That's an interesting idea! I do think that here in the United States, our government's a little bit too business friendly, but using two companies would be a good way to pit competition to (hopefully) produce a better result. Or maybe not, what do I know :P I certainly think it's an idea worth trying, though.

What do you mean by "risk aversion"? I'm genuinely curious.

Yes, let's put people with repeated criminal offenses in positions of great power! It's not like they'd ever abuse it, would they?

What is this, an Atari commercial?

Amen! For a moment, I was really excited too.

Go tell that to the BSD guys. No, they don't want to screw you over, their definition of freedom differs. To them, freedom is defined as having as absolutely few restrictions as possible. GCC vs Clang is a perfect example. GCC is intentionally made as opaque as possible to prevent you from working around it, and it's far worse in this respect then many of the proprietary compilers. Clang is more interested in being as useful to the user as it can. If you really want it summed up in one sentence, here it is: GNU projects put the license first, functionality second. THAT's what drove Apple (and pretty much everything other then Linux) away from GCC, not "They clearly want to be free to f*ck you over later".

Windows NT 3.x was NOT a microkernel. They dropped that claim on NT 4, because they knew it was false.

Damn Whales, walking on land everywhere. Oh what's that, they swim? And they way three times as much as the Dreadnoughtus? The author of this comment is not up to date...

"Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual sense to everythi- oh wait, never mind, that's the nuclear radiation."

OH MY GOD, someone else reads the exploits of 419? Epic.

Most of the people who are complaining about SystemD are either the BSD guys or those who maintain smaller distros. I'll start with the smaller distroes: they don't like it because it's a lot of maintenance (see Fuduntu), and is pretty bulky for a smaller distro. For something that is designed to be simple, reliable, and well understood by one person, SystemD goes against the principles established by these smaller distroes (Slackware, Gentoo, LFS, etc.). For the BSD guys, they actually don't care about SystemD: it doesn't affect their world, and seeing as SystemD isn't compatible with any of the BSD kernels by design, it would be fine if it were on it's own. The big problem is that SystemD is also converting applications to rely on it, and it exclusively - GNOME 3, anyone? When this happens, it starts to cut off their supply of software, and at the very least adds so much more maintenance and hassle. It's really annoying, especially given SystemD's newness, lack of a track record, and intentionally trying to be as hard to port as possible. On the other end of the spectrum, there are the SystemD proponents, mostly Redhat and Debian guys. They like it because they often maintain massive systems, which are pretty complex. At this point, integrating everything into one init process saves so much work, and makes life much easier. Neither crowd understands the other, understandably because of the vastly different approaches. The real probelm is that the SystemD proponents are pretty pushy, and insist that SystemD be used in places where I don't think it makes sense. If nothing else, maintaining compatibility would be nice, but they intentionally break it. Because of this, the classic init crowd feels threatened because their way of life - computing, same thing to us nerds here ;D - is disappearing. When this happens, there is naturally a great deal of resistance, and that's where the tensions lie. My recommendation would be for software to try to avoid being specific to either init system, and instead let the user decide. The two groups can coexist peacefully, although less aggressiveness from the SystemD people would probably go a long way towards helping this. I've tried to provide as much of an unbiased view as possible, and I hope someone finds it helpful. If I get buried at the bottom, never to be seen again, I wish the person reading this in 2034 a good day! Yes, you're probably thinking SystemD is old, crufty, and is probably about to be deprecated, but it was hip and trendy at one time, much as that blows your mind :D

Oh, good god! This post has so many holes in it that it's like a damn piece of Swiss cheese. Where do I start?

Someone didn't do his research here. Do you know what Macs are famous for? That's right, the upgrade treadmill! If you didn't want to deal with that, why the hell did you buy one?

THAT'S THE WHOLE POINT OF OS X. The "Integration" aspect is a big thing for it, and that's EXACTLY what Apple's target audience wants. Seriously, this is like raging on about how semi trucks are big, slow, and noisy. I don't know which application you're talking about, but I assume it's iPhoto. In which case, you clearly know very little about it. IPhoto doesn't do any image processing, it's ALWAYS relied on OS X's built in libraries to do that. If you've ever programmed on OS X, you should have known that.

That wouldn't change anything. CUPS is not a part of OS X, it's a separate tool. Unless, you want your OS to do integrated printing? Why Image Processing as well? ^^^^

Let's get this straight: You have coded libraries under every operating system, yet never once used the built in frameworks? You're telling me you've written HUNDREDS of libraries so small and trivial that they never used any kind of system level frameworks? That's quite an achievement. Or, most likely, you DID use this "OS esoterica". I feel for you, I know EXACTLY what you meant to say, but you're statement is just flat out incorrect.

Okay, this just ridiculous. One, you're talking about something not part of the OS. They promised you a working OS, not any guarantees that your printing would work. You didn't by a full solution, just the package. Have you even contacted their technical support about this? If you have, I'm sorry for you, but they aren't obligated to fix your issue. The best fix is to simply not buy from them next time. Two, how long have you known about this!?!? If this is an old bug, why didn't you put Linux on it? If you don't have the technical knowledge, need compatibility with an application, or found Linux just as bad, why not return it? You could then spend that money on another computer. Seriously, it's inconveniencing, but there are definitely ways around that problem. As a programmer, I would have kinda expected you to have learned by now how to flow around issues like this.

I went through this process of picking my computer operating system, from Windows to OS X to god knows how many Linux distroes. I eventually arrived at nirvana, and it was something completely off the map: FreeBSD. It's rock solid stable, has got a nice long support cycle, is a pleasure to administrate and ticker with, and has a massive library of over 24,000 applications (and no, this isn't Debian where every app is split between 10 different packages). Again, if you need a specific application, FreeBSD is pretty much ruled out (unless it happens to be a Linux app. Then, it MIGHT work. Depends.), and this thing requires you to set it up, it won't do so itself. I'm thinking it isn't for you, but it can be fun to try it out in VirtualBox or something.

If you want to plug and play convenience, you're looking at either Windows{XP or 7, most likely}, OS X{version 10.6-10.9, my recommendation is the latest supported}, or Linux{Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSe, CentOS}. Now, let's look at your options, starting with Windows: XP or 7. XP is past it's supported lifespan, and doesn't to UTF-8 well at all. So, that's one out: (-b- represents a crossed out version, with b acting as the version's name)

-XP-, 7, OS X 10.9, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, CentOS.

Now, let's look at the others. Windows 7 is a possibility, a good one at that, but costs money. If the other options don't work out, it might be worth a peak, but let's try the {cheaper, free} ones first.

-XP-,-7-, OS X, Ubuntu, Debian, OpenSUSE, CentOS.

Now, you like stability, right? In which case, we might want to rule out all the fast moving ones:

-XP-, -7-, -OS X-, -Ubuntu-, -OpenSUSE-, Debian, CentOS.

We got two left: Which one? Well, they're both pretty good. BUT, CentOS is probably more what you're looking for, since it's got release cycles of 10 years (even longer then Debian's!), and it has apparently great success with the Mac Mini (I wouldn't know personally, I only have a 2007 iMac):
https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=7161
So, our winner is CentOS! Now, if this doesn't work, we'll want an unwinding list so we can work out way back. SO:

[OS X, Ubuntu, Debian, Windows 7, CentOS].

There ya go. If one doesn't work, cross it off and work backwards. Again, if you need a specific application, this doesn't really matter - then you'll be stuck into a platform. In which case, I either recommend finding alternatives if possible, or picking a different version of OS X, one without the problem. I apologize for what was probably a rather personal attack earlier, but I hate it when people complain without trying to solve there issue, and I didn't see much indication you did. I've tried to provide some helpful guidance and a ballpark estimate for you, and although I am probably going to get flamed for what I've written here, I do sincerely wish you the best of luck with your Mac Mini.

Ugh, we've heard this before. Remember how to internet was supposed to "revolutionize" our shopping? I don't order very much at all off the internet. Plus, 3D printing machines currently rely upon plastic. YOu can wear solid plastic shoes, but I'm not.

Power pro is a utility that "changes the way you work with Windows". Got you ;). Although to be fair, it took a few google searchs to find this thing. Looks like it hasn't had an update in 20 years.

I have a small, but close group of frien..er, applications I stick with. These are: Audacious for media. Plays many files, while being light on dependencies. Indespensible. TexMaker for latex. Needed for math and science. Indespensible. Firefox/Iceweasel. I don't trust Chrome. Indespensible. vim. Best text editor availible. Indespensible. cups. My printer does not work without it. Indespensible. Bitorrent Sync. Comes on Windows, Linux, even FreeBSD! Needed to sync my folder of stuff. Indespensible. i3. How can anything beat a window manger named, "Window manager improved improved improved!". Indespensible. And yah, that's pretty much it. (Sorry, Slashdot messed up the list format. Won't let me insert a damn line break.)