# IBM AIX 13 Hacker News commenters recommended IBM AIX and 12 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 8 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended for its early design, such as LVM and a pageable kernel, and for nostalgia; critics call it dated and costly to license from IBM. ## Why people recommend it - Fascinating early design: LVM, pageable kernel (2 comments): "I find AIX to be fascinating. Especially 3.x against contemporaries with its LVM, and a pageable kernel" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45878418)) "kernel threads, pageability, and preemptibility at a time when no one else did" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45880869)) - Fond memories of early AIX use (3 comments): "I did use an IBM PowerPC 43P as a daily driver under AIX 3.1 for a long while" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49785346)) "the draw for me was having an AIX system to work with" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49145756)) "AIX was neat, if a little weird" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46503624)) - Versioned, shareable tool config (2 comments): "The major benefits are that my adoption/deletion of skills, rules, hooks, MCP servers, etc. are deliberate, versioned, and shareable." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49601053)) "it does encourage you to keep versioned config in one spot" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49601114)) ## What people warn about - Seen as dated and outdated (3 comments): "AIX made you question your life choices, especially if you wandered off into one of the mainframe versions" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48273819)) "every high-performance platform back then was an abomination" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46505535)) "which were outdated even 20 years ago" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46021039)) - Proprietary vendor lock-in costs (2 comments): "pay massive taxes to Sun (Solaris) or IBM (AIX)" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48530641)) "away from both legacy and proprietary platforms" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46443426)) - Disliked after working with it (2 comments): "I used to work with both and don't miss them in the least." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46928526)) "I found myself grumpily using a HMC and bloody AIX." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49799297)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Windows](https://hackerapproved.com/p/windows.md): 1287 recommend - [macOS](https://hackerapproved.com/p/macos.md): 1041 recommend - [Linux](https://hackerapproved.com/p/linux.md): 745 recommend - [Haiku](https://hackerapproved.com/p/haiku-os.md): 115 recommend - [NetBSD](https://hackerapproved.com/p/netbsd.md): 100 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://www.ibm.com/products/aix) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "IBM AIX", https://hackerapproved.com/p/aix/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).