{"id":236475,"date":"2026-04-27T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-28T02:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux\/"},"modified":"2026-04-28T01:45:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-28T05:45:08","slug":"my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/04\/27\/my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux\/","title":{"rendered":"My 5 favorite open source operating systems that aren&#8217;t Linux"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux\/\">My 5 favorite open source operating systems that aren&#8217;t Linux<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux\/\">https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-04-27 22:00:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"www.zdnet.com\">www.zdnet.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>    <span class=\"c-shortcodeImage_credit g-outer-spacing-top-xsmall u-block\">picture alliance \/ Contributor\/\tpicture alliance via Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Follow ZDNET: <span class=\"c-commerceLink\"><span>Add us as a preferred source<\/span><\/span> on Google.<\/p>\n<h3>ZDNET&#8217;s key takeaways<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>Although Linux is the king of open-source OSes, there are options.<\/li>\n<li>Here you&#8217;ll find a few open-source OSes to toy around with.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t expect any of these to be viable options for daily use.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>When you think of open-source operating systems, most likely only one option springs to mind: Linux.<\/p>\n<p>That makes perfect sense, given that Linux is the most popular open-source OS on the planet (and starting to catch up with non-open-source OSs).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: Ready for a Linux laptop? I recommend a Tuxedo to beginners and pro users alike<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>But Linux isn&#8217;t the only open-source game in town. In fact, there are several open-source options that you can try. I found five in particular that are interesting enough to share with you, including four that reimagine an operating system from the past and one built by a single developer (take that, Linus).<\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s see what there is to see within the realm of non-Linux open-source operating systems.<\/p>\n<h2>1. Haiku<\/h2>\n<p>The first time I tried<\/p>\n<p>Haiku was two-thousand-two<\/p>\n<p>It was in alpha.<\/p>\n<p>Decades later, Haiku has finally reached beta. Yup, that&#8217;s one slow development process. What attracted me to Haiku was its slight resemblance to the Afterstep Window manager\u00a0that I once used and loved. Why the resemblance? Haiku is a reimagining of the late BeOS, inspired by NeXTSTEP (which in turn inspired AfterStep).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Besides the nifty UI, the craziest thing about Haiku is that it installs in seconds. On top of that, you probably won&#8217;t find an OS where the apps run as fast as they do on Haiku. The trade-off is that you might not find the app you need. The good news is that there&#8217;s the Haiku Depot, where you can install plenty of apps (even the likes of LibreOffice).\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Also: You can use Linux 7.0 on these 7 distros today &#8211; here&#8217;s what to expect<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Another cool feature found in Haiku is the Deskbar, which gives you quick access to minimized applications&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>My 5 favorite open source operating systems that aren&#8217;t Linux https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/article\/my-5-favorite-open-source-operating-systems-that-arent-linux\/ Publish Date: 2026-04-27 22:00:00&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":236476,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.zdnet.com\/a\/img\/resize\/47df64e0c74d0f92a7ee2c19ba51186a4932914a\/2026\/04\/27\/b1f47319-d69a-490a-84a3-8a6d9427f317\/templeos-header.png?auto=webp&fit=crop&height=675&width=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[71],"class_list":["post-236475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-linux","tag-linux"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236475"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":236477,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236475\/revisions\/236477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236476"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}