Free/Open/NetBSD or any other alternatives? (Other than Linux...) (Already tried Mandrake but I use Solaris at work so I'd like to get closer to that if I can.) What's the primary differences between the three BSDs? Main usage will be as a "desktop" machine running X... I'd also like to try using a version of WINE to see if I can get a game or two running. Also, how can I make sure that I don't screw up my boot sector and such when I install (whatever) if I want to dual boot to XP Home as well? Would not be good to end up with an unbootable Windows or unbootable system! :p I'm pretty sure I have a few gigs worth of partitions (EXT2 I believe) so that's not the worry, just the dual booting stuff. Do any UNIXes have a problem dual booting with XP Home?

Check out Haiku/OpenBeOSWhile not based on UNIX, it is POSIX compliant. It is an attempt to recreate and improve upon BeOS, a brilliant OS that development stopped on due to a focus shift and then financial failure of the company. [bawling]

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Original quote by Tebriel Also, how can I make sure that I don't screw up my boot sector and such when I install (whatever) if I want to dual boot to XP Home as well? Would not be good to end up with an unbootable Windows or unbootable system!

Absolute worst case scenario you can boot with your Windows XP CD and restore the master boot record.

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Original quote by Tebriel Do any UNIXes have a problem dual booting with XP Home?

Not that I know of.

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What's the primary differences between the three BSDs?

OpenBSD emphasizes on security. It does an excellent job as firewall/server and other network related functions. I wouldn't recommend it for desktop use though.
NetBSD is very portable. If you can't run NetBSD on it, it's not a computer and vice versa. I've never used it so I don't know how it works as a desktop system.
FreeBSD is the most 'user friendly' BSD. The 'one size, fits all' of the BSDs. Perfectly usable as desktop/server/firewall platform. If you want a desktop BSD, go with FreeBSD.
Wine should work on FreeBSD too. I'm not sure about Cedega (WineX).

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I use Solaris at work

IIRC you can get Solaris 9 for x86 for free from the Sun website. I don't have the link but you'll surely find it (Yes, it's legal. I downloaded it from the Sun website).

If, by any chance, you'd like to give linux a second try then the closest you can get to BSDs is Slackware linux.

There's also DragonFly BSD.

If I had a "normal" XP CD I could use that to fix my mbr, but I'm lucky enough to have a "with purchase of a new system" XP CD. :/

So I'm not sure it'll be the same...what's the next best way, as a backup, in case the CD is screwy?

If you're really uncomfortable with touching the mbr don't touch it and make a boot disk. You can then make a backup of it and write to it with lilo or grub. If anything bad happens you still have the boot disk and can restore the mbr from your backup using that.

Another way to get wipe out grub/lilo is to use fdisk with the /mbr argument. You can find a dos boot disk at www.bootdisk.com. Some of the images should include the fdisk util.

I've used fdisk before but wasn't sure if it was still ok for using with WinXP, okay.

btw This is off topic a little, but does creating a custom kernel provide a noticeable performance boost or have any other advantages?

You can boot linux/unix/anything with the XP (2000 really) bootloader. See here

There's also Darwin, Hurd, and AIX is there not?