The greatest software ever written

[unixronin]

According to InformationWeek, it's Unix -- and specifically, BSD 4.3:

The single Greatest Piece of Software Ever, with the broadest impact on the world, was BSD 4.3.  Other Unixes were bigger commercial successes. But as the cumulative accomplishment of the BSD systems, 4.3 represented an unmatched peak of innovation.  BSD 4.3 represents the single biggest theoretical undergirder of the Internet. Moreover, the passion that surrounds Linux and open source code is a direct offshoot of the ideas that created BSD: a love for the power of computing and a belief that it should be a freely available extension of man's intellectual powers--a force that changes his place in the universe.

Comments

[smandal.livejournal.com]

FreeBSD looks very appealing, but hardware support for laptops and sundry PC hardware is still an issue, AFAIK.

If I get a new laptop, I'll probably give it a test drive on my old one. In the meantime, Gentoo does the job pretty well -- Portage tools need to progress and improve performance, ebuilds need to improve in quality and up-to-dateness, and binary packages would be nice.

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

MMm... loves me the BSD :-)