Best On-Premises Operating Systems
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Compare the Top On-Premises Operating Systems as of October 2025
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What are On-Premises Operating Systems?
Operating systems are foundational software that manage computer hardware, software resources, and provide services for applications and users. They handle critical functions such as process scheduling, memory management, device control, file systems, and security. Operating systems provide a user interface—either graphical (GUI) or command-line—that allows individuals to interact with the machine. They also offer APIs and system calls that enable developers to build and run applications consistently across devices. From personal computers to servers, mobile devices, and embedded systems, operating systems are essential for ensuring stability, efficiency, and usability in modern computing environments. Compare and read user reviews of the best On-Premises Operating Systems currently available using the table below. This list is updated regularly.
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1
TrueNAS
iXsystems
TrueNAS is the world's most deployed storage software. TrueNAS is a universal data platform that allows users to easily adopt a modern, open source approach to storing and protecting their growing data. TrueNAS is open source and harnesses the power of the legendary ZFS file system to provide unified storage (File, Block Object, and Apps) with the reliability and performance demanded by virtualization, backup, and many other data-heavy workloads. The TrueNAS CORE edition (formerly FreeNAS) is based on FreeBSD for unified scale-up storage. The TrueNAS SCALE edition is based on Debian Linux for either scale-up or scale-out solutions, and offers Linux Containers, VMs (KVM), and scale-out ZFS storage capabilities. Both are known to work well on standard hardware. Join the millions already using TrueNAS, including the majority of Fortune 500 companies, and experience why TrueNAS is very highly rated for yourself.Starting Price: Free -
2
Windows Server
Microsoft
Windows Server 2022 introduces advanced multi-layer security, hybrid capabilities with Azure, and a flexible application platform. Elevate the security posture of your organization starting with the operating system. Extend your data center to Azure for greater IT efficiency. Empower developers and IT pros with an application platform to build and deploy diverse applications. See how your cost savings will add up on Azure with offers such as Azure hybrid benefit and extended security updates. Modernize your workloads on Azure, the trusted cloud for Windows Server. Connect on-premises Windows Servers to Azure with Azure Arc. Update to the latest operating system for enhanced security, performance and value. Now you can leverage all of the benefits of the cloud with Azure. It’s free to start, so manage your servers, clusters, hyper-converged infrastructure, and Windows 10 PCs with Windows Server.Starting Price: $501 one-time payment -
3
NomadBSD
NomadBSD
NomadBSD is a persistent live system for USB flash drives, based on FreeBSD®. Together with automatic hardware detection and setup, it is configured to be used as a desktop system that works out of the box, but can also be used for data recovery, for educational purposes, or to test FreeBSD®'s hardware compatibility. The images for 64-bit and 32-bit computers fit on a 5GB USB flash drive. A system with a 1.2GHz CPU and 1G of RAM should be able to run NomadBSD decently. Booting is possible via BIOS and UEFI. We've decided to change the versioning scheme to the following form: FFfX-YYYYMMDD, where FF is the major two-digit FreeBSD version, f is the minor version, and X stands for ALPHA (A), BETA (B), RC, or RELEASE (R). Followed by a date. The new scheme allows us to provide images with different version of FreeBSD.Starting Price: Free -
4
IBM z/OS
IBM
IBM® z/OS® brings the computing power and resources of the IBM Z® platform to help you drive business transformation and accelerate innovation. Get the stable, secure environment your organization requires to improve performance for mission-critical workloads and meet future challenges. A highly secure and scalable operating system for running mission-critical applications. The new IBM® z16™ platform accelerates decision velocity, protects against threats across your business, and modernizes for hybrid cloud. IBM z/OS V2.5 enables innovative development to support hybrid cloud and AI business applications, along with next-level technologies for security and resilience. With a continuous delivery model, new z/OS capabilities are available quarterly with no impact on stability, complexity, or costs. Achieve rapid application development and provisioning for hybrid cloud deployment. Simplified and modern experience for easier installation, management, etc. -
5
openIndiana
openIndiana
OpenIndiana is an operating system from and for the illumos community, it branches from the UNIX-derived family tree, and as such it can sometimes seem quite complex. But with a little help and information, once you know the basics, you will find it actually has some of the nicest and friendliest tools around. As most Unix-derived operating system, it can be completely controlled via a Command Line Interface shell, but it also supports a windowing GUI system. From the CLI, it supports a number of different shells, the two main ones being ksh93 and Bash. It also supports the original SunOS SVR4 commands, the command and syntax famiilar to BSD users, and a large portion of the GNU userland commands that most Linux users are familiar with. You can select any or all of those different commands from your shell configuration, giving you the environment you are most happy with. -
6
NetBSD
NetBSD
NetBSD is a free, fast, secure, and highly portable Unix-like Open Source operating system. It is available for a wide range of platforms, from large-scale servers and powerful desktop systems to handheld and embedded devices. NetBSD was originally released in 1993. Over time, its code has found its way into many surprising environments, on the basis of a long history of quality, cleanliness, and stability. The NetBSD code was originally derived from 4.4BSD Lite2 from the University of California, Berkeley. NetBSD is an entirely free and open-source UNIX-like operating system developed by an international community. It isn't a "distribution" or variant but has evolved over several decades to be a complete and unique operating system in the BSD family. NetBSD users enjoy a simple, well-documented, and fully integrated UNIX-like system that feels minimal, and in many ways traditional, while including many modern and interesting features, and support for recent hardware.Starting Price: Free -
7
OpenBSD
OpenBSD
OpenBSD is developed entirely by volunteers. The project's development environment and developer events are funded through contributions collected by The OpenBSD Foundation. Contributions ensure that OpenBSD will remain a vibrant and free operating system. Hence the OpenBSD project has embedded cryptography into numerous places in the operating system. We require that the cryptographic software we use be freely available and with good licenses. We do not directly use cryptography with nasty patents. We also require that such software is from countries with useful export licenses because we do not wish to break the laws of any country. Be as politics-free as possible; solutions should be decided on the basis of technical merit.Starting Price: Free -
8
Unraid
Unraid
Unraid OS allows you to have ultimate control over your data, media, applications, and desktops, using just about any combination of hardware. Video producers, streamers with extensive video libraries, media editors, photographers, musicians, and music collectors use Unraid to reduce their initial costs. Start with as few as two drives and scale using one or more drives at a time. Gamers who also have media servers and like to build their own custom systems use Unraid to do everything without losing their edge. Designers, 3D animators, developers, photographers, and other users who require significant storage use Unraid to locally store assets for fast access. Use Apple Time Machine and Windows Backup services to archive large quantities of infrequently accessed data off of your local devices. Software engineers, game development studios, AR/VR designers, and university labs use Unraid to test software on multiple platforms and across operating systems and devices.Starting Price: $59 one-time payment -
9
OS108
OS108
OS108 is a fast, open, and secure desktop operating system built on top of NetBSD. 1 and 0 being binary bits when represented as 8 bits forms a byte also the distance of Earth from the Sun is about 108 times the diameter of the Sun. hence the name. We are always in need of contributors who want to join the project. If you’re not a developer you can still help in the form of how-to guides and other user-centric documentation and support forums.Starting Price: Free -
10
MidnightBSD
MidnightBSD
It includes all the software you'd expect for your daily tasks — email, web browsing, word processing, gaming, and much more. With a small community of dedicated developers, MidnightBSD strives to create an easy-to-use operating system everyone can use, freely. Available for x86, AMD64 and as Virtual Machines. The FreeBSD project has developed a reliable server operating environment, but often usability and performance on the desktop is overlooked. Scheduling, allocation of resources, security settings, and available application support should be tailored to desktop users. Many of the BSD projects are tailored to servers or older hardware. Others are distributions of FreeBSD with a nice graphical user interface, but still suffer from server-centric design under the hood. We did not fork FreeBSD as a result of a falling out, but rather as an excellent starting point.Starting Price: Free -
11
OmniOS
OmniOS
The open-source enterprise server OS with just the features you need. ZFS, OmniOS' native file system, combines a volume manager and file system with strong data-integrity protection. Easily share volumes via iSCSI, CIFS, and NFS. Run lightweight OmniOS or Linux virtual machines in containers without the overhead of a traditional hypervisor and with full resource control. OmniOS also provides full hardware virtualization via bhyve and KVM for running guests such as Microsoft Windows, FreeBSD, and many others. Virtualize your network infrastructure through Crossbow virtual interfaces and switches and even allocate dedicated resources for specific services. DTrace provides a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework to aid troubleshooting across the whole software stack. Always available, instrument anything on demand. OmniOS is open-source, self-hosting, and maintained on GitHub. All development is done out in the open with pull requests and anyone can grab the source and build OmniOS.Starting Price: Free -
12
DragonFly BSD
DragonFly BSD
DragonFly version 6.2.2 is released. The 6.2 series has hardware support for type-2 hypervisors with NVMM, an amdgpu driver, the experimental ability to remote-mount HAMMER2 volumes, and many other changes. DragonFly belongs to the same class of operating systems as other BSD-derived systems and Linux. It is based on the same UNIX ideals and APIs and shares ancestor code with other BSD operating systems. DragonFly provides an opportunity for the BSD base to grow in an entirely different direction from the one taken in the FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD series. DragonFly includes many useful features that differentiate it from other operating systems in the same class. The most prominent one is HAMMER, our modern high-performance filesystem with built-in mirroring and historic access functionality. Virtual kernels provide the ability to run a full-blown kernel as a user process for the purpose of managing resources or for accelerated kernel development and debugging.Starting Price: Free -
13
eLxr
eLxr
Enterprise-Grade Linux for Edge-to-Cloud Deployments. Open-Source Collaborative Project, Debian-based Linux distribution tailored for edge to cloud use cases. Ensure consistent performance and stability, whether on device, on-prem, or in the cloud. eLxr provides a secure and stable distribution, with its foundation in opensource community innovation with predictable release and update cadence, fit for long lifecycles and long-term deployments. Cater to applications with stringent timing requirements, using preempt-rt kernel configurations to prioritize low-latency responses, ensuring that tasks are executed within precise time boundaries. Achieve better determinism and predictability compared to a standard Linux kernel. eLxr relies on a smaller footprint for better performance, optimized workloads, and smaller attack surface for resource usage efficiency. It provides all required features and attributes, considering best usage of system resources.Starting Price: Free -
14
Security Onion
Security Onion
Security Onion is a comprehensive open source platform for intrusion detection, network security monitoring, and log management. It provides a set of powerful tools to help security professionals detect and respond to potential threats across an organization's network. Security Onion integrates various technologies, including Suricata, Zeek, and Elastic Stack, to collect, analyze, and visualize security data in real-time. Security Onion’s intuitive user interface allows for easy management and analysis of network traffic, security alerts, and system logs. It also includes built-in tools for threat hunting, alert triage, and forensic analysis, helping users identify potential security incidents quickly. Security Onion is designed for scalability, making it suitable for environments of all sizes, from small businesses to large enterprises.Starting Price: Free -
15
VxWorks
Wind River
The World’s Leading Real-Time Operating System for the Intelligent Edge For nearly 35 years, VxWorks has been used to ensure the security, safety, and reliability you need to design and build mission-critical embedded systems that simply must work. VxWorks® is the industry’s most trusted and widely deployed real-time operating system (RTOS) for mission-critical embedded systems that must be secure and safe. It delivers a proven, real-time, and deterministic runtime combined with a modern approach to development. Regardless of industry or device type, companies building intelligent edge systems rely on the VxWorks pedigree of security, safety, high performance, and reliability. VxWorks is a deterministic, priority-based preemptive RTOS with low latency and minimal jitter. It is built on an upgradable, future-proof architecture to help you rapidly respond to changing market requirements and technology advancements.Starting Price: $18,500 / seat -
16
VyOS
VyOS Networks
Democratizing how we access networks through a universal router and open source software. Our vision at VyOS is to dramatically change how we access networks so that we can all build the solutions we always dreamed of, without restrictions, limitations, or prohibitive costs. We fundamentally believe that internet access is as vital to our human development as air, food, water, and healthcare. Built by engineers for engineers, VyOS is an open source software company that democratizes how we access networks so that the many, not the few, benefit from building solutions without limitations and prohibitive fees. We do this as VyOS through our open source software and virtual platforms. Stateful firewalls, zone-based firewall, all types of source and destination NAT (one to one, one to many, many to many). The entire codebase and build toolchain are available to everyone for auditing, building customized images and contributing.Starting Price: $1000 -
17
IBM i
IBM
IBM i is an integrated operating environment developed by IBM, consisting of operating system, database, middleware, and development tools. IBM I, a platform for innovators, by innovators. The latest update to IBM i has arrived. With IBM i 7.4, you'll get continuous availability (thanks to IBM Db2 Mirror for i), the latest security features, and easy integration with IoT, AI and Watson. Ensures mission-critical applications remain up and running. Enhanced security features implement the latest industry-standard practices. Protect critical business applications and data. New auditing capability at the object level. Industry-standard Open Source environments. Port more applications to IBM I. Easily integrate with IoT, AI and Watson. Get work done 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Transfer virtual save media to and from the cloud. Consolidate most commonly used tasks for managing IBM i. -
18
HP-UX
Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Highly integrated UNIX operating system and tools that deliver the highest availability, reliability, and security on mission-critical HPE Integrity servers. Streamline your operations using a highly integrated UNIX operating system with tools that delivers the highest reliability, availability, and security on mission-critical HPE Integrity servers. HP-UX gives you a dynamic, secure, and unified environment and comes pre-integrated on mission-critical HPE Integrity servers. Meet your specific UNIX mission-critical requirements. HP-UX offers four operating environments tailored to specific needs. Holistic server security and system management that includes HPE Systems Insight Manager functionality with power management, health check, and deployment tools. It also provides full performance analysis tools for kernel processes and applications. Protect your business’s most critical applications and services to keep your business on target. -
19
GhostBSD
GhostBSD
GhostBSD provides a simple desktop-oriented operating system based on FreeBSD with MATE, OpenRC and OS packages for simplicity. GhostBSD has a selection of commonly used software preinstalled and required to start using it to its full potential. GhostBSD uses the GTK environment to provide a beautiful looks and a comfortable experience on the modern BSD platform offering a natural and native Unix work environment. GhostBSD is built on top of FreeBSD code, and its roots go back to the University of California Berkeley Unix Research. Historically it was referred to as "BSD Unix" or "Berkeley Unix." However, today it is called BSD for Berkeley Software Distribution. The project goal is to combine security, privacy, stability, usability, openness, freedom and to be available for everybody free of charge. The user experience is further enhanced by tools like the Networkmgr which are developed as part of the GhostBSD project. -
20
Oracle Linux
Oracle
An open and complete operating environment, Oracle Linux delivers virtualization, management, and cloud native computing tools, along with the operating system, in a single support offering. Oracle Linux is 100% application binary compatible with Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Search the catalog to find information about independent software vendors (ISVs) who have certified their applications to run on Oracle Linux and Virtualization. Applications certified on Oracle Linux run wherever Linux runs—on-premises, in Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and in other clouds. Join us in this Oracle Tux Tech Talk webinar on July 28 and learn how to benchmark for performance, discover the benefits of the UEK, and understand which workloads see improvement from UEK. -
21
illumos
illumos
illumos is a Unix operating system which provides next-generation features for downstream distributions, including advanced system debugging, next generation filesystem, networking, and virtualization options. illumos is developed by both volunteers and companies building products on top of the software. illumos is an excellent base for both traditional and cloud-native deployments. The OmniOS and OpenIndiana distributions are a good place for new users to get started. You can install in a virtual machine or on bare metal. You need an illumos-based operating system to build illumos. Cross-compilation is not supported. illumos is freely available from our source repository. illumos is the home of many technologies including ZFS, DTrace, Zones, ctf, FMA, and more. We pride ourselves on having a stable, highly observable, and technologically different system. illumos has a proud engineering heritage, tracing it roots back through Sun Microsystems to the original releases of UNIX and BSD. -
22
Oracle Solaris
Oracle
We’ve been designing the OS for for more than two decades, always ensuring that we’ve engineered in features to meet the latest market trends while maintaining backward compatibility. Our Application Binary Guarantee gives you the ability to run your newest and legacy applications on modern infrastructure. Integrated lifecycle management technologies allow you to issue a single command to update your entire cloud installation—clear down to the firmware and including all virtualized environments. One large financial services company saw a 16x efficiency gain by managing its virtual machines (VMs) using Oracle Solaris, compared to a third-party open-source platform. New additions to the Oracle Solaris Observability tools allow you to troubleshoot system and application problems in real time, giving you real-time and historical insight and allowing for unprecedented power to diagnose and resolve issues quickly and easily. -
23
UnixWare
Xinuos
UnixWare® 7.1.4 is the latest release of Xinuos’s award winning, state of the art UNIX® operating system. It is the mature and proven operating system to support your most critical line of business applications, yet is affordably priced to host all computer needs. It supports the newest industry standard hardware platforms and peripherals and contains even more of the high performance, scalability and reliability features that you have come to expect from UnixWare. As an added bonus, the default configurations of the most popular editions have been adjusted to provide even more value for your money. New installations of UnixWare 7.1.4 as well as upgrades immediately benefit from the additional value in UnixWare 7.1.4. A new, low-entry-level edition has been added and is configured and priced for low budget pilot projects, edge of network services and line of business applications for small companies. -
24
IBM z/VM
IBM
IBM z/VM is an operating system with security-rich and scalable hypervisor and virtualization technology designed to run guest servers such as Linux, z/OS and z/TPF virtual machines as well as Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Z and LinuxONE servers. IBM z/VM runs hundreds to thousands of guest servers on a single IBM Z or IBM LinuxONE server with high efficiency and elasticity. It supports multiple machine images and architectures, simplifying migrations, facilitating application transitions, and consolidating systems onto one server. IBM z/VM excels in sharing system resources among virtual machines, offering extreme scalability, security, and efficiency, leading to cost savings and a robust foundation for cognitive computing. Use on-premises cloud computing in a hybrid cloud strategy. Scale and run thousands of Linux and container workloads efficiently. Help ensure continuous availability with IBM's resiliency offerings. -
25
IBM AIX
IBM
For over three decades, our customers have trusted AIX to run their most mission critical applications. As we enter a new era, AIX will continue to drive innovation with hybrid cloud and open source capabilities helping customers build and deploy modern applications in a secure and resilient environment. Enterprises need infrastructure that is secure, highly available and adaptable to meet changing business demands. AIX®️ on Power Systems delivers these capabilities and more, with the performance, reliability and security your mission-critical data requires. Simplify and accelerate cloud deployment of your AIX apps with an architecture consistent with your on-prem environment Achieve zero downtime during planning maintenance and modernize AIX with the latest enhancements. AIX UNIX operating system maintains a strong, long-standing security focus and reputation. -
26
eLxr Pro
Wind River
eLxr Pro from Wind River is a commercial enterprise-grade Linux solution designed for cloud-to-edge deployments, supporting mission-critical workloads like AI, machine learning, and computer vision. Built on the open-source eLxr distribution, eLxr Pro offers flexible, long-term support, security monitoring, and ongoing updates. It ensures compatibility with hardware accelerators and compliance with industry standards. By providing expert consultative services and performance optimizations, eLxr Pro helps businesses scale their edge computing solutions while managing costs, security, and resources effectively.
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