Ask HN: Recommendation for a non-Linux OS to play around with?

[Apocryphon]

Looking for an OS to install into a partition and experiment with, besides Linux. *BSD, Chromium OS, Firefox OS, Haiku, AROS/MorphOS, OpenIndiana, OpenVMS, what's worth checking out?

[charlieegan3]

You might be interested in checking out Redox. https://github.com/redox-os/redox

[gigatexal]

Curious why you want to partition and dual boot. Why not make a VM? Of the ones you listed I like FreeBSD. That'd be my vote.

[sigjuice → gigatexal]

A VM is absolutely the best choice for experimenting with operating systems. Dual booting is rather inconvenient and can be risky, if you are not careful while setting it up. My guess would be that OP does not have a free or convenient way to do VMs.

I use VMWare Fusion, KVM and plain Qemu (especially for non-Intel systems). All three allow convenient kernel debugging using gdb built with --enable-targets=all. Also, Fusion and KVM support nested virtualization, if you plan to tinker with hypervisors.

[gigatexal → sigjuice]

You'll need chips with the ability to do nested vms. I think it's a fairly new feature for the Xeon class intel chips.

[Cozumel]

Why not try them all? They've all got their good points, also recommend picking up a small notebook or something to experiment with, making a partition isn't a great idea.

[kahrkunne]

For some more "out there" options: TempleOS, OpenGenera

[herbst]

TempleOS