What ever happened to Tandem and NonStop OS 2025

I would tend to agree, but I'll summarize them for BAH, so she can make an informed choice.

Under the hood there are two worlds, Linux and BSD, but they are pretty alike in their adherence to specifications.

Of the BSDs, OpenBSD is the lean and mean one that runs on all stuff remotely PC-like. It follows the spirit of the original minimalism closely. It is small and fast, and I've seen the working set of the kernel fit entirely in cache. If you really want some hard-core, excellent unix experience this is the one to take. Of course, when it comes to things like security and process control stuff OpenBSD outshines them all.

FreeBSD is the larger, somewhat PC-centric one. It has accumulated a ports collection that is mightly impressive. Not so hard core; the modern Macs use this beneath the hood. Still has a very resposive "touch and feel".

NetBSD is the os "for the rest of us"; and has a great focus on portability. Runs on lots of different iron. Impressive work on portability.

Dragonfly BSD has been quite a renegade, and has stirred up a lot of important activity, but I would still call it a little too close to bleeding edge for a first install. That may change just in a few months though.

These are all based on the same codebase, 4.2bsd-lite. They have excellent stability.

Linux is different. It is a reimplementation, which was simplistic at first, but has improved tremendously. Be sure to get a 2.6 kernel. Internally, it is as close to Tops20 as it is to clbuttic unix; it has stolen liberally from the marketplace of ideas, and this is now beginning to shine.

It has lots and lots of neat packaging.

Linux distros are the packages mostly suited for new installs.

"PA1050's" exist :

OpenBSD can run IBCs, Linux and FreeBSD FreeBSD can run IBCs, Linux and legacy FreeBSD Linux can run itself and various legacy stuff

Netbsd? ISTR it can run Linux and IBCs, but is there more? Wine also loads and tries to execute windows binaries. By now, wine is actually sufficiently complete so that it runs the stuff that is actually written according to the W95 spec.

Lots and lots of stuff uses undocumented windows calls though; and wine fights to stay afloat. The core of wine is pretty close to pa1050; plus some dynamic linking and library stupid tricks. Most of this work is done on Linux and FreeBSD.

In Unix, Real Stuff is always built from source. Very few sharp edges exist there anymore (outside of the bleeding edge).

In our corporate environment we are using Macs and Fedora Core for front end (i.e. user visible) stuff, Fedora Core for large servers and OpenBSD for small servers.

Also, be aware that the window system is separate. It comes in three flavors, KDE; Gnome and "clbuttic". They are mostly compatible at a user programming level, so user programs like browsers etc. run happily on all of them. It is easy to change windowing system; it feels a little like a change of wardrobe.

As a very first taste (an an excellent test of the actual hardware to use) try knoppix. It is a linux that just runs from the CD itself without messing with the hard disk. Sort of an old OS booted from tape. It can still run all the stuff, but is a little sluggish due to the lack of a real disk for the binaries. I bring it to all hardware stores to evaluate hardware.