Poor man’s view of the world

In search of the perfect Operating System

My first “real” experience with computers was on a Windows 3.1 machine. (Of course I had tinkered around with a lot of “non-GUI” operating systems as a kid, but let’s get real – that’s ancient history).

Windows (in its myriad variations) is a great set of operating systems (except maybe Windows Millennium Edition). Its ease of use and massive popularity also makes it the most (successfully) attacked.

Linux (with its wide range of flavors) is a great open source choice – saves you money and gives you a great and secure product. But after years of working with different operating systems, I have come to one conclusion – BSD rocks!!

BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) is the name of distributions of source code from the University of California, Berkeley, which were originally extensions to AT&T’s Research UNIX operating system.

BSD comes in many flavors, notably -

FreeBSD – currently the most popular version, it is easy to use and very high on performance. (btw Yahoo runs on FreeBSD)

NetBSD is considered a particularly good choice for running on old non-Intel hardware. Its main aim is maximum portability. It runs on almost everything – from palmtops to large servers.

OpenBSD is the popular choice for aims for banks, stock exchanges and Government departments. Its core guiding principle is code purity – derived from a brilliant combination of open source and rigorous code reviews.