> Would you prefer Windows?
I would prefer sgi IRIX 6.5, but that's dead.
In the absence of IRIX, illumos and SmartOS are the next best thing, so that is my next preference.
> Because that's where the world was heading in the 90s.
> History happened, and what it shows is that Linux arose at a time when EVERYONE thought that Windows was going to steal Unix's throne.
Not everyone. I went through the entire '90's using Sun SPARC, sgi, hp PA-RISC and Commodore Amiga computers, and neither did Sun Microsystems. Didn't touch an intel-based PC until 2002, when I put together my first one, and even my current intel based PC runs Solaris 10.
Sun Microsystems was the only company which refused to bow, and continued developing Solaris. And while we know that eventually that company died, the OS lives on, and is being very actively developed, with new features added, and new technology invented.
> It's amazing you have such negativity about a piece of software.
You would also have it if your telephone rang with priority 1 incidents at two o' clock in the morning because Linux has a problem which I would not have had if I were using SmartOS. Then you'd have bonus negativity when you'd have to log into a crisis bridge and explain to a whole bunch of angry managers (who don't understand a thing about their decision to use Linux) that the application broke because Linux killed the service when it ran out of memory and oh by the way the data is also corrupted because the filesystem is a design from the '90's of the past century. And no I cannot find out why the application ran out of memory because the OS is locked up and when I reset it, I cannot get a core dump for analisys because I do not have adequate tools for that on Linux.
Computers and UNIX are my life calling, and since I am passionate about them, I spend extraordinary amounts of time working on them and researching them. Even what little free / spare time I have, I spend doing computer research and system engineering. So when according to my research and experience, something as inferior as GNU/Linux starts to push out a better solution just because of ignorance, it is only logical I have developed an intense hatred of it. It is messing with something I hold very dear, illumos and SmartOS - it's messing with UNIX.
And when I cannot find any SmartOS jobs where I live because every single ad says Linux-blah-blah Linux, you bet I hate it even more, since working on it, I get to experience first hand just how bad Linux is. When I'm forced to suffer because I am ordered to use Linux, and have problems I would not have if I had been on SmartOS, it's becomes personal, and it also becomes not just personal, but professional.
At home I have SmartOS and do not have a single issue I have at work, because I am using a different OS, a better one, and I love every microsecond developing on it and using it.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go back to do some more software engineering. On GNU/Linux.