Just to add in my 2 cents here. Operating systems have been licensed and owned for a very long time. Even though the BSDs are Unix descendants and Linux is a clone, you can't call them Unix because it is a registered trademark. And Unix is the "grandfather OS" (for those interested in the history http://www.levenez.com/unix/). I am very strong believer, that the user should be able to determine their personal computing experience, not a single company stating "this is how computing is done, deal with it". I choose to run OSS on my computers because, personally I feel I am more productive when working on them. It is also nice having a computer doing exactly what I tell it, not what it thinks I meant, or as in Vista, "are you sure you want to delete this program"..."are you really sure you want to delete this program"..."are you.." ect. That is what privilege separation is for (sorry I am starting to rant).

But as Spidy's Uncle Ben says "With great power comes great responsibility"

Just to add my .02 cents to this conversation. I have been trying to get away from windows since win98. I have tried many variations of *Nix systems since then and I have even tried BeOS (which by the way IMHO is one of the best that didn't make it, hoping the Open Source version does). I am just now to the point to were I am finally away from a systems that tells me what I can and can't do on a system. But in general with flexibility, generally comes complexity. Companies like Canonical, Novel, and even Red Hat (shudders), try there best to simplify the UI. I for that for the most part (even though it is just eye cany) Novel can be thanked for XGL, which brought 3rd effects to the *Nix desktop before Vista was released. An even better example of great things and the polish you are probably looking for is Ubuntu's Add/Remove programs. It just works, and every app that is listed in there is "supported" by Canonical (but my want to go to there site for the fine print on what that means). There are so many great things happing in this community right now that I am very hopeful of what the future of computing will bring. Me personally I have use FreeBSD, but that is defiantly not for your average user. But for the most part all the same apps run in it as in Linux. Heck with the built in Linux runtime layer, and Nvidia providing native drivers, I am able to play Unreal Tournament 2k4.

One thing to take into consideration here is that Nintendo considers itself a Software company, and not a hardware company. So what that means is they will build hardware to match the way they want to play their games. Some "egghead" over there thought that it would be fun to play with two screens and a stylus. For a lot of the games that kind of innovation has worked out very well. Taking consoles as a whole, most other companies try to put as much functionality as possible in them, which in the end pulls away from what is supposed to be there first and primary function GAMES. I like the fact that when it came to this generation of handhelds and consoles that Nintendo was brave enough to make some sacrifices (graphics power), to show the world a new way to play games.

my .02

As to the original posted. Open Source *Nix systems really can't be called Unix due do copyright, nit picky I know but my .02, on that. As far as which system to install a *Nix type Operating system on, I would say the PC. try looking at http://www.distrowatch.com as they list the more popular distributions of Linux and BSD. And an early poster was correct as saying that you already are running *Nix on your system as OS X is built on FreeBSD (forked into Darwin).

For others here, I have been trying to make my escape from windows for years on end, and I finally accomplished that goal. Granted *Nix is not for everyone, but for the adventurous, it is defiantly worth trying out. On my primary desktop that I built, it has solely been running FreeBSD for nearly a year now (and I still get to play Unreal Tournament :) ). As for my laptop I paid the extra money not to have Pista installed on it (Have XP instead). IMHO, it was released to early, and being a computer tech (doing house calls) the interoperability with existing XP machines can make a man rip his hair out.