First things first:

Everything that is in here is provided as is, with no guarantee that it will work for you,
 and that most (but not all) of the software mentioned on this page is a part of the
 GNU/Linux public license, and thus is (but again not all) freely available online.

Note that it has taken me 4 years to compile this (and that it is not all there yet.)

Ok, now to a little history of my OS experience:

For starters, if you want to gain control over your machine, ditch windows and move to a
 *nix. Once that is said, your choice of operating system should not be influenced by biased
 dorks like me, but instead by your own needs.

Mandrake Linux

Freely available online, I started out with Mandrake Linux 8.something. It was an operating
 system that was useful to teach me the standards of the *nix world, but I have struggled
 with some of the features of the particular OS. I haven't used it since 10.1 (and only briefly
 10.1). The main reason why I didn't like Mandrake is the RPM dependency factor. I spent
 most of my time trying to track down an obscure RPM that was the dependency of some
 other obscure RPM because I was trying to install some package that I needed. Not that I
 do run into such issues with other distributions of Linux, but at least I can easily revert to
 source tarballs of the needed packages. Mandrake, for some reason, was a real trouble
 maker when it came to source tarballs.

But not all about Mandrake was bad, the big advantage of that operating system is that it
 is easy to install, especially if you are doing a single boot machine. If you are doing a dual
 boot machine, it partition that much harder, you just have to make sure the partition
 scheme is done before you install windows (in the instance that you want windows as one
 of the boots,) and you HAVE to install windows before you install Linux. Of course that is
 when you are a beginner. As you progress, you will see that there are ways around that
 particular order, which probably won't be mentioned in these pages.

Debian

Freely available online, I am now running Debian on all my x86 hardware (at least on the
 functioning ones)and have loved my experience with this amazing OS.

I have read and heard different comments about Debian, and the only down part was pre
 Sarge. Since the Sarge install,, it has become a very easy OS to setup. It took me 3 days to
 configure into a satisfying matter atlantis (note that it is a dual boot XPpro/Debian) and that
 I spend most of my time struggling with small details like the window manager under X.
 Mandrake would allow me to boot to a terminal, whereas Debian forces me to boot to an
 Xmanager. After a little investigation, I realized I should ditch GDM (installed pretty much
 by default) and replaced it with an older, less versatile, but more to my liking XDM. The
 hole of my issue was that I was trying to get a startup script to run before blackbox (my
 window manager of choice under Linux) would start, so that I didn't have to manually start
 gkrellm, bbpager, bbkeys, and aterms. As it turned out, GDM completely ignores both the
 .xinitrc and .Xsession startup scripts, whereas XDM doesn't. Solved my problem very fast.

FreeBSD

Freely available online, good for very specific applications, not very versatile, but fast and
 efficient. Does not suit my needs as of right now, but one day, I may revert to it for some
 web serving (although I will probably stick with Debian for that.) Has a package manager
 that is very easy to use and makes installation of available software trivial.

Mac OS 9.2, Mac OS X and X Darwin

Mac os X is NOT available for free, but XDarwin is.

Wow, what a great combo.

I have had very little problems with my Mac.

The first one in fact was my Wacom Tablet drivers crashing at boot time. It's only happened
 twice, and hopefully never again. We'll see.

My second problem, which "forced" me to do a reinstallation: I ran software update, and
 after switching to my Debian box (I share keyboard, mouse, screen, and Wacom table in
 between OS X & Debian via a KVM switch) and letting the install take it's time, I switched
 back to OS X to realize that the updating software was trying to get info, but was not
 remounting my keyboard or my mouse. I then logged in to OS X via SSH, and did reboot as
 root. After reboot, I got a message of DOOM saying basically: Please reboot your mac. Did
 so 3 or 4 times, with the same message every time. I used the reinstallation media of mac
 OS X to get the system back up, thus allowing me to back up all my data, then had to do a
 fresh reinstall of the entire system. There were a few advantages in doing a fresh reinstall:
 namely speed factors and hard drive space. But enough for the freak problems...

I like how Apple managed to build an operating system based on a *nix, in this case FreeBSD,
 and ported their older stuff over using mac classic (OS 9.2 in my case) I have not had any
 trouble running older mac applications and nearly non running new applications.

The hardest part has been to get some specific *nix software running. First you have to
 install XDarwin. Once you have that up and running, know that as of the version I am using,
 it does not support dual screens in root mode (as opposed to rootless mode, nothing to do
 with root, which you get to by typing "su" once logged in as normal user.)

If the piece of software needed has been ported to Fink, then it is easily accessible via
 FinkCommander. But not all has been ported yet. For example, my favorite video player is
 Xine, and getting this puppy up and running is not an easy task under OS X. It seems like I
 am going to have to recompile XDarwin with some special functions enabled to allow for
 Xine to work. I will probably have to do that manually, but if I can find a better way of
 doing it, I will try that first. The solution that seems the most feasible is in VLC. Cross
 platform easy to install video player that has not failed me more then on 1 or 2 occasions.
 It has allowed me to play all my zone 2 DVD's bought in Europe, and most of my media.

But the most apparent advantage of having XDarwin on a mac is that I can use ssh
 forwarding and open X applications on my other machines running X. For example, I am right
 now listening to music on my mac using XMMS. Why, you must be asking yourself, would I
 use XMMS in lieu of iTunes, one of the best audio applications available? Very simple, that
 way, I can just ssh into my mac box, use XForwarding, open XMMS on my laptop (note that
 it is running on the mac) and select any music I want without having to revert to such things
 as XVNCVIEWER, which requires that I run OSXvnc on the mac and XVNCVIEWER on the
 laptop. Of course that is but one application of the amazing ability of Xforwarding.

Microsoft Windows

These are NOT frealy available from the internet, unless Illegaly aquired.

There are so many version of windows available and that I have used that I don't know
 where to start. So I'll try to limit myself as much as possible like so:

Windwos95/98/SE/ME outdated pieces of crap that are unworthy of being called operating
 systems.

windows NT/2K/XP are a little more worth mentioning. I'll start with NT. Very limited in it's
 applications, would be comparable to the Windows OS's as the BSDs' would be to the *nixs'.
 2K is a little more versatile then NT, but not much. Still very limited in it's hardware support,
 good work station, but not a Gaming OS. Windows XP home is too striped down to my
 opinion, but XP pro is what seems to me to be the best OS Microsoft has been able to bring
 on the market in terms of usability and stability. Also, since a lot of software is freely
 available for that OS, it is a good choice if you are not picky in terms of control and efficiency
 of hardware use. I will give it that it has a very respectable drivers compatibility, but as all
 others, not perfect. Support for legacy hardware is almost non existent.

Note also that if you want to run windows software, you are not restricted by Microsoft
] releases of Windows. There is a very respectable and freely available piece of software
 called WINE. It fools windows applications into thinking that they are in a windows
 environment. I have had limited success using this, but the main reason is because I haven't
 really taken the time to repartition my windows partition to fat32. There is only limited
 support of ntfs write under linux, and any writing to ntfs from linux is experimental and
 DANGEROUS. The downside to WINE is that it is architecture dependent in that it will only
 run on x86 compatible machines. There would need to be emulation of x86 architecture for
 WINE to run on any other architecture, which would probably prove to be extremely
 inefficient. There is however one exception to that rule: AMD64 allows for 32 bit binary, but
 it is not the simplest to setup. Here is a links on how the get 32 bit support on an AMD64
architecture.

This being said, you all know by now that I have a big preference for *nix operating systems.

© 2005 Solomon Latham