Linux is rapidly becoming just another OS for the sheeple (to add to the likes of MS, Apple, and Google).
So - I’m for Haiku keeping its native heritage. It’s for the discerning among us.
I just looked at the Syllable source tarball size on the download site. The entire OS is 61 Megabytes. Just the KERNEL for Linux is now more than that. I haven’t looked at the Haiku tarball to check its size (can’t seem to find the r1a3 url on Haiku files). But anyway - nuff said.
[quote=ronald-scheckelhoff]Linux is rapidly becoming just another OS for the sheeple (to add to the likes of MS, Apple, and Google).
[/quote]
First of all, it’s Gnu/Linux, NOT Linux – Linux is the kernel (or maybe I’m old school on that).
Google Android and Chrome (OS) are proprietary Gnu/Linux at their core, but the masses don’t seem to care, and the media calls them “Linux” anyway, though most claims I’ve found are usually mainly hyperbole by non-hacker, hip-magazine types that feed on sensation and generally don’t have a clue how a computer works. (Yet, in the midst of that, there are knowledgeable, good writers, like John Siracusa’s works on OS X.)
Ubuntu and the Steam OS have as of recently become a significant problem as well, as they have fully embraced this same ideology of expanded market share and mainstream app title access over freedom. The other problem is trying to open a complex system to people that generally have been shown not to care about proper usage and expecting a secure, free experience, when Gnu/Linux just is not built for their abuse and usage yet. And Fedora does indeed have one particular organization as a SELinux contributor I will not name here but that I would be wary of as well.
However, not all Gnu/Linux distributions share in these problems. I still like the configurability of Slackware 13.37, Gentoo, and Debian; additionally, there are few others that remain in the midst of the 900+ needless distros out there that take up space that one could argue for. True, Linux has risen into real-time spotlight prominence and is now part of the “big three”, but it has earned that success, and still remains a free system and perhaps one of the best I’ve ever used or developed on. Your system’s security, openness, and speed is about choice and how you configure a good distribution, such as the ones I’ve mentioned that most other devs around the 'net would agree on as well, besides *BSD and Solaris.
In short, without giving a full-out lecture or starting a “flame war”, I love Haiku and its minimalist ideals/good design as well, but please don’t bash other systems or pool ALL of “Linux” or its users into one category unless those claims are well-founded. By making claims like the one I quoted, one begins to develop an elitist mentality, which is never good, as it nearly destroyed Apple and divides open source communities everywhere.
agreimann :
You make your point, and I’m sure RMS would be proud. Like the magazine hypsters you referenced, I sometimes omit the GNU part, when referring to the kernel AND the userland.
And yes - generalizations are bad. I think I could live with a really slim Linux distro, without all the chaf. I recently ran a version of Debian with just framebuffer Netsurf, no X, and the most minimal userland. It’s not too bad. The way Google handles its Linux-inside OS is somewhat disconcerting, but you’re correct when you say it’s more open than the other two in the three.
Edit: well - I guess it’s completely open, but they sometimes drag their feet.
SliTaz is a small live/installable (Linux) distro, 34mb.
It is that small because it uses Busybox instead of the GNU utils packages.
Haiku will be good when it gets finished, it’s just that it is taking a long time to reach release-1.
More hardware support will be needed, & this will take still more time, so I think the UI will stay as is.
If you’re serious about a minimal system, Gentoo is the best one (but it will take quite a bit of your time if you build it.) Debian and Slackware, as I mentioned before, are great distributions as they can be configured to suit your preferences from the core up (as you have found yourself, with your X.org-less environment), but you only have so much control. Also, I have found BSD to be a good system as well back when I tried it on a G4.
I never mentioned Chrome OS was more open than the others anywhere; I mentioned Chrome OS, Steam OS, Ubuntu, and the rest of their ilk in the same sense, after which I gave three examples of what I believe were/are good examples of Gnu/Linux distributions. Chrome OS stems from the open source Chromium (OS) project, and in this sense, what is done with most of the code is open. But the proprietary components that are in the finalized, proprietary copy of Chrome are anything but what Linux, the Gnu project, and free software stand for. I actually view (Mac) OS X and Chrome OS in the same sense; their core may be open, but what they present to and lock down the end user with on the outside is not free (as in “free speech”).
I’m just clarifying what I was saying earlier, but again, I don’t want to start a flame war in any way; we all have our opinion and this is just mine…
don’t you mean systemd/linux? 
i kid. still, how much of the userspace even is gnu anymore