OS of choice?

Post Reply
Ch4r
Newby Cowboy
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Sep 16, 2005 11:20 pm
Location: San Francisco
Contact:

OS of choice?

Post by Ch4r »

Heh, every tech forum seems to have the classic OS debate, so why not have it here? =P

Basically, what is your preferred OS and, more importantly, WHY is that your favorite OS? I know that there are some die-hard *BSD fans here, so this could get interesting... :P

I'll go first - I've primarily used Windows and several Linux distributions, and my favorite OS is by far Linux, especially Gentoo. Gentoo simply gave me more control over my system than anything else I tried, and made it relatively easy to set my system up exactly the way I wanted it. Second, I absolutely love Portage: it's very powerful, but still easy to use. Third, I prefer software for Linux over software for Windows simply because most software for *nix is distributed as source code, which adds another layer of configurability and optimizability. Finally, unlike Windows XP, Linux almost never crashes on me, and it's usually pretty fast. In fact, the only time I can remember Linux crashing for next to no apparent reason was one time when I was using Fedora... Anyway, those are a few of the basic reasons I prefer Gentoo - customizability/configurability, Portage, speed, and stability.

Now let's hear it from some of you guys... =P

-Ch4r
http://binaryuniverse.net
irc://irc.thekeyboardcowboys.org/binaryuniverse

eekay
Administrator
Posts: 231
Joined: Mon Sep 20, 2004 3:38 pm
Location: Denver, CO.
Contact:

Post by eekay »

Well, let's see. The only reply I can really have to that is that I like FreeBSD for many of the exact same reasons. Haha.

With FreeBSD you have your choice of plenty of different types of setups depending on your needs, the userland is absolutely fantastic, updates are easy using CVS for kernel and source, ports system is to die for (Gentoo stole that idea.. Pfft. :P) and it's basically just an all around great system.

Another great thing about BSD systems is the licensing for the open source software it comes with. Lately, the GPL and such just hasn't been good enough. People are beginning to want to change rules and keep certain things from happening. But, Berkeley licenses are 100% completely open. "Do what you want with it" is a motto I can't complain about one bit.

And about that crash issue... I'm not sure if I've ever had a decent Linux distribution crash on me before (Slackware is what I'd used many moons ago), but I've never once had a BSD system crash on me. Windows, on the other hand, goes without saying...

So, there's my two cents. *shrugs* Feel free to reply as long is this doesn't turn into some silly flame war! \o/

Regards,
Janky Jay, III

Post Reply