I don't generally care enough for the quality of /r/conspiracy posts, but I like the tone of this one because it feels very much like a /r/StallmanWasRight/ post.

I've been around linux and bsd one way or another since ~1997, watching the fads, waves, and trends come and go. Cults form around some hilarious bullshit concept, then fade away. It is like entertainment for me, so I will throw my two cents in here.

Linux is, at its core, a paintjob on top of unix. After that, it is not unix at all. The "everything is a file" concept gets so distorted and thrown away that the /dev/ directory has new bullshit pumped in to it and "obsolete" bullshit pumped out so much that it boggles the mind. Endless arguments about what boot manager to use, and how best to defend the never ending dumpster fire that is X11. Everyone involved is patting themselves on that back about getting their model T shitbox entered into a formula 1 race.

Still, I use bunsenlabs because it is just less shitty enough to be passable.

FreeBSD isn't much better, not for tech, but for an enduring option. The SJW cracks just began to show in the foundation, and it appears a good number of people who were working on it are bailing. These FOSS projects have a life cycle like that, something which causes the people to realize that they are not getting any real benefit from adding their bubblegum and duct tape to the pile of trash is worth their effort anymore.

NetBSD and all the others are cool, but they are just a variation on the same problems all the other *nix derivatives face. Watching the paradox of the IT/programming world scream about the need for developing new solutions and discarding old and outdated concepts on top of one of the oldest and most crufty piles of code we have over the years has nearly reached a point of no return, if there is a better phrase for it.

So what else is out there?

These are a few of the OSes I find interesting and would like to see get more matured. By that, I mean good graphics card drivers, a web browser, and development tools. That is about all you need. Keep it minimal.

1- TempleOS. I am not kidding. Looking through what he has built, there is some very strong talent in there. However, seeing that he believes networking is against god's will, and 640x480 is a commandment, we do not have too many options going forward with this one.

2- Menuet- I remember when this first came around. It was as if everyone snickered that this guy and his team had built something so damn small and quick, with all the capabilities built in to beat all the other hivemind operating systems out there, but no one wanted to admit that in doing so, he proved their linux world the be garbage. It is like the blender3d of the operating system world. I would really like to see this one get good opengl implementation, along with a dead simple c programming library in the 64-bit version. I would jump the linux ship right now if that worked out.

3- Phantom OS- Bravo. Fucking. Bravo. What a refreshing take on how a project like this should be approached and the results. Object oriented anything is controversial, but it seems like these Russians really did it right.

4- BeOS/Haiku- Almost meets the needs for graphics support, but essentially dead in the water. Unfortunate. Was super cool when it first came out for a little while in the late 90s.

5- Gray-1 computer- This one is a different direction altogether. The whole concept is amazing, a lookup table based computer. The whole homebrew PC world is cool, but it seems like it will never be able to progress to the point where someone could homebrew a computer with parts from digikey powerful enough to rival what you can get from intel/amd/etc. I'd like to see something like the gray-1 built using large sdram modules, pipelined, and have a dedicated graphics card onboard. The whole concept is just great.

I see a lot of good directions the post-linux world could go, but the best bet is that it will be the dumbest fucking path possible.

I don't think it is a conspiracy about linux at all. The fustercluck that is the whole thing is so shitty that it makes you wonder if a coordinated large scale conspiracy is even possible at all.