SysadminOperating System

What is the most portable OS in the world?

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Gentoo vs Knoppix vs NetBSD

Specs

Based On

NONE

Default Desktop Environment

NONE

Init-System

OpenRC

Package Manager

Portage

OS Family

GNU/Linux

Origin

Canada

Release Schedule

rolling release

Release Type

Source or Binary

Initial Release

2002

Official Supported Architectures

-

Main Usage

-

Based On

Debian

Default Desktop Environment

LXDE, KDE or GNOME

Init-System

SysV, knoppix-autoconfig

Package Manager

Debian Package Manager

OS Family

GNU/Linux

Origin

Germany

Release Schedule

Point

Release Type

Binary

Initial Release

-

Official Supported Architectures

i586

Main Usage

Live Desktop, System Rescue

Based On

Research Unix>Berkeley Software Distribution>

Default Desktop Environment

-

Init-System

-

Package Manager

-

OS Family

-

Origin

-

Release Schedule

-

Release Type

-

Initial Release

-

Official Supported Architectures

https://www.netbsd.org/ports/

Main Usage

-

Pros + Cons

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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Pro
 Portage's emerge is powerful

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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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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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Pro
 Portability

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Pro
 Gentoo does not impose a standard look-and-feel

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Pro
  A very large collection of software is available

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Pro
 Documentation and community are second to none

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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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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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Pro
 Fully customizable

The usage of advanced features like USE flags makes it more customizable than any binary distribution.
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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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Pro
 Live USB

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Pro
 Full control of the software

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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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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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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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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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Pro
 Powerful and lightweight

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Con
 Lack of drivers

It lacks drivers for some new devices.
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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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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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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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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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Pro
 Adhere to the standard

It adheres to traditional Unix and new defined standards.
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Pro
 Highest portability

NetBSD is the most portable OS. It runs on nearly all architectures, one can imagine.
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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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