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Operating System
What is the most portable OS in the world?
3
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26
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May 8, 2022
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3
Options
Considered
What is the most portable OS in the world
Price
Based On
Default Desktop Environment
--
Gentoo
Free
NONE
NONE
--
Knoppix
-
Debian
LXDE, KDE or GNOME
--
NetBSD
-
Research Unix>Berkeley Software Distribution>
-
See Full List
--
Gentoo
My Rec
ommendation
for
Gentoo
My Recommendation for
Gentoo
All
20
Experiences
1
Pros
16
Cons
2
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Great for anyone who is serious about learning the intricacies of Linux
It's useful for both beginners and professionals. For the installation, Gentoo offers various types, which are referred to as stages. Basically meaning how in depth you would want to go into the process of installation. For beginners, it's useful to choose for a starting distro due to its various stages that can be very time consuming but beneficial as you learn the composition in general of Linux.
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Top
Con
•••
Customized package installation can take a long time and cause installation failures
The Gentoo package management system allows you to configure what compilation flags packages should support - i.e. specific processor flag support (SSE, SSE2, etc.), -O1, -O2, -O3 optimization, etc. If you accept one of the default flags, Gentoo downloads binaries from the server. However, if you decide to optimize, it can and will download all source packages and start compiling ALL the programs and libraries on your system. If your chosen flags don't work with a particular library, the installation will fail.
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SpontaneousTantalus's Experience
Linux kernel drivers aren't easily portable because there is no hardware abstraction layer against a driver can be written to. Every time Linux kernel needs to be ported to another system, its drivers needs to be rewritten. Gentoo, which uses Linux kernel with no HAL, is, by definition, less portable than other operating systems.
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Specs
Based On:
NONE
Default Desktop Environment:
NONE
Init-System:
OpenRC
Package Manager:
Portage
See All Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Portage's emerge is powerful
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Top
Con
•••
Very steep learning curve
You should already have some clue how a Linux distribution's internals work. The wiki is a great help in learning, but it requires some experience to not struggle at basic problems. The less you touch in gentoo, the easier it is though.
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Top
Pro
•••
Can be officially systemd-free
Gentoo's default init system is OpenRC. Gentoo also officially supports systemd-free Gnome and udev.
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Top
Pro
•••
More fine-grained control over packages
Thanks to the Portage package manager, you can forbid the installation of certain packages by "masking" them, adding packages to different "world sets" for maintaining them separately, using stable and unstable branch of packages individually or system-wide and installing different versions of the same package in "slots". And unlike Arch, because of compiling, linker errors after package manager actions are less likely to happen, and when they do, you can build dependencies reversely.
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Top
Pro
•••
Portability
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Top
Pro
•••
Gentoo does not impose a standard look-and-feel
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Top
Pro
•••
A very large collection of software is available
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Top
Pro
•••
Documentation and community are second to none
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Top
Pro
•••
USE flag system for extreme flexibility
A feature called USE flags control how packages are compiled from source, and what options are configured to get compiled. That means you can have per-packages USE flags to enable or disable certain features in them, or system-wide USE flags to enable or drop support for something you don't want entirely.
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Top
Pro
•••
Fully customizable
The usage of advanced features like USE flags makes it more customizable than any binary distribution.
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Top
Pro
•••
Can by optimized to any given CPU by using proper compile flags
Since everything is being built on your PC you can tune the code to make use of your CPU.
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Top
Pro
•••
Live USB
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Top
Pro
•••
Full control of the software
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Top
Pro
•••
Creating and updating packages is easy
With the e-build overlays, you can easily add, change and update packages. Many e-classes are available for helping you package specific languages, build systems without redundant invocations.
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Top
Pro
•••
Good for people who want to compile everything
Based on everything being compiled from source which means it comes with a very flexible system for compiling packages - USE flags, CFLAGS, and company, both global and per package. With USE flags you can select what is included in each package and with CFLAGS you can set various compiler optimization options (it's recommended to stick with the more common ones for most packages except those known to benefit from more extreme optimization as overdoing it can actually produce slower binaries, make compiles take forever and introduce weird bugs). Binary packages are available for some packages, especially those that are hard to compile correctly or those that take very long.
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Top
Pro
•••
Vast possibilities and options for system programs
While having less official packages for desktop applications compared to something like Arch Linux, it has many options for system programs and utilities. For example the choice of glibc, uclibc and musl. Also the choice of kernel, vanilla kernel, gentoo patched kernel and even GNU/Hurd. You also have the choice to have a Gentoo FreeBSD.
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See All
Free
Recommend
13
1
--
Knoppix
My Rec
ommendation
for
Knoppix
My Recommendation for
Knoppix
All
2
Pros
1
Specs
Top
Pro
•••
Powerful and lightweight
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Specs
Based On:
Debian
Default Desktop Environment:
LXDE, KDE or GNOME
Init-System:
SysV, knoppix-autoconfig
Package Manager:
Debian Package Manager
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Recommend
4
--
NetBSD
My Rec
ommendation
for
NetBSD
My Recommendation for
NetBSD
All
10
Experiences
1
Pros
7
Cons
1
Specs
Top
Con
•••
Lack of drivers
It lacks drivers for some new devices.
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Top
Pro
•••
Architecture portability
It's the most portable OS in the world when considering what architectures it can run on. It runs on very wide range of hardware, from toaster to satellites. This of course does not mean it supports drivers for many consumer facing products making it a difficult solution to just boot up and use when compared to other OSs.
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KindheartedKutkh's Experience
NetBSD software work on every architecture it claims to support, no undocumented and strange behaviors. I have had Gentoo on PCs fail to install common ebuilds when adjusting USE flags for features that are normally considered default. Portability is often taken into consideration when using embedded devices, of which are complicated enough without the additional points of failure in the operating system as default.
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Specs
Based On:
Research Unix>Berkeley Software Distribution>
Official Supported Architectures:
https://www.netbsd.org/ports/
Top
Pro
•••
NetBSD is the most Unix-liked Open Source OS
NetBSD always aims at being the most Unix-liked Open Source OS. It does not pretend one is another e.g. csh is real csh not tcsh, vi is real vi not vim, nvi or elvis. It's brings all favors of the real BSD Unix with ease of use.
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Top
Pro
•••
NetBSD is the real OS
NetBSD is the real OS, not just the kernel. It includes all toolchain and userland with inclusion of pkgsrc, which can also be ported to various platforms.
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Top
Pro
•••
It's Open Source
It's open source with a BSD License, which is much more business friendly than GPL. It's the real ancestor of Mac, that is being used nowadays.
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Top
Pro
•••
Adhere to the standard
It adheres to traditional Unix and new defined standards.
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Top
Pro
•••
Highest portability
NetBSD is the most portable OS. It runs on nearly all architectures, one can imagine.
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Top
Pro
•••
Clean source code
NetBSD focuses on clean source code. Cleanliness of source code is the first piority before release any new versions.
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7
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