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Comment by pjmlp | Hacker News Reader

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pjmlp·

I don't understand. There are lots of alternatives.

- Aix

- HP-UX

- Solaris

- Tru64

- MacOS X

- QNX

Or do you mean you don't pay for your OS?

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I don't think any of those are Open Source. There is OpenSolaris, but you didn't list that.

The complaint was about UNIX alternatives, not free beer.

I don't think OpenSolaris is open anymore, maybe you're thinking of IllumOS or OpenIndiana.

How many of those closed-source Unix variants run the applications Linux users are familiar with?

The complaint was about UNIX alternatives.

Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible.

"BSD is what you get when a bunch of Unix hackers sit down to try to port a Unix system to the PC. Linux is what you get when a bunch of PC hackers sit down and try to write a Unix system for the PC"

"BSD people do what they do because they love Unix. Linux people do what they do because they hate Microsoft." --Theo de Raadt

And right here we see why BSD mindshare is a fraction of Linux mindshare: managing to outperform Linux in the "arrogant, condescending nerd" factor.

I don't see the problem.

Linux mindshare is smaller that Microsoft mindshare, too

> Linux distributions are not even UNIX, just UNIX compatible.

Depends on how you define "UNIX". If you define it as "Derived from the V6 codebase", then I'm pretty sure a number of the OSes you mentioned don't qualify. If you define it as "Legally able to use the trademark", then you miss a lot of OSes that work just fine with POSIX-compatible software, such as FreeBSD, and include z/OS, which is just perverse.

I was referring to the trademark.

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