Your post nothing but thinly-veiled FUD. I can't even tell what point you are trying to make, as your arguments aren't at all analogous to a social network.

There are very few serious distributions that compete for the same niche market.

Most distributions commit kernel fixes back to upstream or backport them to older versions.

s/argue/collaborate/

Compared to what?

It's pretty well known that you should never let programmers design user interfaces.

I've used a lot of free software so far, and it's extremely rare that there is no documentation. Just because it's not in your preferred format, doesn't mean it's non-existent.

Despite your example being exaggerated, I've never had to do anything so ridiculous using any free operating system. I'm willing to accept that a minority of applications have less than perfect installation procedures, but fortunately, there is rarely a shortage of alternatives in the free software world -- you can often find something better.

What does a non-geek need to know about kernel versions, distributions etc. to use Ubuntu for their non-geek activities (i.e. web browsing, writing documents and listening to music)? All these activities are possible with the default installs.

FTFY

How inconsistent. You complain about Microsoft's prices, then use pirate and/or EULA-violating Apple software and claim that option is cheaper.

Legally, you only need to pay Microsoft the tiny Windows OEM license fee to have full access to the entire .NET SDK and Express Editions. To develop an iPhone application you need to invest a lot more on the hardware and OS X (which all goes to Apple).

Then again, this is Slashdot, where Microsoft bashing takes precedence over facts.

Not if you take advantage of the free Express Editions which are mentioned on a nearly daily basis here on Slashdot, of course.

This comes up on every Slashdot article even vaguely related to Microsoft, Express Editions are free, dumbass.

You need an Apple computer for the iPhone SDK. How much is the cheapest new Apple computer?

GPL: You can only tell your friend how you built your house on the condition they tell everyone who asks, along with any original ideas your friend spent time and/or money proving themselves.

How can anything be `actively unsupported'?

ERRATA NOTICE

Good morning,

Your shill welcome pack contained a misprint on page 49, section 3, the term 'C+' should be 'C++'.

Best regards,

Apple

FTFY

This sounds a lot like what securelevel(7) already does.

There is absolutely no reason to put up walls so the sysadmin can't do anything, rather than fix the bugs that let an attacker gain root in the first place.

OpenBSD doesn't want to take over the world, see the project goals. This doesn't stop their work becoming used on a large scale, but this happens because of the software's features and technical superiority.

On the other hand, many Linux advocates seem to be obsessed with the idea of world domination. I've seen these people choose Ubuntu for reinstall/upgrade jobs when their friends and family would genuinely be more comfortable, and better off, with Windows or OS X.

Decide for yourself which is the more noble goal.

Maybe I'm wrong, but if the mail server isn't crap it should give up root privileges as soon as possible. So, to get root you need to do two things.

1) Exploit a bug in the mail server
2) Exploit a bug in the operating system to gain root privileges

If MAC is part of the operating system, and can therefore contain operating system bugs, how does it mitigate step 2? How does it mitigate it any more than an operating system without MAC?

Are you serious? The root user has ultimate power by definition. That's been the case with *NIX for decades.

It's entirely possible that a piece of hardware you buy contains portions of *BSD code.

So maybe at some point you will use it, if you don't already, just not how you'd expect.

I'm surprised you have time to investigate other operating systems if you're thinking in MMORPG analogies. :)

When operating system code is security audited, what needs can the *NIX security model not meet?

No, Ubuntu isn't unusable because of omitting features. It's unusable because what they start with is unusable, and they have nowhere to go from there.

Much like security. You can't bolt on features after the fact and suddenly have a secure product.