Operating System Tribes

It occurs to me that, aside from the sort of brand attachment tribalism one sees, operating system choice is a modern sort of "cultural" shibboleth - something that not only separates users into various camps, but serves as an indicator for a way of thinking, speaking, and acting. Of course, (particularly if one is a fan of Richard Stallman) the choice can also be political.

Yet, with the implications of "choice" put aside, there is the (chicken-and-egg) question of influence. Consider the difference of working in the starkness of Plan 9 versus the lushness of OS X. Or how about the difference between Linux and *BSD users? The latter have often seemed (at least in discussion groups) a more mature and less "political" group. What of the people who enjoy working with Windows? What of the ones who like it enough (but maybe not Microsoft) to create their own version of it?

What are the lineages, the lines of derivation? The BSD versus Sys V Unix lines? The Apple kin, NextStep and BeOS, then their progeny and spin-offs: Zeta, OpenBeOs, OpenStep/GNUStep, and SkyOS, for example? What of the OS that won't die, AmigaOS?

Are these merely tools, chosen as the old adage goes? Or are Operating Systems akin to programming languages - bounding the limits of language and thought in a Whorfian manner, something I discussed previously? That there is a tribal quality to OS choice seems widely recognized, if only subconsciously. Thus, groups refer to themselves as "cultures" and indeed often have their own customs, "gods", legal documents, and even bits of language (tools, processes).

It seems that there is the possibility an interesting anthropological study here.