I know Catch can say that because he's a Unix guy who switched,
I just had a conversation in PM with another user about this... they asked my favorite operating systems... and I replied:

"For research and software development or large data processing systems UNIX can't be beat. I prefer AIX for large data processing systems and Solaris or IRIX as a workstation... SUSE isn't bad either.

For graphical development/editing systems... MacOS and IRIX again get my vote.
"

People just accuse me of being anti-UNIX because I have a realistic idea about its security architecture.

And gore... at 16, your cousin needs to learn to shut his mouth and open his mind. I think we can all agree how clueless we were at 16.

cheers,

catch