IBM AIX
Shares rank 41 of 87 operating systems by recommenders
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.
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.
25 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 13
- criticize it
- 12
- approval share
- 52%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 13 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1 recommender for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 8 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Fascinating early design: LVM, pageable kernel
“I find AIX to be fascinating. Especially 3.x against contemporaries with its LVM, and a pageable kernel”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Installing and using HP-UX 9” “kernel threads, pageability, and preemptibility at a time when no one else did”
Comment from 10 Nov 2025 in “Installing and using HP-UX 9” Fond memories of early AIX use
“I did use an IBM PowerPC 43P as a daily driver under AIX 3.1 for a long while”
Comment from 21 Sep 2026 in “Amiga Unix, Again” “the draw for me was having an AIX system to work with”
Comment from 2 Aug 2026 in “IBM i (OS/400) the Database Operating System” “AIX was neat, if a little weird”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “The last supported version of HP-UX is no more” Versioned, shareable tool config
“The major benefits are that my adoption/deletion of skills, rules, hooks, MCP servers, etc. are deliberate, versioned, and shareable.”
Comment from 7 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?” “it does encourage you to keep versioned config in one spot”
Comment from 7 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: How do you manage skills files?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Seen as dated and outdated
“AIX made you question your life choices, especially if you wandered off into one of the mainframe versions”
Comment from 26 May 2026 in “C extensions, portability, and alternative compilers” “every high-performance platform back then was an abomination”
Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “The last supported version of HP-UX is no more” “which were outdated even 20 years ago”
Comment from 23 Nov 2025 in “Ubuntu LTS releases to 15 years with Legacy add-on” Proprietary vendor lock-in costs
“pay massive taxes to Sun (Solaris) or IBM (AIX)”
Comment from 14 Jun 2026 in “How to Earn a Billion Dollars” “away from both legacy and proprietary platforms”
Comment from 31 Dec 2025 in “The rise of industrial software” Disliked after working with it
“I used to work with both and don't miss them in the least.”
Comment from 7 Feb 2026 in “We Mourn Our Craft” “I found myself grumpily using a HMC and bloody AIX.”
Comment from 22 Sep 2026 in “What Sun got wrong”
Other operating systems people recommend
The four most recommended other operating systems, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
See all 87 operating systems, rankedWhat people said
27 of the 30 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I found myself grumpily using a HMC and bloody AIX.”
“I did use an IBM PowerPC 43P as a daily driver under AIX 3.1 for a long while”
“There's also a command you can run to convert your Claude config to what Codex expects”
“I've been using this heavily the past 6 months to solve exactly this problem”
“it does encourage you to keep versioned config in one spot”
“The major benefits are that my adoption/deletion of skills, rules, hooks, MCP servers, etc. are deliberate, versioned, and shareable.”
“the draw for me was having an AIX system to work with”
“pay massive taxes to Sun (Solaris) or IBM (AIX)”
“AIX made you question your life choices, especially if you wandered off into one of the mainframe versions”
“Solaris, AIX, and HP-UX also maintain excellent backwards binary compatibility”
“the virtualization functionality was pretty neat”
“assuming it wasn't ported AIX already”
“I don't think it's super useful”
“To me, the metaphor doesn't really work, especially at level 5.”
“it is mainly for anti-AI people to virtue signal about not using it”
“I used to work with both and don't miss them in the least.”
“every high-performance platform back then was an abomination”
“they had various systems running on Solaris, AIX, etc, all with "normal" naming conventions”
“AIX was neat, if a little weird”
“still sells AIX as well as Linux systems”
“away from both legacy and proprietary platforms”
“the clocks were skewed between the processors”
“IBM's AIX with the web browser package(s) installed phoned home unknown telemetry to Big Blue”
“have forgotten long before FOSS circles keep repeating them”
“which were outdated even 20 years ago”
“kernel threads, pageability, and preemptibility at a time when no one else did”
“I find AIX to be fascinating. Especially 3.x against contemporaries with its LVM, and a pageable kernel”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.