@fasnix @codemonkeymike

It's difficult to give a succinct answer, because it naturally depends on your use cases. For me, personally, I find BSD a lot more manageable than Linux on servers of various kinds; I find Linux more useful on workstation and development class machines.

With respect to the larger point, there's an interesting (to me) dichotomy here: because the BSDs have not been given nearly as much energy as Linux over the years, they're correspondingly less developed: a lot of Open Source software is "Linux First", for instance, with other systems being given token consideration, if any, and so they tend to lag behind the leader. So there's less incentive to use alternatives. But because there's less incentive, those alternatives don't get better at the same rate as Linux.

It is undeniable that there _are_ powerful network effects that one takes advantage of when one uses Linux that are not available on other systems, but again: that leads towards a monoculture, which as with biological systems, isn't super awesome for the overall health of the ecosystem.

@codemonkeymike that sort of reinforces my thesis. The Linux ecosystem _is_ remarkably diverse, but that no one else is wondering what one might want beyond it shows that the questions aren't being asked: it's just not considered. What might one want? Perhaps a different development model (illumos is a good example here), or other community norms (the BSDs: the mailing lists have rather different norms across projects, but also than, say, the LKML).

Broadly speaking, operating systems have devolved into two main categories: Windows, and Unix-like (including Linux and macOS, the BSDs, and illumos).

Discounting purely research systems, some others exist, but they're so niche as to be negligible (Haiku, Plan 9/9front, a few retro-ish hobby things) or controlled by a single corporate entity (Fuchsia, OpenVMS) or tied to expensive, proprietary hardware (various mainframe systems, and a few minicomputer systems that are quietly hanging on). No one explores new models, though, because Linux has become more or less a commodity and is the default.

Vis older hardware, another poster mentioned NetBSD, which actively works to support older architectures and will often serve to keep machines from becoming e-waste in landfills. For upcycle types of machines, I imagine that many of them will also run FreeBSD (commodity 64-bit CPUs have been common for the last 15 or so years), or OpenBSD. Would Haiku run? Possibly! Perhaps even ReactOS?

Anyway, I don't mean to detract from your otherwise excellent point by ratholing on random technical goo, but I think that the point is that there _are_ alternatives to Linux that are neither macOS nor Windows, but as you said, the question often isn't even asked. I personally find that disappointing, because it really does mean that we're converging on a monoculture, and I don't think that's a good thing overall. We have open source alternatives, we should be encouraging their growth in addition to support Linux.

@codemonkeymike I agree with the sentiment, but have to say I find it somewhat dismaying that the open source OS landscape is a de facto monoculture. FreeBSD and OpenBSD exist, for example, and may work in places where Linux feels awkward (or vice versa).

One can't help but feel that the dominance of Linux has closed off interesting avenues of development. That's not Linux's fault, exactly, but it is a kind of unfortunate outcome.