible with xyz libary, etc.
The documentation is excellent! FreeBSD has a central documentation source, that is very well-written and detailed. The handbook in particular is a god-send, and I’m currently reading the developer’s handbook, also very good (300 more pages to go…)
The community is also very intelligent, helpful, and usually polite. Most questions are answered politely on the mailing lists, although some of the folks are rude sometimes, I think they are in the minority.
I don’t like to have all of my eggs in one basket as well. I do in fact like Windows (XP), but who knows? Microsoft is a large company, and large companies tend to act in their own best interests many times.
Hmm. Sorry for rambling, but… you did ask. 😉
(I wish there was a preview)
I nearly voted for OS X, because of it’s ease of use and applications. In the end I went for NeXT, NeXTSTEP may be dead and lacks modern software, but it’s still a fantastic OS IMO.
NeXTSTEP 3.3 is quite fast and responsive on the old 64Mb P233 I use for messing around with old software. It’s certainly much faster than Linux with KDE/GNOME, or Windows 2000 on the same system. To me it feels even more responsive than the latest OS X running on a 500Mhz G3, which seems strange considering how similar OS X and NeXTSTEP are.
Package management is brilliant, installing and removing software is easier than in Windows, so there’s no comparison with Linux. If anything I like the NeXTSTEP GUI a bit more than Mac OS X, I prefer the NeXTSTEP Dock/miniwindows/shelf to the Dock in Mac OS X, it tries to do too much and can get cluttered. Plus NeXTSTEP is more consistent, as there isn’t the mix of cocoa, carbon and classic apps.
Despite being over 10 years old, the only desktop UNIX that comes close is Mac OS X, and that was based on it. If Linux ever becomes half as elegant and easy to use as NeXTSTEP I would switch in a second.
>>> FreeBSD beats any distro of Linux.
Horses for courses, as they say in English (this means different tools for different tasks). FreeBSD was the best option for Yahoo, e.g. For some other, maybe Linux is a match for FreeBSD, who knows?
>> Linux is a poor clone of UNIX.
Linux evolves faster than any other OS (ok, some smaller ones we see here beat Linux at that). If you use the word “is” to describe Linux, you’ll get obsolete in a month.
Linux is unifying several Unix variations. Linux may not be Unix, but Unix is becoming Linux.
>> Linux is a hacked together mess.
More exactly, a dynamically reorganizing hacked together mess. In these times, where everyone confuses terminology and hacker == cracker, people developing Linux are the highest kind of hacker, in the original, productive and good sense.
I’m just a user, but nonetheless very happy with the other guys work — it’s way too cool.
And, unlike *BSD, M$ won’t copy it (notice the $).
Yay!
Sure, it may be coming THIRD, but lets consider that all the different Linux distro people are voting under one bannerm hey, i think BSD is kicking Linux butt here.. w00t
… And besides, having asked around, alot of Linux people havn’t even tried FreeBSD, yet most FreeBSD people have atleast tried Linux, I think FreeBSD is realistically the x86 Unix King as a single distro.
>>> Where is everybody’s favorite Microsoft-built UNIX-based OS, Xenix? (Just kidding.)
If I’m not wrong, SCO Unix started from Xenix, a long, long time ago, in a far away galaxy…
Please correct me otherwise.
Numbers at the time of this writing:
*BSD = OS X + FreeBSD + OpenBSD + NetBSD + Darwin + NeXT
*BSD = 317 (197 + 96 + 5 + 6 + 3 + 10)
GNU/Linux = 262
*BSD > Linux
So much for the slashdot “bsd is dying crowd”
That sum shows nothing really. They are all very different projects and the “BSD is dying” trolling is targeting mostly freebsd.
Well, if you added Darwin as a BSD, then you SHOULD be adding MacOSX. Because OSX is based on Darwin.
Read the Unix timeline:
http://www.levenez.com/unix/
Ummm, I did add OS X?
I know the sum means nothing. But it was fun to play with the math. And GNU/Linux wouldn’t look so daunting if it was broken down into it’s distros. I was just trying to point out that there are a lot of OS’s listed there which are pretty much BSD.
Took the poll off. Well damn. I was trying to monitor the results. (I have no life whatsoever)
Someone trying to manipulate the results? hmmm. Yeah I thought the FreeBSD bar was going up faster than it should be.
2 years ago, I was completely Windows dependant. I hated it, but I was to scared to try anything else. But I ‘took the plunge’ at the start of 2002, by starting out with Slackware. Sure, its ‘different’, but as long as you have patience, and rtfm, you’ll be fine. Right now, I’m completely windows free. I don’t use it anymore. period. All my hardware works with linux, and they work well.
I installed gentoo at the start of the month, just to try something new. And wow, I love it! The portage system is really cool. I’ve only had 1 or 2 apps that refuse to install, but after asking around I got them working.
I’m from a minimalist desktop background, and I’ve always despised GNOME and KDE. But I decided to give both a spin, Gnome 2 is really nice, and I’ve used it for 2 months. But it lacks that ‘complete’ feeling. I hope it will feel more polished by 2.2. KDE 3.1 otoh is amazing. I love it. It just ‘feels’ nice. Unfortunately it uses up a lot of ram, but thats to be expected I guess
Sorry for the long post.
It is an oft forgotten fact that if it weren’t for the BSD network distribution, the internet would not be here. If that had been GPL, then commercial companies would not have touched it and there would never have been critical mass for the internet to take hold, and Linux (and GPL) would still be a curiosity. Also, we’d all be struggling with DecNET, Appletalk, Netware and LanMan (add your proprietary network protocol here) protocols. I’d rather not return to the bad old days thanks. Don’t also forget that alternative forms of open source predated the GPL for decades.
It’s all very well to be holier than thou about licensing but some sometimes cooperation is better than standoff. My guess is that most companies that find the BSD licensing great give back to the open source movement in one form or another – if not in source, then in kind (e.g. donating server/internet/marketing resources). I sometimes find the GPL more divisive that cooperative because it it too fundamentalist/isolationist in a religious sense.
The GPL people need to learn not to bite the hand that feeds them.
P
How I use Mac OSX
C/C++ development and writing on the commandline, Java development with Project Builder, the usual communications stuff, games.
But honestly: does it really matter how a Unix is used?
Why did you vote for OSX and not for the other?
Because it’s the one I use 99% of the time *duh*.
While I also have a FreeBSD laptop, I hardly ever use it as there is no need.
What qualities do you appreciate in your fav unix that you don’t on other?
OS-X has all the power of Unix, but with only a fraction of the pain. And the GUI is better integrated than everything I’ve seen in the traditional Unix world (including KDE/Gnome).
And finally it runs on a really well-designed (this includes “pleasant to look at”) computer.
Eugenia:- “”Easier for me. Also, I want to run polls as parts of stories, and not on the side of OSNews. And that wouldn’t be doable with the current osnews engine, because if I write PHP code for a poll and then copy/paste that code into the text entry (that goes as the body of the story), it would render as code and it wouldn’t get executed. So, I prefer this javascript solution. Hassle free.””
preg_replace with the /e modifier before output?
Mac Os X is a registered unix, apple paid to have it tested, and can use the trademark. BSDs and other free OSes cannot since they dont have the funds to test em or really need/want to.
I also despise the poll rigging too. It is plausible that an enemy of FreeBSD having considered that Linux was far enough in front to still win, deliberately sabotaged the poll to make FreeBSD look bad, but only enough to still let Linux win.
Maybe I’ve read too many spy thrillers
P
How?
Though I need to admin it a little, it’s mostly desktop tasks, trying new apps or new interfaces and reading news about trends inside the Linux movement.
Games, too.
My family also uses Linux as we don’t have other OSes installed (no, no dual-boot).
Now and them, I take some time to experiment with new technologies — somewhat easy since all I have to do is mostly read superb How-tos. And I can afford it, it’s all free, no strings attached etc.
Why Linux?
Because of people. I don’t contend some Unixes can be better (*BSD, QNX, even OS X)… but this is missing the point. Linux is a rare experience, even inside IT. Its development pace is astounding and folks are (almost) all very bright guys, always wanting to collaborate and displaying normal egos — few people are stars, and even these are very approachable.
Because of apps. Some are simply incredible: lean, powerful, versatile.
Because of entry-cost. I won’t even touch the TCO question… Linux is great because anyone can enter for free (i.e., gratis). And not just Linux, but anything: there are tons of free apps, many of them complete or nearing completion.
Because of source code. I feel safe to install new apps and compile from source, using a few pre-compiled binaries from trusted sources; nowadays, I’d expect some trouble with a few of the many .exe shareware programs available for Windows.
What qualities Linux have that others don’t?
Linux is open. Much, much more than any other, including *BSD. So basically, anyone can become important — and this really happens. Even annoying highly-disliked guys can and do contribute.
Linux is Free. That is the GNU part: it can be made available to anyone who needs it — it’s like a software cornucopia. It doesn’t matter how poor you are, if you can get a small computer, you can have Linux. And you will continue to have it, because of the GPL licence.
Linux is fun. Everyone does new projects on Linux, because you will be showing your baby to guys who want to hear you — not for elitists who look at you and think you’re a weirdo. Maybe this is because inside Linux everyone is weirdo, too. %-P
Exactly.
I’ve been saying this for years. BSDL code leads to the quick spread of good standards. And this is what a lot of my linux buddies can’t seem to understand. There’s lots of great linux/gpl code but often it isn’t used to it’s full potential because of it’s crappy license. There’s some software where the GPL works okay on, but other pieces where it just doesn’t make any sense to use it.
The only time the GPL seems to accel is when big companies (IBM) use it to their own advantage. Release some code as GPL and let the freesoftware world develop it for free. Yeah that’s right. You guys go around saying how great the GPL is but I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of programmers lost their jobs because of it. Why pay a big software department to develop for you when you can pay a small team of developers in addition to the free labour of the OSS world?
First of all, I like unix. I first tried out linux close to 2 years ago. I originally tried Debian but that confused the hell out of me so I tried Mandrake right after that because it looked easier. It worked nice but it still felt kind of hackish. Soon after I discarded linux for anything but console work. It’s gui just wasn’t up to par with what I usually used (mac OS 9). After that i even got fed up with linux on the command line and moved to a mix of Free and OpenBSD (which I still use). Anyway, i still liked unix and mac os x finally caught my eye so I moved over. I can’t say it’s the snappiest thing i have ever used on my machine (400 Mhz iMac) but i still like it a lot. I can use word and photoshop along with just about anything unix my heart desires. It just works UI wise too and is very integrated. It’s vachemont chouette!
That’s enough special green kool-aid for you sir.
HOW do you use your Unix? WHY did you vote for that Unix and not for the other? WHAT qualities do you appreciate in your fav unix that you don’t on other?
I use my Unix (Mac OSX) to run my laptop, on which I keep grades (AppleWorks), run computations for research when I’m not in the office (Maple 7), keep my digital photos, keep some music, play some games, write letters, email friends & family, … the whol nine yards.
Why did I vote for it? Because although KDE is starting to make me like Linux, I’m still not quite at home with it, even though I’ve had this Linux box 2 or 3 years now. I’ve had the Mac OS X box only half the time, and I was accustomed to it quite quickly.
I guess that answers the third question, too… putting aside the fact that Waterloo still hasn’t gotten around to making a Cocoa version of Maple, and hence Maple 7 is godawfully clunky on my iBook; the Mac OSX experience is more polished, and easier to deal with (esp. installing & upgrading) than the Linuxes I’ve worked with in the past.
BUT I had to think about it; like I say, I’m starting to enjoy Linux thanks to KDE.
“Why pay a big software department to develop for you when you can pay a small team of developers in addition to the free labour of the OSS world?”
I have recently seen what I consider may be an abuse of open source using the GPL.
An unnamed company releases software under dual license GPL. They open source the basic stuff under GPL. It only provides limited functionality this way and if you want to do anything useful, you have to commercially license the full product which is not open source in any form. They meet the letter of the law by open sourcing only the bits they want to and stating what is GPL and what is not, and keep the rest totally proprietary. How they can argue it as being GPL is beyond me – I’ve been scratching my head about it for a while – maybe I still don’t understand their licensing model.
The worst of it is that their licensing costs are far too high to be practical for the project I am working on so they have ultimately lost out completely from any kind of sales they were hoping to make as a result of their product.
Now if they had released under BSD or something easier than GPL, it would have been enough of a sweetener to get the concept up & running and we could have met in the middle with licensing somehow.
P
My vote would be FreeBSD, nothing more and nothing less. 5.0 is starting worry me lately, but I need to wait and see what happened when it arrives to the stable/mature level. I personal don’t like Linux for long time.
http://www.linuks.mine.nu/worldmap/
Er, standards generally don’t have licenses attached to them (unless it’s protected by something like an NDA). GPL software can use open standards just as well as the next guy – XML, HTTP, TCP/(IP|UDP), SOAP, Jabber, SVG, Postscript, the freedesktop.org standards, FHS, LSB … these are all standards. They are also all standards to which GPL software can and does cater. So, BSD licensing vs. GPL licensing is orthogonal to the open standards issue.
I object to the inclusion of Mac OS X in a poll about Unix-based Operating Systems. It is not an Operating System.
Mac OS X is God.
Dang poll doesn’t seem to work under Mozilla…hmmm, is a pop-up poll?
No, it is a deleted poll. Can’t you read the story?
I use a Powerbook for my desktop. Hence, I run OS X. This lets me use all the productivity apps and provides a good platform for general computer use, such as gaming and browsing.
I have an U2E, which runs Solaris 8 Sparc. I use this box for some sparc specific applications related to work. I think I’m gonna replace it with an E450.
I also have a dual x86 box running Solaris 8 x86. I run Solaris on this box because Solaris has the best SMP code in the Unix world, IMHO. I also spent quite a while as a Solaris admin, so I’m pretty comfortable with the layout and structure of Solaris. If I get the E450, this box will become a QNX box.
I don’t like BSD as much, prefering SVR4, so I don’t use *BSD. (Except OS X) I got sick of linux, it feels more like a toy. I also got sick of the linux user (luser) community. Plus sorting through all the distros is a huge time suck, plus there is so much crap in each one, it’s hard to tell what all is actually installed. With Solaris, I have to install everything by hand. It takes time, but I know exactly what is installed and what versions are installed.
I also tend toward minimalism. I don’t run Gnome, I don’t run KDE. I run Blackbox for my WM, it is 18k lines of code. Given that I use my Solaris x86 box for development, I only need xterms, multiple desktops, gcc, gdb, and a few other debugging utilities.
Cheers….
– Kelson
It is plausible that an enemy of FreeBSD having considered that Linux was far enough in front to still win, deliberately sabotaged the poll to make FreeBSD look bad, but only enough to still let Linux win.
Damn those evil Linux zealots victimising FreeBSD and now rigging polls against themselves in a dastardly double bluff. Not even the fine people at Microsoft would stoop so low.
In terms of free …
I’ve played with Red Hat, Mandrake, Suse, Solaris and FreeBSD on x86 hardware for a few years now
I feel FreeBSD really does shine above them all
The ports packages are stunning and the attention to security blows away Linux
You have to really try it out before you can judge it.
My 3 Canadian cents
I am not saying that BSDL code is responsible for the creation of standards. I am saying is is responsible for the quick adoption of standards. These are two VERY different things.
Let me ask you: How good is a standard if nobody uses it?
BSDL code leads to the quick adoption of standards because _everyone_ can use it. Even evil microsoft or whoever. This makes a lot of sense, and this is why I feel that a lot of GPL’d code is wasting it’s potential. But I suppose we all have own opinions.
Even though I strongly belive that *BSD is the better OS, I am quite happy that Linux has become the “popular” unix-like operating system. I feel that the popularity of Linux is harming the quality of it’s code because the development is happening much too quickly and there are too many people contributing and therefore drawing Linux in too many directions at once. The *BSD code has been developed slowly and carefully over a much longer span of time. This allows the programmers to really think deeply about what they are doing and to produce higher quality code and fewer security issues and fewer bugs. I also want to believe that MacOS being based on *BSD will be a good thing in the long run, but time will tell.
As to whether an OS really is or isn’t a Unix-based OS, you should refer to the “Unix family tree” at the following website.
http://www.levenez.com/
There is also a Windows family tree and a computer languages family tree, all of which are quite interesting.
“That’s enough special green kool-aid for you sir.”
Wow, is it so inconcievable that, people maybe, just maybe use linux for everyday things? Sir, when I get on my linux machine, it is not the console I need to go for. I click on the Kinternet icon. It connects to the internet. Next I start gaim and start talking. Now I open up KMail. Wow, such hard tasks to preform, huh?
Now, sir, I must do some word processing. Thanks to SuSE 8.1, YaST configured my printer for me. Task completed. GASP That was hard. Oh gawd no, I need to do some spread sheets! Why is this so hard?!
Sir, green cool-aid is not the problem here. Its you inablity to open your eyes. Most Linux distros are EASY. But no, go ahead, flame people for using a OS for doing something productive.
realy…..hmm, I guess al those clibs and command line tools are made by some other organization then huh.
The only unix I ever used was NeXT on NeXT black hardware. Of course, it was pretty slow on it, but it was so different than anything I had ever used before. I could almost feel the gears and wheels of unix turning under my fingertips. Like a poster above said, it really is/was a great OS. It was also my introduction to the unix command line.
So, using OS X was certainly not difficult for me when it came out. In fact, it has become more compelling as time has gone on. It is compelling in both directions – the Mac OS desktop and the unix underneath (although I don’t really think of it as being “underneath” anymore, the more I’ve learned). There are tremendous possibilities for this OS.
I would like to try FreeBSD. That’s my next project. So many unices, so little time 🙂
Whoever messed with the poll – you spolied the fun for everyone.
I use NetBSD, so maybe one could change the final results from “6” to “7”.
It’s too bad that someone spoiled the poll for everybody else.
That having been said, I like NetBSD for a lot of the reasons that FreeBSD people like their OS. NetBSD is a very clean install, (cleaner than fbsd, more like it’s fork OpenBSD). pkgsrc (the NetBSD name for *BSD ports, the inspiration of Gentoo’s famed “portage”) rocks. pkgsrc tends to be easier to automate and more flexable than FreeBSD ports in many cases. (Though I do miss fbsd’s portsupgrade; though that addition did mean that sometimes fbsd’s portsupgrade database gets fouled up; making it have some of the disadvantages Linux has, though not as intractable. Of course, NetBSD has the “update” target, and tools like pkg_chk allow me to do the “update everything” dance of portupgrade.)
Everything just makes sense in NetBSD; for example, it puts packages in /usr/pkg rather than dumping everything in /usr/local, making the original usage of this for being admin installed programs difficult or impossible to do. It certainly does not put programs who knows where in Linux. (Yes, I know there’s the FHS; but that sucks even those times it is adhered to.)
NetBSD also has a new init system (that was made part of FreeBSD in 5.0) that is better than either the traditional BSD inits or SySV inits.
Of course, /usr/pkg and the NetBSD rc.d init systems violate Unix tradition slightly, but this is natural for a non-dead OS like BSD. 🙂 Besides, NetBSD adheres to BSD Unix tradition most of the rest of the time. 🙂
The documentation, which was mentioned a lot in the FreeBSD posts is doubly true for NetBSD. The man pages of NetBSD are excellent, probably among the best in the industry; and of course lightyears beyond the “this manpage is not maintained, read the info docs (which are only marginally better with the worst hypertext interface known to man)” nightmare of Linux.
The FreeBSD handbook I admit is a very very good source of tutorial documentation, the NetBSD guide contains a lot of useful “how to” newbie information not in the FreeBSD handbook however; though it has a long ways to go before it’s as comprehensive as the fbsd handbook.
NetBSD’s code is very well written, this is a side effect of it running on so many different architectures and the fact that code correctness is one of the project’s official goals. Many of the traditional *nix tools are the best. For example lukemftp, though that has been ported to other *nix OSs since. Of course *they* don’t get lukemftp automatically grabbing stuff as it does with pkgsrc. 🙂 (This is also more verbose than fbsd’s fetch program, which is a plus for debugging if you ever need that. (Fewer stuff in pkgsrc seems to be broken than fbsd ports.)
I don’t mean to flame FreeBSD, it’s an excellent operating system. I just thought the comparisons were appropriate because more people from the *BSD world are familiar with FreeBSD than with NetBSD.
Speaking of interoperating-system comparisons, I’d like to note that two distributions percieved as the most hacker friendly Linuxes, Slackware and Gentoo, are the most BSD-like. This is no coincidence.
It doesn’t surprise me the only person who is capable of hacking the poll would alter it in favor of FreeBSD.
How many people who aren’t even qualified to answer in that poll (that is, has a deep understanding of all the OSes listed)?
Each UNIX has its reason to live. FreeBSD happens to be one of the best, especially for x86 boxes. Asking morons which UNIX they like best is misleading, and stupid.
Juniper OS (JuneOS) is based on FreeBSD. Its a really, really nice network centric operating system and is a clean, coherent UNIX with great documentation and doesn’t have the virus like GPL or /usr/include/linux.
If you took a poll of Americans on 9/12/01 and asked how many wanted to nuke Afghanistan, would you listen to them [it was way over 50%]? Mobocracy sucks, and polling is homage to that inferior system. Meritocracies don’t seem to suit the restless, uninformed unskilled masses.
Why don’t they like linux. They seem to abhorr it as if it is some unholy horror that they wouldn’t install on their worst enemies computer.
I don’t think Linux people see BSD in the same light. Why can’t we just get along??????????????
ROFL!! You should have your own poll for pomposity. I guess we’ll have to make you King Of the Universe 🙂
At close inspection they really are very alike: Apple bought NeXT for their ‘NeXT’ OS anyway, so a vote for OS X is a vote for NeXT/OPENSTEP, and vice versa
The thing is that licenses only cover IMPLEMENTATION of a standard, not the standard itself. Take a look at the Jabber standard for example. Anyone can use it, but it was first implemented in a GPL’ed program, jabberd. But the specification for the protocol itself has nothing to do with that code and doesn’t have anything to do with that license. Sure, you have to code your own conformant program from scratch if you want to make it non-GPL, but the standard itself isn’t “infected” by the GPL. If the standard is good, it will stand on its own, implementations notwithstanding. So while the fact that anyone can just steal the implementation of a protocol if it’s done in BSDL’ed code may aid its adoption, that doesn’t necessarily make the case that that’s because they are all good standards. They are simply the easiest to implement because someone has already done it for you in a way that you can use for your own program whatever way you want.
I guess I would vote for Linux. The wide variety of distros and large amount of software mean Linux can be configured for just about anyone’s individual needs. I’m particularly fond of Lycoris, and have also learned much by using Mandrake.
FreeBSD worked well, but I accidentally “changed” something and now it starts to a command line… What the hell am I going to do with *that*? It’s back to the documentation for me…
Solaris had so many install problems on wintel computers that it was hard to even give it a chance.
QNX is the OS I boot the third-most, after Win98 and BeOS. It was super-easy to install, connected to the Internet without a glitch, and is easy to use. However, for everyday use as a desktop OS, it really needs more apps. I’ve never had a problem with the QNX repositories either.
I’ve only seen, not used, Mac OSX. Does it have the ridiculously cryptic Unix file hierarchy? Or does it retain the old, fairly common-sense, Mac file structure for browsing?
Best Wishes,
Bob
Freebsd + XFCE = Fast, stable, useable
GNU’s NOT UNIX!
Well well, what have we here? The good old my OS vs. your OS in the traditional discussion with absolutely no new arguments. It’s hard to discuss for instance FreeBSD vs. Linux, because the origin and idea of these two operating systems are quite different.
It’s a shame this poll wasn’t named “what’s your favourite Unix-clone”. GNU/Linux really isn’t a Unix – it’s a clone based on Linus Torvalds’ own code, just like Minix and all the other so-called Unix-like systems out there. The BSD-alliance for i386 has derived from original 4.4BSD Lite/Net2 code, and therefore that system applies more to the Unix-name than any version of GNU/Linux from the Redhat company.
I personally have had many nice experiences with both GNU/Linux and FreeBSD – especially Debian which is the favourite distribution of mine. My small 166MHz Pentium with 64 megs of memory has been running for more than a month now without rebooting – the OS is FreeBSD. Even though it’s nice to be an expert at one platform, I tend to be as flexible as possible regarding operating systems.
When discussing wether GNU/Linux or FreeBSD will conquer the desktop, I always keep my mouth shut. I used not to do that. But they’re really nice alternatives. Let’s keep it that way – right now I’m hoping that Apple would port their oh-so-nice OS X for i386.
—
Anders
I like GNU, Linux, the GPL, and I think that Linux and the GNU toolset are not hacked together.
By the way, how many of you who are constantly claiming that these tools are hacked together have ever even looked at the source?
I want to vote for either Pyramid OS (Bsd or SYS-V by throwing an hardware switch and booting) or Unix System V (ran on a quad 88000 processor box, OS was outsourced? Good solid
os though.)
#3. Linux
#4 Msc OSX
i was going to vote for coherant but there was no entry for it…. ohwell…
most popular not so much things.
it doesn’t mean that the os is superior(cost, function, history, stability and so on).
if you insist popularity, ms windows is the best. do not talk anymore.
everything has it’s own personality and value as like you do. you don’t want to be compared with other guys. and you have your own personality and value. don’t you know that?
if you hate sco unixware, you are passing over it’s orthodoxy. it adhears many properties of sys5. and its own interface for long time. (oh, my… GNU/Linux system is still changing so much.)
– of course it is one side, the other side is that it needs more active development. (when can I use my dvd-rom on unixware?)
htw, why OpenUinx? don’t you know that it is unixware 7.1.2?
(I also like NetBSD. NetBSD is very simple and very portable. isn’t it?)
anyway, I hope you don’t believe this result so much.
Not even the fine people at Microsoft would stoop so low.
Are you referring to that incident where an MS-exec sent out an email to employees asking them to vote for .NET in a poll on a major web site? Unfortunately I don’t recall the details, but it was making the headlines a year or two ago.
[Btw, what’s with the flat structure of the comment section here? I know Eugenia has stated her opinion in the past, but wouldn’t a user choice of nested/threaded/flat be more … convenient? Maybe have a poll about this?
]
I think the leader is Sun Microsystems with Solaris operating system and Solaris is leader over FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and Linux.
It is commercial product.
what is UNIX-based, anyway? if you mean that it can trace its decendance from the original, then OS X/Darwin and Linux shouldnt be on there. so the most popular choices are the ones least related to ‘real’ UNIX – is that significant?
i was disappointed that Plan9 wasn’t on there, but i guess there are too many nearly-UNIX-clones to fit in a single poll…
what is UNIX-based, anyway?
POSIX, UNIX99… choose your own specification
Lee Nooks wrote:
And, unlike *BSD, M$ won’t copy it (notice the $).
Yay!
So you get your thrills when companies cant release software?
Despite the anti-MS zealots, MS software has definitely spurred the computing revolution. Do you really think mainstream would have picked up a Linux distro as easily?
Microsofts success is THE incentive for others to enter the marketplace and produce good software so they can be successful too.
The all software should be zero cost stuff is fine until the mortgage bill comes.
Your ENVY is showing, grow up. One man’s gain is NOT another man’s loss. This is (and always was) a Marxist fallacy.
I think there is no “UNIX 99” specification by the Open Group.
In any case, if this is the criterion, Linux definitely should not be there: it’s not even POSIX compliant, let alone UNIX 98. And since it’s not UNIX 98 compliant (it can’t pass the conformity tests), it can not receive the UNIX denomination. And at least Linus Toorvalds doesn’t want it to.
some links for your education:
http://www.unix-systems.org/unix98.html
http://www.unix.org/questions_answers.html
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue29/uniforum.html
Plenty of nonsense to pounce on here, but by doing so I would only repeat myself, and I’m bored just thinking about it. But I must say, lately part of the FreeBSD crowd is reminding me more and more of Slackware fans. To spot a (self proclaimed) Slackware user on a Usenet Linux group, you just have to look at the headers; they always seem to be posting with a Microsoft client.
It’s particularly obvious that a lot of the arguments trotted forth are mere repetiton of old memes flying around in the BSD-camp, as opposed to the result of an individual’s own evaluation based on first-hand experience.
Not that it matters. This ‘battle’ has long since been decided.
Can someone answer the following:
1. Why was there only one Linux choice but three BSD choices? 2. Why is there an OS X choice AND a Darwin choice?
“… I voted for FreeBSD…”
Eugenia, you can help me with FreeBSD – just what you wanted to hear! 😀
come on, eugenia. This is not science, it’s a fucking web poll. Have a sense of humor. Anyone with two brains cells wired together would see FreeBSD having 10,000 votes and laugh their asses off anyhow.
Besides, it’s a three line shell script to hack most of those crappy web polls anyway.
Mac OS X.
– Mark
It was not funny if you wanted to get a good read of what OS News readers are using. It might be funny if you were in 4th grade perhaps.
It is much more likely that someone subverted the poll to make BSD look bad, not that a BSD fan tried to pump up the BSD votes.
This sort of deception has been very common in modern times.
–ms
We’re not talking about standard quality. We’re talking about the adoption of standards.
As far as I know very few people use jabber. It would be nice if some of the many conflicting IM systems would just change over to the open jabber protocol. But guess what? There isn’t a free drop in code replacement so it will never happen.
>1. Why was there only one Linux choice but three BSD choices?
While all the linux DISTRIBUTIONS share the same kernel,
the three BSDs are developed independently and can be
considered different OSes.
I work in a test computer lab for a multi-national. I test how different operating systems interact with our network peripherals. I specialize in UNIX OSes and have installed, adiminstered, and maintain HP-UX 10, Solaris (sprac and intel)2.6-8, SCO 5 and 7,IRIX 5, Redhat 5-7, Mandrake 5-9, slackware 2.6, Caldera 1.x, Corel 1.x, many more Linux distros, OpenBSD 2.x, NetBSD 1.x, FreeBSD 3-5.
The primary server in the lab is FreeBSD 4.7. I think that speaks volumes for FreeBSD seeing that all the other servers are still running. I could use any of them.
Stable, secure, execellent file system layout, the ports/packages system is outstanding, and the list goes on.
BTW, it is what I use as my desktop at home as well. I have great hopes for 5.x but it’s not ready yet
“But I must say, lately part of the FreeBSD crowd is reminding me more and more of Slackware fans. To spot a (self proclaimed) Slackware user on a Usenet Linux group, you just have to look at the headers; they always seem to be posting with a Microsoft client. ”
WTF is that supposed to mean????
Yes, the Slackware newbies tend to post with Lookout!! Express until they get up to speed with Slackware (it’s a Linux distro that requires the users to know what they are doing unlike the pointy clicky distros) they end up posting from pine of slrn, or if they get KDE working, KNode.
I think you all missed the point. All OSes suck to one degree or another, its just a matter of taste. What does it matter if people that post here like your OS or not? Just use it and shut up.
And for the guy that linked the moron that ruined the poll with Slackware users, I take offense. Only because his behavior is that of an inconsiderate asshole, not someone who uses slackware linux.
thanks.
i like os x, even though im using 9 on these powermacs at school. I run os x all the time at home.
Hmmm. here at home we have a computer with the old MacOS 8. Seen from this, any UNIX is ten times better. Because what is the case:
1) MacOS for the PowerPC/G3 has a 68xxx emulator, which is even used for certain system components! This makes some finder functions slower than necessary, and makes it a real hell to use Netscape. On our 180Mhz mac Netscape needs one complete second to process an enter while typing an email. Note that I got this from the MacFAN magazine.
2) Memory management. If you tell MacOS a program needs 32 MB of memory, it really needs that much to be able to start, no matter if it really requires this. Well, this problem is solved in 8+, but what remains is that a program can never use *more* than the given amount of memory. This is very annoying, for example, when you get “out of memory” while pasting images in your text, and MacOS shows that there is free memory, but the application is not allowed to use it.
So, after all, every unix is better than the old MacOS series. On my own PC I use Linux, as this is the first Unix I got to know because someone gave SuSE 6.4 with me, and I do not want to learn a new system.
MacOS X looks very nice, I think.I have only used it for about half a minute in a shop, but it seems to work quite fast, it looks nice and it can run X11 applications, I read…. too bad that Macs are so expensive.
HP-UX 10 Ummm… not only is that really old, HP-UX 10.0 has not been popular one bit. I have seen a lot of 10.20 installs, even 10.30, but 10.0? Not to speak of the fact that you missed 11.0 and 11i. Are you making this stuff up?
slackware 2.6 ???
SCO 5 and 7 ?????
You really think someone’s going to believe this HS?
I’d probably have voted for NetBSD. Or Tru64, since it looked so lonely and forgotten. I’ve only seen it for a few minutes at my neighbour’s, but I hear that it’s a very clean and proper development. Something I can’t say about HPUX.
I run NetBSD on a number of machines. A DECstation 5000/200, a Mac LC 475, a Compaq Pentium 75 (nice SCSI-based PC server), a HP 9000/380, and am in the process of installing it on several kinds of SUNs, both 68k and SPARC ones.
That’s one strength of NetBSD. I can install it on any kind of hardware which I’ve rescued. The install is extremely speedy. And it behaves the same on all of them.
Basically, I use NetBSD a UNIX, doing UNIX-like tasks. That means running ZSH (try it out some time), NCSA HTTPd (no bloat, does all I expect from a web server save support for RXML, see http://www.roxen.com/), ls/colourls, Pine, Pico, Lynx, (ml)ftp, TcpSpeed (my favourite program), and LAME.
Nothing fancy, but that’s my application for UNIX. I don’t think it fits on the desktop (see Eunix and my comments on the GNOME article), but if you leave it alone, it will serve pages and encode MP3s for eternity. And it’s free.
I’ve also got a HP Visualise C180. The fastest machine I’ve got. Mainly due to the lack of a proper C compiler, I use it for one thing: playing MP3s with MPG123. This because it’s got an internal speaker and enough horsepower. And it’s got a serial console, which means I can tell it to play MP3s using my Psion while in bed.
But I find that HPUX misbehaves in many ways, perhaps because I haven’t read the “grey wall” that is the HPUX documentation.
Plenty of nonsense to pounce on here, but by doing so I would only repeat myself, and I’m bored just thinking about it. But I must say, lately part of the FreeBSD crowd is reminding me more and more of Slackware fans. To spot a (self proclaimed) Slackware user on a Usenet Linux group, you just have to look at the headers; they always seem to be posting with a Microsoft client.
Huh? It’s pretty nonsense comment made by you. What makes you think that they are using FreeBSD and Slackware as their main desktop for real? A lot of UNIX SysAdmins are using Windows as their main desktop, but have BSD or Linux as their main server. There are hundreds reasons, different ways and etc why they are having the M$ client, so it doesn’t mean they have to be anti-M$, use *nix as main desktop nor else.
They can say, Windows is their favorite desktop and BSD or Linux is their favorite Unix-Based OS with the M$ client. Also, they can go on Usenet Linux group with the M$ client and ask for help, help others and etc. Yet again, it doesn’t mean they have to be pure/loyal *nix users by being anti-M$.
yeah, as if the outcome wouldn’t be biased anyway due to the readers this site attracts *shakes head*
>>>>> Lee Nooks wrote:
>>>>> And, unlike *BSD, M$ won’t copy it (notice the $).
> So you get your thrills when companies cant release
> software?
Yes. I wish M$ market share to drop to 5% and all other OS, Unix-like or not, to raise to say, 10%. Better products can dominate the market, but monopolistic manipulators should be boycotted. Now, I won’t start to organize that boycott. I’m doing it myself.
Now, regarding other companies, I hope they thrive, release software, profit and help reduce M$ share to that magical 5%. Whew! I don’t hate MS, but why are you surprised? Did you want me to help MS?
Should I change my nick to Ween Dolls, too? Gee!
> Despite the anti-MS zealots, MS software has definitely spurred the computing revolution.
You mean MS-price, don’t you? Much before Linux, they lowered prices to cut other companies air-supply; now they face Linux/*BSD competition and they can’t beat free. So now it’s curtains for them. Thank you for all the fish.
Now, “spurred computing revolution”? Where have you been in the ’70s? If you must name a still-alive pioneer, choose Apple with their 8-bit machines. A computer for a guy to use while his wife did the dishes.
MS is not good at innovation, but it could be if it wanted. This simply is not its strategy. They buy those who innovate. This is actually clever, since most ideas fail and it’s wiser to buy them after they prove to be winners.
> Do you really think mainstream would have picked up a Linux distro as easily?
It was not easy for MS. They worked hard to make Windows win 🙂 It’s not about technology, it’s about marketing — and they’re the best at this.
> Microsofts success is THE incentive for others to enter the marketplace and produce good software so they can be successful too.
In this one we agree. KDE gets its foot on the door by mimicking Windows (but they start slowly to innovate with their proposed Slicker interface alternative, for instance).
> The all software should be zero cost stuff is fine until the mortgage bill comes.
I don’t think this. I think people must be pay otherwise workers won’t be paid. But you can’t just close eyes at poor nations (like those in Africa). They need to get many things for free, so they start to live on their own.
And unemployed guys also need a hand. Even MS, full of cash as it is, can’t hire everyone. Are you employed? If so, good.
If not, and if you work in IT, I understand you don’t like zero-cost software. But if you’re skilled in other areas, a good, free OS would be a boost to help your children to do homework and save your short money.
> Your ENVY is showing, grow up.
I only need to grow up hair, ’cause it’s not showing. 😛
> One man’s gain is NOT another man’s loss. This is (and always was) a Marxist fallacy.
This is also my opinion — and you would know it, were we not complete strangers. Avoid judging others.