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Uncommon Unix or unixlike systems you currently use
totally_not_banned
Member
in General
I kind of wonder what uncommon systems LETers might use on either servers or desktops. By uncommon i mean anything outside of the generic Debian, Redhat/CentOS/Fedora/Enterprise Linux, Arch and direct derivatives. Specialized single use case distributions also don't count. Let's see if there is anyone being a little bit of a special snowflake outside the probably existing handful of BSD users.
Thanked by 1emgh
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Its FreeDOS for me.
FreeDOS isn't exactly unixlike but i still have to agree that nothing makes a server hum in perfect harmony like a http daemon written in handcrafted assembly and distributed as a .com file.
For a few years my main computer booted to a ramfs, synching to disk at shutdown. I was in school, friends didn't understand why. Me neither. More than anything I enjoyed the faces of inquiring people.
Okay that doesn't qualify. But it's a cool candidate.
Deb…
… nvm
Current FreeBSD user here. I also used Slackware in the past but no long use it now.
Occasionally playing with a Solaris successor/kid but I feel that, frankly it makes little sense nowadays to use anything outside of a few somewhat less, uhm, not really professional distros (e.g. Alpine and yes, still Slackware) or (preferably, on servers) one of the BSDs.
The cathedral products just have become quite solid, versatile, and reliable. And the bazaar zoo has largely taken over the unix-ish world.
Isn't that kind of obvious? After all RAM is fast my man!
Locally or remote?
Even though the names escape me right now i've read about those but haven't been able to bring myself to try any yet. While it seems somewhat interesting i simply don't see myself using them on a regular basis and learning about all the nuances just to turn the box off a hour later to let it collect dust seems like time i could also spend in a more productive manner.
I've superficially rather looked over but into it. Seems kind of refreshing from the same-old-same-old "install, figure out package manager, wow that was interesting" type of distributions but from my impression it seems to be one really would use it to build embedded systems and i'm already using mostly NetBSD for that.
This is a distribution that pretty much just passed me by. Pretty much everyone who has been around during the early Linux years seems to have fond memories of it but since i've started with FreeBSD and went straight to Debian after that i never came into contact with it during it's heyday and thinking about trying it i always come to the conclusion that i am about 30 years late anyways and should just try something else.
Yes, that's where i am about to settle somewhat soonish, i think. Linux has kind of lost me during the last couple of years. logind, seatd, systemd, myassd, ... On desktop i am mostly just waiting for my hardware to catch up with amdgpu. Well, i am not entirely sure yet (that's kind of why i made this thread to see what other people are using). I could also somewhat see myself using a source based Linux distribution in one way or another but then what i really want (automated remote package building and caching) simply does not exist i think and if that's the case i could also simply use a BSD + pkgsrc.
Pretty much. Linux simply has so much manpower behind it these days it's hard for anything to really compete on a broader level. Hardware support is downright impressive. I feel all the attention came at a price though. At least mainstream distributions seem to have kind of devolved towards being more and more like the kind of black boxes they set out to replace.
As early 2000, friend of coworker gave a floppy-disk for dial-up internet sharing solution between MSW3.11 to MSW9x, then realize that FreeSCO based nix OS. Casual playing TinyLinux on old-Qemu, what of lovely-days
... so many things have to learn
Alpine Linux, free and tiny size.
FreeBSD, because some providers provide this image.
Here, you may find something that you want OS family tree
Kinda interesting but sadly only so much helpful for finding actual practical systems.
I use Arch btw
Very similar here. I can and do run FreeBSD on pretty much all VPS and dedis; never had a problem, all, incl. new hardware was supported, incl some more professional slightly "exotic" hardware like e.g. Mellanox and Chelsio adapters.
But as a developer, at least in my field I quite often use "exotic" tools with very cumbersome and or problematic builds (like Ocaml), so to simply use binaries I pretty much have to use linux. The good news is that not all distros are systemd infested, so I prefer those.
Fun fact: I originally was driven to use FreeBSD by a client demanding it. Wasn't very happy back then, but today I'm very grateful for that client basically forcing me to look at and learn BSD.
Let me add: and corporate power ...
To put it bluntly, IMO nowadays mainly has corporation guys (visible or not) plus a ton of, uhm, is there a nice way to say "clueless idiots", and finally frighteningly few capable real open source guys who weren't driven out by the new focus on virtue signalling.
So, for me it's BSD for servers, period, and linux on the desktop. Plus occasionally an short excursion to Solaris, Minix and such, just for pleasure.
MjjOS
👍
same , I use linux desktop and FreeBSD for servers
I have tried before using OmniOS (for servers) and Tiny Core Linux (for desktops)
What was your experience?
I didn't have any specific use case for OmniOS, I just wanted to give it a try for running solaris containerization (zones). It's pretty cool if you want to try out something similar to solaris, but other than that, I mostly use linux.
Tiny core is great for running on a old laptop/desktop with low ram, but the gui is very minimal.
Love playing with it but I don't exactly have a use case. What do you use it for?
GUI doesn't matter much to me as i have my own custom WM setup anyways. I am mostly concerned with simplicity and (as long as default configuration doesn't suit my wants/needs anyways) flexibility. Room for optimization is cool too but given i am mostly concerned with practical usability it's not that big of a concern.
I have the nagging feeling that the main use case is shitposting
Come play with deez n 🙏😩🙌